She nodded. “It’s the best of both worlds, right? All of the amazing, delicious sex without any of the complications. And no one needs to know, which means no entanglements messing up my firstyear on the job or you getting Coach Crawford’s recommendation for reinstatement.” She let out a nervous laugh. “C’est la vie, right?”
Wow, was she good at putting him right back where she wanted him, at arm’s length. But wasn’t she on to something here? Levi wanted Haddie. Haddie wanted Levi. And neither of them wanted to jeopardize their careers. They could have exactly what they wanted and be no worse for wear when it was time to say goodbye. “This is our redo, Levi. The night that didn’t happen can finally happen…here!” Even she could hear the delulu level of eagerness in her voice as she tried to convince him to take her in a bridal shop dressing room. But that was what weeks of burying how she really felt had done to her. Haddie was a shaken two-liter bottle of soda into which someone had dropped an entire roll of Mentos. She would not, could not be contained.
A gust of wind rushed into the fitting area, and their fitting-room door rattled in its frame. In the distance Haddie heard another door slam.
“Hads?” Emma called. “Levi? Are you guys still here?”
“Shit!” Haddie whispered. “Pull up your pants!”
Haddie scrambled back into her underwear and snatched her dress from the door. She wriggled back through the open top, only now seeing the jagged tear where the zipper was once attached and then wasn’t. She lost her footing and stumbled back against the mirror, all while Levi did his best to stuff himself back into his pants.
Apparently, she stood corrected on that wholewould not, could notcontainment thing.
“Over here, Ems!” Haddie called. “My zipper was stuck, andLevi helped, and then we got locked in! Is Layla with you?”
“No,” Emma replied, and Haddie could tell she was right outside the door. “Turns out her puppy ate the corner of her couch, so she had to run to the vet to make sure he didn’t swallow anything he couldn’t pass. She told me the key code to get back in when I told her you guys hadn’t shown up yet.” Emma tapped on the door and then added, “And I thought maybe… I mean, I was catching some weird vibes between you two today and wondered if…” Her voice trailed off. “Are you guys really stuck, or did I just interrupt something you didn’t want interrupted?”
“Stuck,” Levi replied before Haddie even had a chance to open her mouth.
Emma sighed. “Guess it was all in my head. I’ve definitely got wedding brain going on and will continue to use the wedding as an excuse for my spaciness for months after the fact.”
Haddie nodded and gave him what she hoped was an apologetic smile, though she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for.
Emma jiggled the handle. “It’s definitely locked,” she confirmed.
“You don’t happen to have a screwdriver, do you?” Levi asked, turning around to survey the door.
Emma gasped. “I do! I have one of those all-in-one tool things that Matteo makes me carry even though I told him I would never have a use for it!”
“The hinges are on the inside,” Levi told her. “Can you pass it to me over the top of the door? Then you might want to call Layla and let her know she’ll be coming in to a bit of a mess tomorrow but that I’ll set her up with Tommy’s uncle Pete to change out thehardware on the door.”
Emma held the tool just above the top of the door, and Haddie realized her friend must be on her tiptoes.
Levi grabbed it and immediately got to work. Less than five minutes later, the door dropped a half inch to the floor, and Levi carefully pried it away from the frame enough for him and Haddie to slip through without breaking anything.
“Wow,” Emma said when they emerged from their veritable cocoon. “You’re shirtless,” she said to Levi. “Andfast…at taking doors off of hinges, I mean.”
Levi flashed her a quick grin. “Appreciate you specifying the part about the door.” Then he slipped back into his own dressing room while Haddie stood face-to-face with her best friend as she barely held the torn bridesmaid’s dress to her torso.
“What the hell?” Emma asked. She grabbed Haddie’s forearm and dragged her across the fitting room area, through the red velvet curtain, and out into the main shop area. “Yourdress, Haddie! What did you do?”
Haddie tried to survey the damage, but every time she craned her neck to try to see what was behind her, she just ended up looking like a dog trying to chase its tail. It didn’t matter. She knew it was bad, and it would have been even worse if she not only trashed the dress but then also had sex in Emma’s friend’s beautiful shop. What was wrong with her? Levi was making her lose all sense of logic.
“I’m sorry, Ems,” she finally said, feeling even more guilty that Emma didn’t know the half of what Haddie was apologizing for. “I really am,” she continued. “But the dress was so freaking tight. Icouldn’t breathe. Like, the zipper was stuck, and I was literally about to pass out, so I asked Levi to come and help me.” She grimaced. “The zipper was stuck, and I was desperate. So I told him to rip it off of me if he needed to since I knew Kayla was going to have to let the dress out in the bust area anyway.” Emma stared at her as if Haddie had just set the whole shop on fire. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for whatever damage we did to the dress, but the door? That’s on Layla…and Levi since he’s the one who kicked out the pen that was holding it open.”
With one hand still holding the dress up, Haddie held out her other and spread her palm into the jazziest of jazz hands. “Ta-da!” she said, but Emma still didn’t look amused.
Her friend sighed. “And there’s really nothing going on between you and Levi?” she whispered.
Haddie scoffed. “Me and Levi? Please. I know better than to get involved with someone—even casually—who is a colleague in the district where I don’t have tenure and where the principal already warned us against any complicated entanglements. Nor do I have any interest in getting involved with a man who’s skipping town in less than a year.”
“Or…” Emma countered, “who will be the best man at my wedding in a matter of weeks, and I really don’t want to have to change your table at the last minute because you broke Levi’s heart.”
Haddie took a staggering step back, her mouth falling open. “That’s what you think of me, Ems? That I’d be so careless as to make your wedding awkward by complicating things with my roommate?”
“Who is Matteo’s brother,” Emma reminded her.
“Yeah!” Haddie replied. “We’ve met. He’s about yea tall…” She held a hand up high to indicate Levi’s massive height. “Athletic build. Really handy with hinges and is apparently a high priority on the bride’s list of all things that need protecting, yet somehow I didn’t make the cut.”
