But it’s hard to trust anyone from my old world, and she isdefinitelyfrom my old world.
Dylan squeezes my knee under the table. “You think we should date?” he asks Lola.
“Oh my gah, yes,totes.”
“Just because we’re cute?” he presses.
“That’s, like,the very best reasonto date. It means your souls are compatible when you’re cute together. I can, like,feelTavi’s soul getting better every time I see her with you.”
“Maybe he’s not real,” I say. “Maybe he’s my guardian angel sent to earth in human form, and at the end of this year in Tickled Purgatory—I mean, Tickled Pink—he’ll go back to heaven, and I’ll get to spend the rest of my life atoning for my sins by missing him.”
Anya chokes on her water behind the counter.
The forty other out-of-towners and tourists crowded into the café this morning all stare at me, too, some of them like I’m insane, some like they’d never considered that before, and one random tourist gets this weird look on her face, then pulls out her phone and starts dictating quietly into it.
I don’t catch much, but I’m pretty sure I hearbook ideaandnext bestseller.
Also, can we talk a minute about how this social media experiment with Dylan isclearlya success, yet Gigi is still refusing to acknowledge that I’ve done any work?
Soon.Swear to God,soon, I’ll be done with this place. Everything’s in place for an investor meeting with a chocoholic new billionaire who wants to do good with his money.
My nerves aren’t in place, but everything else is.
I hope.
The number of things that could go wrong ...
And the people I’ll be leaving behind ...
But I’m not thinking about that. Not yet. If I’m here, I’m going to enjoy myself. Or possiblyenjoy torturing myselfis a more accurate phrase.
I tap Dylan’s arm. “We should get going. I have a consultation with a local interior designer for the teachers’ lounge redesign, and you have clients who can’t wait.”
“Aww, you’re so, like,domestic,” Lola squeals. “Have you synced your calendars yet?”
“Not yet,” Dylan replies as he scoots out of the booth and offers me a hand.
I give him Pebbles’s carrying case, which he accepts with an amused smirk before offering me his other hand too.
It’s like heknows.
He knows I’ve fallen head over heels for him. He knows I’m overthinking everything and can’t just enjoy this for what it is in the moment. He probably also knows all my desires to leave everything here behind and move to Costa Rica are suddenly complicated.
But does he know andcare?
Or does he know and want to spare my feelings by not pointing it out?
“Do you do emergency house calls?” asks a middle-aged guy who’s probably not a local if he has to ask.
“Sometimes,” Dylan replies easily.
“Leave him alone, Earl,” the man’s companion says. “He has to sleep if he’s going to stay that hot.”
“It true you kept a running tally of the girls you knocked up in high school?” Earl asks.
“Earl.Of course that’s not true. Don’t badger the poor man. How would you feel if you got famous for what happened to your dentures?”
“I can make that happen,” I say sweetly.
