I take them, step toward him, place a hand on his chest, and rise to my tiptoes to kiss him. As if it’s as common a thing for me to do as breathing.
Noah grins against my mouth as his arm slides around my back. He presses me into him, not letting me back away. “You know,” he says. “You could kiss and make better the places I hurt where I fell. If you want.”
I laugh, though the images conjured in my head are not fit for the dating stage. Battling between loving that comment and his obvious show of desire—but knowing I can’t act upon it and need to throw a barrier up to crash my train of thought—I playfully slap his chest and push away from him. “You rake.” And thenit dawns on me he isn’t supposed to be here until Friday. It’s Wednesday. “What are you doing here?”
Noah runs his hand through his curls, which fall right back into a haphazard state that simply works for him. Then, as if he’s nervous, he rocks back and forth on his heels and folds his hands in front of him. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, but I’d like to take you out on a surprise date.”
My heart leaps like a ballet dancer. Asurprisedate? Planned forme?
“Intrude away!” I state, elation leaking through my voice. I look down at the beautiful bouquet of flowers in my hand and then remember I’m dressed in a day-old-sweatpants-and-sweater combo that boasts coffee stains and reeks of exhausted, over-caffeinated author. “Crap. I need to change. How should I dress? I should probably shower. And I need to do my makeup and—”
Noah silences me with a long, delicious kiss. When he pulls away, leaving me begging for more, he says, “Be ready at five, sweetheart. I’ll come pick you up. Wear something you feel pretty in.” He plants a kiss on my forehead, the sweetest action I could even imagine, and leaves me speechless as he walks across the yard, gets in his dark blue truck, and leaves.
“What in the romance novel?” I ask myself aloud as I watch him drive down our dirt road. He honks the horn three times as he gets to the stop sign, then he pulls out onto the highway. He disappears behind a wall of oak trees, and I’m left once again wondering how this man is even real.
Once I’m back inside my camper, I check the time and realize I have three hours to get ready. My heart’s beating a little too fast, my skin is a little too clammy, and I’m a lot too distracted to focus on writing. Instead, I call my best friend.
“Sammie? You busy?” I ask as soon as she answers.
“Just doing laundry. What’s up?”
“Noah kinda just showed up on my doorstep, and I about knocked him out, but that’s not pertinent to the story. Point is, he gave me flowers and told me he was taking me out on a surprise date tonight and to wear something pretty and be ready at five.”
A beat of silence, and then, “Be there in fifteen.”
Thirty minutes later, Sam finally arrives. She’s throwing my clothes everywhere as she digs through my small closet at the end of my bed, looking for only God knows what. I told her I wanted to wear a simple sundress, but she said that wasn’t going to cut it.
“Seriously, Sam. This is Whitney. Where in the world could he take me that I need more than a simple sundress?”
“He could take you to Jackson. There are fancy places in the city.”
“He said ‘pretty,’ not ‘fancy.’”
Sam stops, her hands grabbing one of the felt hangers. She drags out a mini black dress, one that I haven’t worn since, well, I don’t remember. It belongs to the three-year memory hole.
“I’ve never even tried that on,” I state, crossing my arms like a child.
Sam waggles her brows. “Yes, you have. You wore this bad boy on your first date with Bryan.” She frowns. “At least the first one after you told me about him.”
I scoff, throwing my hands up. “Then I definitely don’t want to wear it out on my first official date with Noah.”
“But you don’t remember that date, and you didn’t have a good time with Bryan anyway.”
That catches my attention. “Sam, why did I even date that man? I have my assumptions, but did I ever confide in you about them?”
Sam drops the dress onto my bed and sits down as I stare at her from the bedroom steps. She sighs, fiddling with her shortblonde hair. “You were pretty closed off in that relationship, which is why we haven’t told you more information about it. You weren’t in love with him; that’s for sure. We could all see that from a mile away. Like I’ve told you before, I think you were settling. When you finally told me about him, you said he was sensible, had a decent income, and was kind, to which I replied that you needed more than sensible and kind. I told you that you needed romance and passion.” She scrunches her nose. “Then you told me that romance and passion were only meant for heroines.”
I soak in her words as I move to sit next to her on my bed, a defeated slump in my shoulders. “In that time, did I ever tell you what Lane once told me? I know I didn’t tell you before I lost my memories, but did I ever open up about it?”
Sam shakes her head.
“Before Lane dumped me on Valentine’s Day, we had been doing a lot of arguing. He had started going full days without talking to me, never planned dates outside of me going to his apartment and watching movies, and a bunch of other things like not telling me he loved me or not even bothering to get me little gifts like he had used to. Of course, I noticed it all. But when I brought it up to him one day, he laughed at me and told me that we were past all of that. The romance. He said I was his, and he was mine, and that was that.”
“What a fusty, barren-spirited, abomination of a man.”
“Okay, Miss Shakespeare.” I laugh, then continue my story. “Determined not to believe that, I kept bringing it up. I was kind, gentle, and respectful in my approach, but no matter, it always ended in him ghosting me for a few days until I ended up practically begging him to talk to me and kept telling him how sorry I was for even mentioning it again. Then, when he broke up with me, he told me that my expectations were too high and that I wanted a fictional man, not a real man.”
Sam curses, her fists clenching at her side. “I never liked that guy.”
