I swallow hard. “I don’t know. You’ve got workouts, the rest of the season, travel ... your life is all over the place.”
“And you have your life here,” he finishes for me.
I nod, staring down at the table. “Right. My studio classes, the yoga schedules, my parents.”
Harris squeezes my hand. “Okay, yes—I have football. No getting around that, my career is intense. But! I also have a phone. And a car. And we have planes. And apparently, I have a growing fear of you forgetting about me.”
I snort. “You? Afraid I’ll forgetyou? You’re on national television. I thinkI’mthe forgettable one here.”
He leans in. “Lucy, I could be standing in a stadium with thousands of people screaming my name, and I’d still be thinking about you rolling your pretty brown eyes at me.”
My face flames. “I don’t roll my eyes that much.”
He gives me a look.
“Okay, fine,” I mumble. “I do.” Sue me.
He sobers quickly. “Look, I’m scared too. I’ve never done the long-distance thing. I don’t know if I’m going to be good at it. But I do know I don’t want this to end without giving it a fucking try.”
I worry on my bottom lip. “I don’t either.”
“Good.” We sit in silence for a second, and then he says, “So. Logistics.” He pulls out his phone. “We set standing call times,” he says. “Even if it’s five minutes. We send each other something every day. A text, a picture, a funny meme—something.”
I nod, a smile tugging at my lips. “I can do that.”
“So. What about Friday?”
Friday? As in, “This Friday? Five days from now?”
“Yeah. Friday. Can I take you to dinner?” The way he’s watching my reaction as he says the words, “I’ll fly you out. Dinner under the desert sky, you and me.”
My jaw drops. “You want to fly me toArizonafor dinner?”
Is He Crazy? Who Does That?
Harris shrugs, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. And who knows, maybe it is. “I told you—I don’t want to wait. And I definitely don’t want to say goodbye like this and not see you for weeks.”
I press a hand to my chest to temper my beating heart. “You know most guys just FaceTime.”
“Most guys aren’t me.”
“You’re insane.”
“Only for you.” He raises my hand to kiss my palm. “Let me fly you out. We’ll have dinner, I’ll show you around the city, and you’ll see exactly where I am when we talk every day. It won’t feel so far.”
I bite my lip, heart pounding. “You’re serious?”
“Completely.” His smile softens. “Come to Arizona and have dinner with me.”
Chapter 29
Lucy
The rash has spread.
And it itches worse than it did. Like, full-body, “can’t stop squirming,” “this is a nightmare” itching.
I blink against the soft morning light filtering through Harris’s bedroom window, disoriented for a second because it’s still so early.
