“I think I narrowed it down to three,” she announced, unaware of any of the day’s events and fanning three nearly identical paint samples in her hands. “For the accent wall behind the stage. What do you think?”
She waited for his answer, utterly serious.
“Hmm,” Tom said, stepping closer to pretend to consider the paint chips. He put his thumb in his mouth and wiped it across the smudge of dust on her nose before answering.
“This one,” he said, choosing a shade at random.
Rosie squirmed away from his wet finger on her face, then held the paint chip at arm’s length.
“Are you sure?” she said doubtfully. “You don’t think my dad will say it’s too pink?”
Tom thought if Mr. Kelly cared, he would have shown up by now, but he wasn’t going to break Rosie’s heart by telling her that.
“I think it’ll set off my summer tan wonderfully,” Tom said.
Rose pulled the corner of her mouth out to the side, becauseshe recognized both the evasion and the implied promise in that statement. Her expression was hesitant, but she took a deep breath, checked to make sure that nobody else was watching, then went up on her tiptoes to brush her mouth across his lower lip. Her palms splayed across his stomach for balance. Tom savored this tiny bit of sweetness, even though he wanted a lot more of it.
At least he was the romantic lead in this play. Now he just had to hope the show was a comedy.
17
February
“Big day for the Tomboys,” Snowy announced, scrolling through her phone. She gave Rose a significant look.
Puff and Snowy were helping Rose hem the new curtains she’d bought on remainder. Rose had thought she could teach them how to use a sewing machine, since she’d been the only one in her group of college friends who’d ever learned. But this particular group of kids not only knew how to sew well enough to make their own elaborate convention costumes, they could hand-bind books, scrub and decipher metadata on ten different social media platforms, and paint the human form like they’d trained at the knee of the old masters. Rose got the feeling that if she expressed interest in setting up a small nuclear reactor in the backyard to provide auxiliary power, Snowy would flip through her mental Rolodex of die-hard Boyd stans and muse, “I guess we could get MeteorManWhore at the Department of Energy. Or would it be better to see if AngelKisses96 can get a visa once she’s done at ITER?”
So the sewing machine wasn’t new and exciting to them,but they’d still been keeping Rose company all morning. Which was…really nice, actually.
“Are people excited for dinner?” Rose asked, taking the next fabric panel from Puff. She was making king ranch chicken casserole tonight. It was really a shame none of her family had been able to make it out so far—that one always went over well when Max made it.
Snowy paused as though struggling for diplomacy. “Yes. Absolutely. Dinner. But I’m actually talking about the big post this morning about whether we should let multishippers use the Tomboy hashtag.”
None of those words were in the Bible.
“Hmm,” Rose said, trying to be supportive, though she found it much easier to relate to the girls when they were talking about window treatments than their fandom drama.
Puff made a troubled expression. “Are you doing okay?”
“Why would I not be okay?” Rose asked. It had turned out to be a wonderful month. They’d made so much progress on the inn, and everyone had been very considerate of her, personally, even though she’d just met everyone but Tom.
Snowy and Puff exchanged guarded looks.
“Well, you’re sort of the main character of the day,” Puff said.
“Me?” Rose said, startled. “What did I do?”
“Okay, so, you know about all theVoguepictures with the pool, right? And someone else dug up your divorce decree,” Snowy confessed. “Not me! Andthensomeone posted a clip of Tom grabbing your ass last week. Also not me. Sooo…can you see where this is going?”
Rose did not see. She understood the interest in the thirst trap photos of Boyd and Tom carrying heavy things around the inn that Snowy had been posting, but Rose tried to stay out of the frame. Why would anyone care what she was doing?
“You and Tom. Tom and Boyd. Boyd and You. All here. So, a lot of people are havingallthe feelings about you,” Snowy said. Puff nodded.
“Allthe feelings? Are some of them angry at me?”
Snowy bit her lip, then passed her the phone. The Tomboy Updates account—that was Snowy—had posted a poll on whether OT3 content, whatever that was, ought to be allowed in the Tomboy hashtag. There were 158 comments.
“Wow,” Rose said faintly.
