“Thanks for thinking I’m a decent enough guy to introduce her to.”
Sherrie rolled her eyes and pointed at me. “Saying stuff like that is exactly what makes you a decent guy. You’ll love her.”
“I look forward to it,” I said. She left my office with a wave, but despite meaning every word I said to her, I found myself clicking away from a picture of Rink’s weekend home to do a search on porch swings instead, because somehow, imagining Brooke having one of her own and spending a lazy Sunday afternoon in it had become the calm I needed in the never-ending capital rat race.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brooke
Week two of school went better, mainly because I wore pants every day just to make sure I didn’t tuck my skirt into my underwear again. It was a low bar, sure, but I needed an uneventful week after the first one from hell.
As a bonus, the microscope activity went well, and the kids loved doing an actual lab. It bought me some goodwill for the rest of the week. I tried not to worry about how I would top it the next week, and just enjoyed having everything work well. By Friday afternoon, I even managed to settle one rambunctious boy with a single look. The Look. The teacher look.
I couldn’t wait to tell Miss Lily about it after school while we worked in the garden.
“You got the look down on your second week of school?” she repeated. “Impressive, but I’m not surprised. You’re a fast learner.”
“It doesn’t feel like that,” I confessed. “I feel like they’re going to see right through me every single day, like my days are numbered before they figure out I’m not a real teacher.”
“Keep thinking that and they will, honey.” She leaned over from where she was weeding eggplants next to me and patted my hand. “Just remember, you may be an inexperienced teacher, but you’re an experienced human. You’ve lived twice as much life as they have, and that counts for something. Let your authority rest in that, and pretty soon they’ll believe you’re a regular old teacher like everyone else over there.”
“I hope so.” I rose to stretch my back before I tackled the next row. And to steal a glance at the road.
“You looking for Ian?”
“No.” I crouched down and went to work on the row on the other side.
Miss Lily continued like she hadn’t heard my denial. “Don’t know if he’s coming this weekend, to be honest. Says he’s got work. And probably another date.”
Another date? A-n-o-t-h-e-r.
I wanted to follow up on that except I’d gone out of my way to make sure it was none of my business.
“Don’t worry, honey. He’ll see sense eventually. He always does.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’ll realize it’s you he should be taking out.”
“Oh, that’s not what I—”
“Yes, it is.” She was probably trying to save me from telling a lie.
But I didn’t want her feeling sorry for me, so some stubborn part of me lied anyway. “I wasn’t thinking about Ian, Miss Lily. In fact, I have a date tonight.”
Miss Lily scooted around so she faced me again. “Come again?”
“I have a date tonight.” The lie tasted worse the second time.
“With who?” She said it like she didn’t believe me which made me feel like I needed to double down on the lie.
“Noah Redmond?”
“Is that a question?”
“No, I mean, I’m going to dinner with Noah Redmond.”
“The new PE teacher.” She seemed to consider this. “All right. I hear his people are good. They’re over in Lynchburg.”
“Right. We eat lunch together most days, and he’s nice. Helps to not be the only new face on staff.”
“Tell me about your classes,” she said, turning back to her weeding, and I did, not sure how I felt about her giving up on the idea of me dating Ian so easily. It was for the best, of course. It was a good thing she wasn’t too worked up over it. I didn’t like disappointing her.
But...there had been something so nice about her having a high enough opinion of me that she’d lured her grandson home to meet me in the first place.
After an hour of chatting and weeding, I stood and held out a hand to help her to her feet. “I should head in. I need to get ready.” For the date I made up.
Miss Lily accepted my hand and rose. “Well, you have a good time, honey. I’ll see you out here tomorrow, and we’ll plant some of that trendy kale and then some actual good lettuces.”
“Can I take a couple of ears of corn?” The first stalks were ripening, and we had two whole rows of it growing.
“Are you crazy, child? Of course not.”
I looked at her, startled by her denial.
“Unless you can pluck it and eat it fresh, leave it on the stalk. It loses most of its sugar within two hours of being plucked. Trust me, you’re going to want to eat it tomorrow when you’re not rushing off to dinner with someone who is a poor second place to my grandson.” Then she winked and strode off toward her house with the energy of a woman half her age.
I let myself into my kitchen, smiling, because it was reassuring that Miss Lily still wanted me for Ian. But then I felt like trash for lying to her about Noah, so I decided to cowgirl up and try to make it the truth.
He’d offered his number in case I ever needed help with spider-wrangling, and we often texted to confirm lunch plans before he made the trek across campus. I had so far declined the opportunity to eat lunch in the stinky gym. I thought for a minute and drafted a text to Noah.
Hey, so feeling like I want to try a place in town but don’t want to be a loser at a table by myself tonight. You up for dinner?
I read it over, decided it sounded non-datey, and pressed send.
Noah answered a couple minutes later. Don’t know. I had my eye on a Lean Cuisine.
I laughed. You’re right. Gourmet burgers can’t compete.
He responded immediately. Lit the Lean Cuisine on fire and threw it in the trash. What time for dinner?
I suggested meeting at the Three Penny Pub at 7:00, and he confirmed he’d be there.
Who knew? Maybe we’d find a vibe with each other that didn’t necessarily show up at work?
I came home shortly after nine, full and sleepy after a fun night at the pub with Noah, but it hadn’t felt remotely date-like. Fun and easy, yes. Romantic? No.
And annoyingly, I’d found myself checking Miss Lily’s driveway for a BMW and frowning when I didn’t see it.
Maybe that was why when Noah suggested dinner out at an Italian place the following week, I said yes. This time, he offered to come pick me up. That was more date-ish. I even put on a dress for it.
But from the minute he knocked on my door, I knew we were as friend-zoned as I’d tried to pretend Ian and I were.
In fact, something about Noah coming to my house turned us both awkward. Where conversation usually flowed easily between us at school, we kept falling into pockets of silence in the car, and by the time our orders arrived, I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever known how to carry on a conversation.
I poked at my ravioli. I didn’t even want it, but my mom had always taught me not to order noodles on a date because there was no elegant way to eat them. I shot a covetous look at Noah’s plate of fettucine alfredo, wishing I’d ordered that instead.
“Something wrong with the food?” Noah asked.
“No, it’s fine.” I took a bite. “Yum. Good marinara.”
He nodded and swirled some noodles onto his fork. “Good alfredo.”
We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, but the awkwardness made it feel like two hours.
“So what—”
“Is it me—”
He laughed. “It figures we’d both try to break the silence at the same time.”
I smiled back. “You go ahead. What were you going to say?”
“I’m wondering if it’s me or this whole evening has felt weird to you so far?”
“Super weird
,” I confessed.
“Is it because we tried to treat it like a date? Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “Don’t answer that. Of course it is. Sorry. I think I made it weird by coming to pick you up.”
“I made it weird by wearing a dress to dinner.”
He nodded. “You could always tuck it into your underwear. Bring things back to normal.”
I grinned. “I actually think that would make me feel better. But I’m not doing it.”
“Fair enough. So how do we reset?”
“How about if we call this not a date? And I pay for my own dinner and confess that I wish I had gotten the fettucine. I only got the ravioli because I thought I could eat it more neatly on a date than noodles.”
His face lit up. “I didn’t get the ravioli because I figured I’d probably drop some on my shirt and end up with a marinara stain. Want to trade? And never go on a date with each other again?”
“Heck, yes!” I said and held out my plate for the swap.
“So much better,” he said after his first bite of ravioli.
“No way. I came out better in that trade,” I answered after trying the fettucine. “Tastes even better when it’s seasoned with friendship.”
He held up his wine glass for a toast and I obliged. “To never trying that again.”
“Cheers!”
Dinner went much better from there as we settled into our usual rhythm of jokes and school gossip. He dropped me off and I slipped in the house, grateful that we’d worked things out but frustrated that my eyes had searched for Ian’s car once again the second Miss Lily’s house was in view.
Ugh.
Get your mind right, Brooke. He’s a bad fit. Move on.
Which would have been far easier to do if a delivery man hadn’t rung my doorbell mid-morning the next day with a huge cardboard box.
“What is it?” I asked when I opened the door to the delivery guy.
“No idea,” he said. “Heavy sucker though.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Don’t know that either. Try the mailing sticker.”
“Thanks, I would have never thought of that,” I muttered as he jogged down the stairs.
He’d propped the box beside the front door, and it was as tall as I was. It was also very solid when I nudged it with my toe. He’d faced the shipping label inward, so I had to wrestle it around before I could find the sender. All it said was Virginia Woodcraft.
I wracked my brain trying to think of what I could have ordered from them, but I didn’t remember buying anything online lately, and definitely nothing this size. The only thing left to do was open it. I fetched a pocketknife inside, carefully eased the box flat on the porch, and sliced through the tape.
When I pulled away the cardboard, it looked like a wooden bench made of white-painted wood along with two packages of sturdy chains.
A porch swing? “What in the world...” I dug through the packaging again, but there were no further clues to be had.
Who would send me a porch swing?
I had only ever mentioned the idea to...
Ian.
As if I’d summoned him, my phone vibrated with a text, and his name appeared in my screen. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d heard from him, and my heart did a dopey skipped beat as I opened the message.
Got a delivery alert. Finally figured out how to say sorry like I really mean it. You deserve a porch swing. Let me know when you want it installed and I’ll send Grace over to do it.
I had the strangest feeling of my heart leaping while my stomach sank.
He listened to me!
He sent me a porch swing!
He would hire someone else to hang it rather than come do it himself...
“Brooke Spencer, you are a ridiculous person.” But saying it out loud didn’t make me feel any less simultaneously goofy and annoyed as I picked up and admired each piece of the swing.
I should say no to this, I finally texted back. But I love it too much. So thank you.
There was a long pause before he responded. It was the least I could do.
I closed the box and pushed it against the far edge of the porch until I could get to it, then went inside to get the remaining wallpaper down. But as I worked by myself removing the last pieces from the entryway, instead of the sense of satisfaction that the unending project had an end after all, I pulled the final piece away and realized that I missed listening to Ian do it while he muttered curses to himself when he thought I wasn’t listening.
I missed Ian, period.
The failed date with Noah last night only highlighted what I’d been trying to deny to myself: I was into Ian. In a big way. In a one-slight-nudge-and-I’ll-fall-madly kind of way. And while I hadn’t tumbled yet, he was going to be the shadow looming over any other dates I might have a chance to go on, now or six months from now.
I sat down hard, right in the middle of the foyer amidst the curls of old wallpaper.
What the heck was I supposed to do about that?
I tried to think through all the possibilities.
I could throw myself into my work! But that hadn’t helped take my mind off him so far.
I could try a dating app! But the nearest candidates were an hour away in Charlottesville, and none of their pictures showed the same glint in their eyes that Ian had.
I could ask Miss Lily to set me up with a nice church boy! But I liked Ian’s devilish streak.
I just really liked Ian.
Finally, I pushed up from the floor, dragged myself into the kitchen and fixed myself a cup of fortifying tea before I made my next call. I bowed my head in defeat and surrendered to the inevitable.
“Hey, Mom? I was thinking about coming to visit next weekend over Labor Day.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ian
The Rink case was killing me. Or making me want to murder something. I tried to take out my frustration in the batting cages with Landon after work one evening, but even smashing the pitches from the machine didn’t make me feel any better.
“Yo, Ian, you good?” My brother looked at me with concerned eyes from beneath the bill of his Orioles cap.
“Fine.” I smashed another pitch and grunted.
“You sound real fine,” he said, his lips twisting.
“It’s just a case. I keep turning up leads and they keep running into dead ends.”
“At least you don’t have to do the paperwork on it.”
I stepped out of the strike zone to study him more closely. “You getting tired of your job? About time. It only took me a year.” He was a second-year associate at the largest firm in Baltimore.
“I’m tired of grunt work.”
“It’s the nature of the beast, man. You gotta put in time before you get to do the interesting stuff.”
“You didn’t.”
I grinned at him. “No, I sure didn’t. I jumped right to the interesting part.”
“But you’ll never see the inside of a courtroom.”
I shrugged. “Overrated. I like being where the action is, doing the research, solving puzzles. It’s a good fit for me.”
“Then why are you so frustrated that you dragged me to the batting cages tonight?”
I gave him a tight smile this time and kicked at my bat. “Because the puzzle isn’t solving. Or maybe the better way to say it is that I know exactly what this puzzle is but I’m missing the last piece.”
“Can’t find it?”
“Yes and no.”
“Talk to me in hypotheticals.”
I thought about how to say it in a way that kept me inside the right ethical lines. “Imagine you have a big, powerful guy named Bad Guy.”
“Creative.”
“Shut up. I didn’t go to novel-writing school. So Bad Guy has a history of doing bad things to nice women.”
“How bad?”
“Not exactly sure, but bad enough that he’s had to pay several of them a lot of money to stay quiet. And let’s say that Bad G
uy has fooled the world into thinking he’s reformed, but I know he hasn’t. And let’s say that Bad Guy has a lot of influence that he doesn’t deserve, and worse, constant access to new victims. So Bad Guy needs to go down.”
Landon thumped his bat in his open palm, like a goon in a mafia movie threatening a small-time crook. “Yeah, he does.”
“Yeah. He really does. So, we need one of his victims to come forward. And if one comes forward, more will come forward. But none of them want to cross him because they think he’ll retaliate. Or that the system won’t believe them.”
“You can’t find any of his victims?”
I frowned. “Worse. I can find plenty. But all of them are afraid to take the first step.” I’d spent more than two weeks tracking down leads. I’d talked to six young women, and Sherrie had spoken with another four. Even the ones who didn’t have non-disclosure agreements didn’t want to come forward. Rink’s influence was that great.
“Can you blame them?” he asked. “It doesn’t always go well for women who speak up.”
I sighed. “I know. But the reality is that he’s going to keep preying on new women because he knows he can. It kills me.”
He nodded and stepped into the strike zone, squaring up. “So you keep looking until you find someone who will.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I know you’re the older, wiser brother, but it’s exactly that simple. It’s also very hard. But you have to do it.” He swung and connected with the next pitch, the crack of the bat underlining his point.
“I know.”
“That everything?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Liar. Gran says there’s a girl.”
I rolled my eyes. “There’s no girl. She tried to trick me into dating her neighbor.”
“Something wrong with the neighbor?”
“No, she’s great. Just not looking to date.”
“She isn’t or you aren’t?”
“She isn’t—” But I lost my train of thought as my watch vibrated with a text from Brooke. I hadn’t heard from her since last week when I’d sent the porch swing.
Heading to McClean to see my parents tmrw. Thought I’d check out the spy museum you made up. You free to prove it’s real?
Kiss Me Now: A Romantic Comedy Page 17