But my concern for our northern neighbors and Gage’s career and… well, basicallyeverything… evaporated when I glimpsed a familiar dark head threading its way through the crowd.
Despite the year we’d spent “shacking up,” as Lorenna called it, despite all the years I’d loved him before that, my stomach still flipped over every time Rafael Goodman was in my vicinity. I was pretty sure it always would.
“Hey there, handsome,” I said. “I thought you were gonna be late to—”
I cut off as Rafe’s two hands came up to cradle my jaw and tenderly hold me in place for a kiss that sent a jolt of electricity to my bloodstream. When he pulled away a long moment later, I swayed toward him with my hand on his waist to get another taste, completely forgetting where we were, who was around us, and where my half-drunk mead had gone.
I wasn’t entirely sure what my name was either.
“Gratuitous PDA is gratuitous.” Gage sighed. “Aim, let’s go chat with Dr. Dave. He looks lonely.”
“Hey, baby,” Rafe greeted me belatedly once we were alone. He ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “Loved that last song.”
“Yeah?” I blinked dazedly, trying to remember the last song. Or any song. “Oh, yeah!” I felt my smile grow all syrupy sweet of its own volition but couldn’t bring myself to care. “Something new I’ve been playing around with. Can you guess what it was about?”
“Mmm. I don’t have to guess—Iknow. My close personal friend Jayd Rollins wrote that one about a frustrated tour boat operator who finally pulled his head out of his ass and told the man he loved how he really felt. Fun fact: that song was originally meant to be sung in rounds with an electric accordion solo.”
Laughter welled up inside me, the kind that came from knowing without a shadow of a doubt that my worst day with this man was better than my best day without him. I’d gotten kinda used to that feeling.
“Is that so?Because I thought it was about a singer who realizes he’d rather pullhishead out of his ass and spend his time with the man of his dreams than just sing songs about it.” I bit my lip. “I envisioned it as all acoustic guitar, no accordion.”
“Pfft.” Rafe snorted. “That’s just crazy talk. And not to say you’re singing it wrong or whatever, but the song iswaytoo peppy without the gravitas of the accordion.” He hooked his thumbs through the back loops of my jeans.
“You’re a genius. What would I do without you?” I asked, only mostly kidding.
“You won’t have to find out, ’cause you’re stuck with me for good,” Rafe said, not kidding at all. “Now kiss me again.”
I started to lift my hand up to cup Rafe’s neck… and blinked in confusion when I realized I was still holding my guitar.Jesus. I was gone for this man, and that wasn’t in doubt, but this wastoofar gone, even for me.
And of course, Rafe witnessed the whole thing. His shoulders shook with laughter as he pressed his forehead to mine.
I grabbed his hand and towed him past the table filled with our friends and family so I could settle my guitar in the case I’d left on the stage.
“I thought you were gonna be late tonight,” I said, glossing over the whole loss-of-all-situational-awareness thing.
“I was, but we finished our meeting early. I told them tonight was special.” Rafe boosted himself up to sit on the edge of the stage with his legs dangling off the edge.
“Tonight is?” I laid Vega in its case and turned back to him. “What’s tonight?”
It was late August, and as far as I knew, we didn’t have a single thing on the calendar except a cookout at his dad’s house the next day… and the Extravaganza the following weekend, obviously.
Rafe fake-gasped. “It’s our anniversary, boyfriend.”
I had a minute of low-key panic before realizing he was mistaken. “Uh. It’s super not. The Extravaganza is next weekend. That’s our anniversary.”
I knew this because I had huge plans for Saturday night when I played the Extravaganza’s headline show. As in, monumental, down-on-one-knee, ring-in-a-box plans, which I’d only managed to keep from Rafe by not telling a single soul on the island about them.
“But we didn’t get together at the Extravaganza,” Rafe informed me. “We got together long before that. In Dry Hump, remember? You might recall that a song was karaoke-d? Blow jobs were exchanged?”
My fingers tingled hot and cold, and my dick perked up at the memory.
“I seem to vaguely recall that.” I cleared my throat. “But we weren’t together-together then. That wasn’t our anniversary, it was our… oursexiversary.”
“So you’re saying you weren’t all in from the first minute?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it and pretended to be very busy buffing the body of my guitar with the hem of my T-shirt. He was not wrong. But I also would not tell him he was right. Sappy as we were, we were still competitive. Arguably even more so nowadays.
And yet, if celebratory anniversary blow jobs were on the table… well, a man could be flexible.
