“The parade is my job. I want everyone safe so that they can all have a good time,” I said.
She smiled and focused back on the road.
After one final loop and some practice at parking, we turned back toward the inn. She parked carefully, engine idling, hands trembling with leftover adrenaline.
Then she turned and hugged me.
It was quick. Tight. Entirely unplanned.
She froze almost immediately. “Oh. I’m sorry. I just—”
“It’s all right,” I said, equally flustered. “You did great.”
She laughed, embarrassed. “Thank you. For everything.”
“No problem. I think you’ll do fine at the parade,” I replied.
I got out and headed back toward the inn, leaving her to park and sit with her victory.
Behind me, the engine cut off smoothly.
I smiled before I could stop myself.
Chapter Ten: Girl Chat And A Pact
Lydia
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, my legs still felt like they were humming.
I wasn’t tired, just awake. Like my body had decided this wasn’t the moment to settle down, not when it was still replaying the sound of the engine catching, the way the truck had finally rolled forward instead of dying beneath me. My hands felt different, too. Looser somehow, like they had remembered something useful.
The stairwell smelled faintly of cinnamon and sawdust, which had become the scent of this place in my mind. Progress and chaos blended together. Below me, voices drifted up from the lobby, softened by distance and walls. Laughter. Someone calling someone else to look at something. It made me smile.
I pushed the apartment door open carefully and stepped inside.
The space was exactly what it always was. Too small, too full, but completely ours.
The living room barely fit the couch, which pressed against one wall like it was bracing itself. A narrow coffee table sat crooked in front of it, cluttered with mugs that didn’t match and a bowl that currently held three candy canes, two hair ties, and something I suspected might once have been a cookie. Shoes lined the wall by the door in a loose interpretation of organization, each pair telling a story about whoever had kicked them off last.
Meri sat cross-legged on the couch, a book open in her lap, reading glasses perched on her nose. She looked up the moment the door clicked shut.
“You’re smiling,” she observed.
I froze, then tried to smooth my face. “Am I?”
“You are,” she replied calmly. “It’s subtle, but it’s there.”
Kitty was sprawled on the floor with her back against the couch, phone in hand, scrolling with the intense focus of someone who had absolutely been waiting for me to come upstairs.
“You drove,” Kitty announced without looking up. “I saw you leave the lot and later return. The truck stalled less by the end. You must have finally figured it out.”
“Thank you for that ringing endorsement,” I said, toeing off my boots.
Meri closed her book slightly, holding her place with one finger. “You didn’t quit.”
“I considered it,” I admitted, shrugging out of my coat and draping it over the back of a chair already burdened with at least two other garments. “Several times. Loudly.”
“But you didn’t,” Meri said.
