“Where is it?” I ask.
“It’s actually only a block from Archer,” Owen says. “It’s an old craftsman that needs some updating. The kitchen and bathrooms were last renovated in the seventies, so it has the finest avocado-and-burnt-orange color palate. The linoleum is old enough to collect social security.”
“And I do not care, so long as it means we won’t be woken up by a toddler screaming at five a.m. or your brother starting a new home renovation project at midnight,” Wyatt says. Owen currently lives with his twin, Felix, a contractor with a penchant for hyperfixating on projects just long enough to get them started. And things aren’t better at Wyatt’s house, which she shares with her younger sister, her baby niece, and her formerly estranged mother, recently released from prison. The four of them have done some serious healing while crammed into the tiny house, but I can see why Wyatt is ready to get the hell out.
“McBride!” a teenager calls from the pickup window, and two heads whip around. Owen jogs toward the window and grabs two big cups, whipped cream and maraschino cherries spilling over the top.
“Wait, how did you get that so fast? You just got here!” I ask Wyatt.
“Brynne’s one of his patients.” She nods at the blond girl working the window. “Whenever Owen shows up, she knows to make an extra-thick chocolate shake, and when I’m with him, she makes two. My sweet man is an excellent tipper.”
Owen’s the beloved town pediatrician, so I’m not surprised that ice cream appears as if by magic when he arrives.
“We’re heading back home to celebrate,” Owen says with a grin.
“He means sex, and a lot of it.” Wyatt winks, and Owen blushes adorably. If I didn’t love them so much, I’d find thisexchange absolutely disgusting. But I’m happy for them, truly. And not jealous. At all. Not a bit.
I glance up at Dan, whose face is still a closed book.
“See you later.” I wave and give Wyatt a stern look when she mouthsWe’ll talkwith a pointed look at Dan.
It’s another ten minutes before we make it to the front of the line, and Dan maintains his frosty demeanor for every last one of them. His discomfort is practically a living thing, its breath blowing my hair back. I want to lead him back to the moment before his brother arrived, when he was just…talking. When he didn’t look like he was measuring every word, carefully uttering as few as possible. I ache to hear his voice again, to feel him open up like a safe, letting me see what treasures he’s got hidden inside.
“What can I get you, Miss Webber?” Brynne asks. I was her little sister’s kindergarten teacher last year, so now I’ll be Miss Webber to her until the day I die.
“I’ll have a strawberry shortcake cone,” I say, then turn to Dan, who shakes his head. “What?”
“Nothing for me,” he says to Brynne with a tight smile. Even when he’s reticent, he’s still always polite.
But I don’t wantnothingfor him, or from him. I want more.
“You can’t get nothing,” I say.
“I don’t really do sweets.”
Okay, a full sentence. A terrible full sentence, but a full sentence nonetheless.
“That’s…no. That’s unacceptable,” I say.
He shrugs. “I’m more of a savory guy.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s bullshit,” I say without thinking. Brynne gasps behind the counter, and Dan’s eyes go wide. Oh, so I guess I’ve hit the moment in the summer when my cursing ban fully falters. But I can’t even be bothered to care, because suddenly I know exactly how I’m going to draw him back out. “You know what’s not a good date? Making me eat ice cream by myself. You picked this place, Dan. You’re getting ice cream.”
Dan’s eyes narrow, suspicious, and I can tell he’s on the edge of shutting down. But then he says, “Okay, then pick something for me.”
I give him a long look, a smile unfurling across my face. Then I turn to Brynne and order a triple brownie delight.
“What the hell is that?” he asks as we walk away from the window and around the side of the candy-colored building to wait for my name to be called.
“You’ll see.”
It doesn’t take long for the sullen teenager at the window to holler my name. He hands me my cone—strawberry soft serve dipped in pink and white cake pieces with a white chocolate drizzle—then slides a bowl the size of a baseball cap across the counter.
“That’s yours,” I say to Dan, nodding at the mountain of ice cream topped with Oreos, brownies, hot fudge, whipped cream, and sprinkles. Three maraschino cherries perch perilously on top, glistening red in the sinking sun.
Dan stares at it for a long moment like it’s a bomb that requires defusing. Then he glances back at me over his shoulder, but I just give him a saucy little smile.
“Scared?” I ask, cocking a hip.
