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“What?”
“My mom…” She smiles at her phone.
There it is again—the stirring in my chest. Her smile lights up her face. “She really liked the photo I sent.”
“The one of us?” My voice drops because now I’m thinking of how it felt to stand cheek-to-cheek with her.
So good.
That photo I shared of us received a lot of love on Insta last night while I was sleeping. I woke up to hundreds of likes and a couple dozen comments.
“We’re photogenic,” I say.
She nods, still smiling. “My mom says that the snapshots of us made her day…”
Her smile fades. “I guess—I guess that’s the last of them, though. We can’t?—”
“Why not?” I cut in.
I want to see her smile again.
“Because… obviously. I mean, work.”
“It’s no big deal to pose for a photo now and then,” I say.
A text comes into my phone. I skim it swiftly. “Look, Mark will send me a contact in the real estate biz. I’ll call Chad to see if I can cheer him up. Give me time to get some stuff rolling. You and I can make a plan from there, depending on how my call goes.”
“Don’t promise him the moon,” she warns.
“Me? Why would I do that?”
“Because that’s what you do, Jack. Just… email me about how it goes, I guess. I’d like to give Devina an update by the end of today. I mean, this is marked ‘Urgent.’”
“How about we meet up at six? We can snap another of your fake photos, then hit the work stuff.”
She hesitates… for a really long time. It’s like she’s weighing a billion pros and cons in her head.
Finally, she nods. “Okay, meeting up at six is fine. But not in the hot tub.”
“A little too hot for ya?”
“Yeah. You could say that.” The pink in her cheeks surpasses a blush. She looks like she might faint again.
So, I do my best to save her. This time, it’s with words. “Great. Six o’clock, I’ll swing by your bungalow.”
“I guess you do know which one it is.”
“The pink one.” A memory of the textured stucco sneaks up on me. I looked at it, right after that crazy, amazing kiss. I can picture the flaky pink paint, the vines snaking up the side. Hazel, breathless and beautiful in the moonlight. “We’ll grab dinner.”
“Okay.”
I nod. “It’s a date.”
“It’s a work meeting.”
“Six,” I remind her, cracking a grin.
She rolls her eyes. “See you, Jack.”
