AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I chuckle. “Guess she’s a pro. All right, I’m going to go give him the news.”
“Which is?”
“Nosy prier,” I grumble.
“Stubborn denier,” she sing-songs back.
“That I’ll do it,” I say, my smile spreading as I say it out loud. I feel like doing cartwheels that would result in an injury, jumping up and down like a fool. At the very least, some victorious fist-pumping. “I’ll stay.”
“That’s my girl,” Josie says with a nod and a final orange-crumbed grin. “Now shoo.”
“You will?” Emerson says a few minutes later when I tell him, still standing in his doorway and practically bouncing on my toes. “You’re sure?”
I laugh. “No. Are you?”
He laughs, then hugs me. “Hell no. But—hell, we’re actually doing this!”
He picks me up and spins me around. I get a big whiff of him—his clean, woodsy, manly musk.
Our kiss tastes like victory.
I’ve never had a kiss be victorious, but I guess this is it. I guess this is what it’s like when you want the same thing and you get it. When the triumphant music in your head plays just the same tune. Or at least an accompanying harmony.
If I had to describe what music is playing here as he holds me tight in his strong, warm arms, it would be jazz. Something with a sharp, staccato tempo, all upward chords and sweeps, and yet slow and rhythmic and inescapable like the mournful tuba in the background. Not taking the foreground, not in the least, and yet there all the same.
The little voice in the back of my head, with the conviction of a tried-and-true saying, If it feels too good to be true, it probably is.
And here’s the thing. I’ve learned how to make killer tattoos—the kind of designs other people post on Pinterest or Instagram and stamp their lying names on. I’ve learned how to run a business and balance the rent and the tools and the marketing and everything else to get a good profit. I’ve learned how to not give up when the seventeenth guy I date turns out to be Dud #17.
But I haven’t learned how to prove that little voice in the back of my head wrong.
Not yet.
Chapter 16
Emerson
Calling up airlines and getting bounced around by operators, some foreign and unintelligible, some local and bored, some a varying combination of the two, before arguing with a supervisor and being transferred to a higher supervisor, until finally reaching the one you need, after losing an hour and most of your sanity, shouldn’t be fun.
Waiting in a Black-Friday-Walmart-worthy line to talk to the hotel to ask where your room service meal went shouldn’t be fun. Rushing off to the buffet in a starving stupor and finding another Sale-Day-at-Walmart-worthy line shouldn’t be fun.
With her, it is.
Wynona hooks her hand in mine. She wraps her lithe, pale arms around mine. And just like that, the waiting falls away in a hug, a giggle. She kisses me on the cheek and I could wait another day.
What do we even say to each other, talk about?
I couldn’t tell you.
We joke, we tease, we talk, and we discuss.
About the line and the violently sneezing lady with the big hair trying to pass her caged growling baby tiger off as an emotional support animal. About how, even half-consciously, Wynona manages to scribble illustrations that are pure gold on the scrap of a receipt she found in her pocket. About net neutrality and what it will all come to—how the average person not knowing about it is shitty.
She makes the mundane exciting. The average anything but. And the exciting, the fun? She makes it out of this world.
I almost don’t take the call when my phone rings.
“Bad news,” Landon says.
“Now’s not really the time,” I say.
“Yes, it is,” Wynona says firmly.
Her gesture to the long-ass line that’s moving like an old turtle is convincing. I can’t really say I don’t have the time right now.
“All right,” I tell Landon. “What’s up?”
“Did you do something to piss off your ex?” he asks.
“She came all the way here to the hotel,” I admit. “I sent her packing. Firmly, but politely enough. Why?”
Landon sighs. “I told you Marla had crazy eyes.”
“Mary,” I correct him. “Why is it no one could ever remember her goddamn name?”
“Because we didn’t want to.” A bit of typing sounds in the background—Landon’s probably trying to get some emails out of his way while on the call. “She wasn’t exactly model girlfriend material.”
“Right, but what’s up?” I say.
Even Wynona in my arms and the sexy little red Spanish dress she’s wearing can’t stamp out the tension that’s coiled every muscle in my body. I need to know.
“It could be worse,” Landon says diplomatically.
“Landon.”
“Hold on, it’s Kyra.” More muffled now, he’s probably covering the phone. “Yeah, yeah, hun. Okay, see you soon!”
“She’s going to the grocery store,” he explains.
