“Like, cryptic?”
“Not Da Vinci Code–style stuff, Trey,” she says, and rolls her eyes, and that small gesture makes me feel like she’s returning to herself.
She hands the card to me, and then wipes the sweat off her brow. “I hate New York summers. I wish I were anyplace but here,” she mutters.
“Music to my ears. You know I want to get out of here,” I say, and then I run a thumb over the raised lettering of the aardvark in the sand as we walk past a dry cleaner on the way to the shop. “To our Harley.” I look at her. “They really did send you a birthday card?” I say, but it’s more like a question of wonder. “I thought you hadn’t talked to them since you were six and spent the summer there.”
“I haven’t. Haven’t seen them, haven’t been there. And now this. Is it out of the blue, or do you think she’s hiding other cards from me?”
“This is your mom we’re talking about. Anything’s possible. You should look for them at her house.”
“Snoop?”
“Uh, it’s not snooping when they’ve got your name on them and she’s been hiding them from you. It’s hunting down what’s yours,” I say as we reach the store. It’s all black and punk on the outside, and has racks and racks inside of cool T-shirts with funky sayings. Maybe it’s not the typical “Will you move in with me?” gift, but I don’t even know if you give gifts when you ask someone to move in with you. And I don’t care. We’re kind of making up the rules as we go along, new ones that fit us.
She flips through the racks, and when she finds a shirt she likes, she tells me she’s going to try it on. She opens the curtain of a dressing room that is probably half the size of an airplane bathroom, and I wander around the store, listening to the music that’s playing overhead. The dude behind the counter nods at me as he flicks through a magazine.
“Need anything?” he asks, barely glancing up from the pages. He has huge plugs in his ears and a spike in his nose.
“I’m good.”
I check out some leather jackets Harley might like as the music shifts to Arcade Fire. Our favorite band. We always seem to hear them when the moment is right and meaningful. Like the night we met, then the night we finally admitted how we felt for each other, and hell, this feels like another moment, another crossroads—it feels like the moment to ask her to move in. I walk straight to the dressing room. “Best. Band. Ever.”
She peeks around the curtain. “No. Questions. Asked,” she says with a sexy smile, and it’s our saying, it’s our words, it’s us. “Come in.”
I walk in and close the curtain behind me as she pulls on the shirt. I catch a glimpse of her flat stomach that I want to press my lips against.
I can’t resist. I am so drawn to her it’s ridiculous. I brush my thumb across her flesh, tracing a line along the waistband of her jean skirt. “You have such a sexy stomach.”
I drop to my knees and kiss her belly, like she’s a goddess and I’m worshipping at her feet, and maybe I am. Then, the moment that had been turning the inside of this dressing room as hot as the New York asphalt is blurred with sudden waterworks. Tears rain down her cheeks, and she tries to cover them by hiding behind her fingers.
I spring up and press my hands on her shoulders. “What is it, Harley?”
“I’m pregnant.”
In an instant, all the noise and all the music has been vacuumed out of the store.
My ears are ringing, my head is clanging, and I stumble back against the wall of the dressing room. Stars circle my vision, turning me woozy and weak. The inside of my chest is a black hole. All I can figure is I’m hearing things, seeing things, and I’ve slipped into my own worst nightmare where I’m tumbling into endless dark.
Only I’m not sleeping. I’m wide awake in a dressing room in the East Village, and the love of my life has just shot a bullet through my chest.
THE STORY OF HARLEY and TREY concludes in EVERY SECOND WITH YOU, available everywhere.
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The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Page 16