by Linda Seed
“Well,” Rose said, “I have double fudge brownie every night, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s pretty goddamned delicious.”
“Will is double fudge brownie?”
“My version of Chunky Monkey.”
“Ah.”
It was all so confusing. If Lacy was dating Daniel—and it seemed like that was a real possibility—then she was in way over her head with all of the lust and the longing and the … the feelings. And all of this so soon after her unsatisfying bowl of Neapolitan. But after today, and the kiss, it increasingly seemed as though it might be out of her hands. She might not be able to put down the damned spoon.
Chapter Sixteen
“Why the hell did I do that, Z?” Daniel asked. He was sitting on his sofa with the dog beside him. Zzyzx, worn out from a busy day of doing dog things, was resting his head on Daniel’s blue-jean-clad thigh.
“I mean, she’s on the rebound, right? Plus, she’s way out of my league. That’s just … well. That’s just asking for trouble.”
Z gazed at him adoringly.
Daniel looked at the dog and grunted. “Why am I asking you? You’re crazy about her, too.”
Z’s little pink tongue emerged, and he licked his own nose.
Daniel figured he had two choices: He could stick the kiss into his mental scrapbook of the high points in his life, close the book, and move on. Or, he could pursue Lacy with reckless abandon, and to hell with the consequences.
He remembered the way she’d looked, her face tipped up to him, her eyes closed, her lips gently parted.
Oh, Christ.
“You know I’m already screwed,” he said to the dog. “Why don’t you just say so instead of pretending I’ve even got a damned choice?”
Z raised his doggy eyebrows at Daniel and made a slight whimpering noise.
“You know, if you’re going to live here, you’re really going to have to get better at giving advice.”
Z thumped his tail against the couch cushions.
Daniel wasn’t sure where to take things from here. But he did have some idea who to talk to about it. Someone who could talk back to him, for one thing.
Vince had some preliminary sketches of the renovation ready for Daniel’s approval. Daniel had suggested that they meet at the Old Stone Station for lunch. Daniel was buying.
When they both had fish and chips and mugs of beer in front of them, Daniel broached the subject he’d really come to talk about.
“Hey, Vince?”
“Mmm?” the man said around a mouthful of fish.
“I was wondering … What would you think of me kind of … well … going out with Lacy?”
Vince’s eyes widened, then he swallowed his food and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Well, son, it’s not that I don’t love an good, old-fashioned gesture, but I don’t really think that’s up to me.”
“Sure, of course,” Daniel said. “I know. But … Do you think … It’s just, she just broke up with that Brandon guy, and I—”
“You want to test the waters before jumping in,” Vince provided.
“Well, yeah.”
Vince put down his napkin, folded his arms on the table, and looked at Daniel. “I stay out of these things, generally.”
“Right.” Daniel nodded. “Right. I just—”
“I stay out of them,” Vince continued, “because I find that’s what serves me best in a domestic bliss kind of way. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see what’s going on around me.”
“Okay,” Daniel said.
“Just because I keep my mouth shut, like any man with half a brain would, doesn’t mean I don’t have my opinions.” He raised his eyebrows at Daniel meaningfully.
Daniel waited, trying to look both encouraging and upstanding.
“That Brandon guy.” Vince shook his head sadly. “My wife was very big on him. Still is. But I could see that train wreck coming a mile away. Wasn’t my business to say anything, but there it was. And then …” He used his hands to pantomime two trains colliding, and the ensuing wreckage.
“Right. And I don’t want to—”
Vince interrupted him as though he hadn’t spoken. “You live with a woman enough years, you start to understand her in ways you would have never thought possible. And I understand my daughter. Maybe better than my wife does.”
They were leading up to a verdict, Daniel could feel it. He waited to see which way it would go for him.
Vince clapped Daniel on the shoulder. “You do what you’ve gotta do, son. Ask her out. Make your move. You’ve got my blessing, if you feel like you need it.” With his hand still lying heavily on Daniel’s shoulder, he said, “But if you hurt her, I’ll tell you what … nobody’s ever going to find the body.”
Daniel gulped.
Vince laughed. “Son, you going to eat the rest of your fries?”
Lacy still couldn’t seem to find the damned earrings.
It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been just any earrings, but they were her grandmother’s. She ransacked the trailer looking for them, but they just weren’t there. She had to search the main house surreptitiously, because she didn’t want to admit to her mother that she couldn’t find them.
She’d last worn them to the engagement party. The blue topaz had matched the color of her dress. She hadn’t left them at the veterans’ hall, had she? No, because she hadn’t taken them off until late that night.
She was searching the meager spaces of her little trailer one more time when her cell phone buzzed with a text message.
Zzyzx misses you.
Daniel.
Suddenly, Lacy felt warm all over, and she was aware that she had a goofy smile on her face. She was silently berating herself for the warmth and the goofy smile—Get a grip on yourself, Lacy—when a second text came in.
I miss you, too.
Oh, God.
She didn’t know how to respond. Should she admit that she missed him? That she thought about him nearly every moment? That she kept replaying the kiss in her mind, over and over, mentally taking it much further, to its logical and decidedly NC-17 conclusion?
She couldn’t tell him any of that—not without losing whatever semblance of self-control she had—so instead, she typed:
How’s my sweatshirt?
It was neither sexy nor clever, true. But it was friendly and chatty, and it wasn’t likely to result in her being naked sooner than she was really prepared to be. The phone buzzed, and she read his response:
Warm, smashed flat, and covered in dog hair.
There was that goofy grin again. She couldn’t seem to help it. Oh, she was in so much trouble.
She thought, calculated, and then composed her own text:
You said you’d buy me another one. Maybe you could just buy me dinner instead.
She looked at her screen, at what she’d written. If she pressed SEND, she’d be setting something in motion that she might not be able to control, sort of like Ebola or global warming. On the other hand, being out of control with Daniel would be so much more fun than either of those things.
Shit.
She erased the text and put down the phone. Then she paced the length of the trailer a few times, picked up her phone, and put it down again. Then she snatched up the phone, typed the text again exactly as it had been the first time, and pushed SEND before she could stop herself.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She waited, pacing, the phone on her little dinette table. When it buzzed, she jumped slightly and lunged for the phone.
How about I buy you both? Are you free tonight?
Her heart was pounding. And how stupid was that? It was like she’d never been on a damned date before. In fact, she’d been on hundreds. Maybe thousands. And none of the invitations for those dates had made her feel like this—at least, not since Mark Brockton in the ninth grade. God, he’d been cute. She’d written Lacy Brockton in flowery script on her science notebook for a week afterward.
She took a deep breath and com
posed her answer:
Live music at Jitters tonight. I have the late shift.
She sent it, considered, and then sent another message:
Maybe you could stop by.
His answer came in less than a minute:
I’ll see you then.
Okay. It wasn’t anything as drastic and dangerous as a date, but she’d be seeing him again, and soon.
Oh, God.
What the hell was she doing? She sent a group text to Kate, Rose, and Gen. It contained only two words:
Emergency meeting.
It wasn’t easy to pull together an emergency meeting at the last minute early on a Friday afternoon. Everybody had work—Lacy needed to be at Jitters at four, Kate and Gen both closed their shops late on Fridays, and of course, Rose couldn’t get away from the wine shop, because Friday and Saturday nights were their busiest time.
But they were all motivated, so they found a way to make it work. Lacy’s shift hadn’t started yet, and both Kate and Gen had assistants they could leave in charge for a half hour. Rose, who was the manager of the wine shop and not the owner, was the only one who simply couldn’t leave work. So, the natural solution was for all of them to meet at De-Vine, where they gathered at the bar during a lull in Rose’s customer traffic.
Lacy was there first, sipping a glass of water Rose had served her. Kate came in next. She took a barstool next to Lacy’s and ordered a glass of pinot grigio. She was wearing a T-shirt that said BOOK LOVERS DO IT BETWEEN THE COVERS, and her short, dark hair was artfully messy.
“So, what’s the emergency meeting all about?” she asked.
“Let’s wait for Gen,” Lacy said.
“She wouldn’t tell me, either, but I suspect it’s got something to do with the delicious Daniel Reed,” Rose observed, a smirk on her face. Her chin-length hair was a vibrant purple, and her belly, which had really popped out just in the last month, stretched the front of her knit skull-and-crossbones dress.
On cue, Gen rushed into the shop, click-clicking along on perilously high heels. She was wearing one of her sleek black gallery dresses, and her hair, a mass of unruly red curls, had been forced into submission with a complex arrangement of pins and clips.
“Okay, okay,” Gen said. “I’m here. What’s going on? Why the emergency meeting?” She plopped down onto a barstool and focused on Lacy with interest.
“Daniel asked me out,” Lacy said. “And also, he kissed me. But … not at the same time. Those are two separate events. But related, obviously.”
“I knew about the kiss,” Gen said. Kate nodded in agreement.
Lacy had only told Rose, who now shrugged her shoulders.
“What was I supposed to do, just sit on information like that?” Rose asked.
“No, no.” Lacy shook her head. “It’s fine. Just … what now? He asked me out to dinner, but I stalled him, because I have to work. But he’s going to come by Jitters tonight, and I—”
“Wait, wait.” Kate put up her hands in a stop gesture. “Just back up a little. We haven’t deconstructed the kiss yet.”
“Can we focus?” Lacy demanded. “We’re on a timeline, here.”
“There’s always time to deconstruct a kiss,” Gen said, taking Kate’s side. “So … how was it?”
Lacy shot Gen a look. “He’s Daniel Goddamned Reed. How do you think it was?”
Kate looked thoughtful. “If I’m guessing, I’d say about an eleven on the one to ten scale. Daniel always looked to me like he had that seething sexuality thing going on. And if Jackson asks, I never said that.”
“So? Is she right? An eleven?” Gen said.
Lacy moaned. “I don’t even think my scale goes that high.”
“Ooh,” Kate said, rubbing her hands together in glee.
“But that’s the problem!” Lacy exclaimed.
“Wait. Why is that a problem?” Gen said.
“Because he’s Chunky Monkey.” Rose filled them in on Lacy’s ice cream metaphor for relationship sustainability. Just as she was getting to the part about Brandon and the Neapolitan, a pair of middle-aged women came in, decked out in Cambria sweatshirts and carrying shopping bags from the boutiques on Main Street. They settled in at the far end of the bar, and Rose greeted them and placed tasting lists in front of them.
“But that’s just crazy,” Kate said when Rose had concluded her explanation. “Of course you want the Chunky Monkey. Who the hell would choose Neapolitan?”
“Oh. You serve ice cream here?” one of the tourists asked.
“No, just wine and relationship advice,” Rose told her.
“But Chunky Monkey makes people fat!” Lacy exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air. “And it’s expensive! And it leaves you all … all gassy and full! And you swear you will never eat it again, but then you do! You do! Because you can’t help yourself!”
“Oh, honey,” Gen said, putting a hand on Lacy’s arm. “I think Daniel’s worth the risk.”
Rose poured tasting portions of two wines for the tourists, who were beginning to catch on to the gist of the conversation.
“I dated a Chunky Monkey man once,” one of the women said. Her helmet-like blond hair appeared to have been recently coiffed, and her red lipstick was feathering slightly at the edges of her mouth. “He broke my heart. I cried for months.”
“See?” Lacy said, gesturing toward the woman as Exhibit A.
“But it was so worth it,” the woman said, a dreamy look on her face.
“I married my Neapolitan.” The other woman looked at Lacy pointedly. “Do not make that mistake. Unless you think you’ll enjoy twenty years of him watching football in his boxer shorts.”
“Brandon—her ex-fiancé—wasn’t a boxer shorts and football kind of guy,” Rose told the woman. “More polo shirts and NPR.”
“I suppose that could get tiresome, too,” the woman said.
“Back to the question.” Lacy attempted to get the conversation back to its original purpose. “I’m in trouble here. Real trouble. If I go out with Daniel, you’re going to find my bloated corpse submerged in a bathtub of Chunky Monkey.”
“But what a way to go,” the first tourist observed.
“Look, Lacy,” Kate said. “Daniel’s a good guy. He’s not going to hurt you. At least, not on purpose. And you deserve the Ben & Jerry’s. Not the … the bargain store-brand stuff.”
“But it’s so soon after Brandon,” Lacy said, slumping a little on her barstool.
“You can’t put your love life on a schedule,” Gen said. “Things happen when they happen. You’ve got to seize your opportunities. You’ve got to … grab that ice cream spoon.”
The blond tourist leaned toward Lacy conspiratorially. “You should at least try one little lick.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jitters usually closed around six p.m. on a weeknight. But on the weekends, when Cambria’s tourism was at its peak, the coffeehouse stayed open as late as ten, serving hot drinks and snacks to people who weren’t quite ready to retire to their hotel rooms.
Live music wasn’t a regular evening offering at the coffeehouse, but they did it on occasion; it was usually one guy with an acoustic guitar, a tip jar, and some CDs to sell.
Tonight, Lacy had put a chalkboard sign out on the sidewalk announcing LIVE MUSIC, 8-10 P.M. She’d added a chalk drawing of a guitar and a steaming cup of coffee just to amuse herself. They weren’t expecting much of a crowd, but it didn’t matter; the singer worked for free, so if they got ten people drinking lattes and enjoying the music—along with some additional takeout traffic—they would consider it worth the effort.
Lacy’s shift had started at four, and now, at 7:45, she and Connor were moving tables and chairs around and bringing out a platform they kept in the back room to create a stage for the guitarist, who’d just arrived with his guitar in a case slung across his back.
In a venue of this size—barely a thousand square feet—they shouldn’t have needed a microphone, but they wanted the guitarist to be
heard over the milk steamer and the whir of the blenders they used to make their frothy iced drinks. Plus, the owner thought that if the music was loud enough to waft out onto Main Street, it might attract more of a crowd. So Connor brought the sound system out of the back room and set up a speaker and a single microphone on a stand atop the platform.
By eight, the guitarist, a guy in his mid-forties with a blue chambray shirt and prematurely gray hair that was long enough to curl slightly at the collar, was settled into a chair on the platform, singing a cover of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours.”
They’d turned down the lights a little for the sake of atmosphere, and within twenty minutes they had a medium-sized crowd of people sitting at the café tables, sipping cappuccinos, and listening appreciatively—or at least passively—to the music.
Lacy was going through the motions of doing her job—making lattes, ringing up sales, making sure the tables were wiped and the trash cans were emptied—but she was having a hard time focusing, because she couldn’t seem to stop watching the door for Daniel.
She’d already had to remake two drinks because she’d gotten them wrong—a mocha that was missing the chocolate and a latte sans the drizzle of caramel sauce the customer had requested—and she mentally berated herself for her silly, teenage behavior.
When she dropped a drink behind the counter and had to retrieve the mop from the back room to clean up her mess, Connor gave her a pointed look.
“What’s going on with you, Lacy?” he asked, not unkindly. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course. Yes,” Lacy answered as she mopped up coffee and milk.
“Because if this is about a guy, I can kick his ass for you.”
Lacy had been working with Connor for a couple of years now, and the boy—she thought of him as a boy, since he was nearly ten years younger than she was—had been flirting with her for that entire time. She didn’t mind, though. It was the kind of benign, companionable flirting a guy did when both he and the object of his flirtation knew that he was hopelessly out of his depth.
“It’s not about a guy,” Lacy lied. Just then, the front door of the shop opened, and the unmistakable form of Daniel Reed filled the doorway. Lacy froze in the middle of her cleanup efforts, having completely forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.