“Do you ever date anyone who gets to know the real you? Someone who doesn’t care that your favorite baseball team is the Twins when you live in Wisconsin and you’re supposed to cheer for the Brewers. Or someone who’ll trade you all of your caramels for his morning coffee, because you don’t like the way most caramels stick in your teeth, and he doesn’t like coffee, and you just trade instead of mocking each other or telling each other to change.”
“You never told Hannah you don’t like her baseball team either? And do you not like coffee? For real? You order it every morning.”
“I don’t like caramels. But only when they’re the kind that stick in your teeth. Honest-to-God soft caramels are fine. But that’s not the point.”
No, the point is, this man who kisses like a god and is everyone’s best friend in Tickled Pink and who could stay famous on TikTok foryearsis too good for someone like me, and that knowledge hurts.
I wave a hand. “So you weren’t interested in anyone in the first wave. Give it time. You can’t force miracles.”
He runs a hand over the top of the cabinet. “Are you taking the rest of these down?”
“Yep. I think I can handle it, though.”
When he levels ano, you will notglare at me, I feel the first honest smile of the day. “You’re a very good man, Dylan Wright. And good things will happen to you. Good things always happen to people who deserve it.”
See also: I’m a fraud, and so of course nothing is easily falling into place with my cacao farm.
“I’m not a good person. Not all the time. And bad things happen to good people too.”
“Like concussions when they make friends with the wrong people.”
His lips twitch while he grabs a screwdriver from the assorted tools scattered on the counter, flips open the cabinet over the counter next to the vacant spot where the cabinet now on the floor used to be, and starts unscrewing the door. “Mistakes happen.”
“Accidentshappen. Mistakes are made. And I think you’re making a mistake in being friends with me.”
He shoots me another look while he scoots onto the counter so he can reach the top screw on the cabinet door.
Duh. I should’ve removed the doors.
It’ll make the cabinets lighter.
“You think about emptying these before you took them off the walls?” he asks as he hands me a can of beans.
“Shutup. I get paid to look pretty, not to be smart.”
“Me too.”
I blink at him.
He grins. “What? A guy can’t know he’s pretty? I am. And I have a nice ass. You said so. And I imagine you’ve seen alotof asses, so I trust your judgment.”
“You arenotattractive right now.”
“Lies. You want to jump me. Here. Take this, and then we can pull this cabinet off the wall too.”
I’m so grateful that I don’t have to respond to him calling me out—yes, Iwouldabsolutely join the ranks of the women throwing their panties at him if I didn’t know it was such a bad life decision—that I don’t ask what he’s handing me until I’m holding it.
“Ew.Is this—no, you know what? I don’t want to know what this is.” It might be a tennis ball that’s seen better days.
Or it might’ve once been an orange.
Hard to tell.
He also hands over each of the shelves after he pulls them out, then points. “Hold the bottom of the cabinet for a second here. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I would totally not jump you.”
“The one about how you know when someone’s interested in you for you and not just faking it.”
