She stood there like that for a moment, pretending to scan the shelves while grinning like a teenager. Because she knew now. She knew it with one hundred percent certainty—she wanted to kiss Jordan Everwood. Not just any woman or person. Jordan. No one else would do.
The thought was freeing and terrifying and electrifying all at once. She was of half a mind to grab Jordan right now, but she had to think this through. Jordan had to know she meant it, that she wasn’t caught up in memories or in some future scenario involving Disney songs and baked goods.
As she worked to even out her emotions, her eyes snagged on a deep blue spine featuring an illustration of two white women entangled in an embrace. She pulled the book out to see a larger version of the women on the cover—one redheaded and one blond—gazing at each other under the stars, the Seattle Space Needle in the background.
Her heart suddenly felt very large and very tender in her chest. She scanned the book blurb on the back—aPride and Prejudiceretelling, queer, a bisexual woman and a lesbian.
“That looks intriguing,” Jordan said, leaning in to see the cover. Jasmine and pine wafted over Astrid—she fought the urge to inhale deeply.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Astrid said. She met Jordan’s eyes and swore she saw a challenge there.
She set her wine down on the turquoise coffee table and tucked the book under her arm, eyes scanning the shelves for more options while Jordan settled into one of the squashy leather chairs in the middle of the room and watched, lazily sipping her beer. After ten minutes, Astrid had three more paperback romances in hand—one featuring two Dominican women, another with a male Jewish rabbi and a bisexual female, and one with a female and nonbinary pairing that was all about a baking competition.
She spun on her heel, colorful books in her arms. Jordan lifted a single brow.
“Looks like you’ve got some reading to do.”
Astrid just smiled. “Looks like I do.”
THROUGHOUT THE RESTof the night, all Astrid could think about were the books she’d stashed in her bag. Around eleven, Simon and Jordan were the first to say good night, and she took the opportunity to leave too—they had a big day tomorrow, after all, going over the new design plan with the Everwoods and Natasha. Really, though, she’d never been so glad to go home to her empty, white-walled house. She showered and settled into her bed with the novel about two women in Seattle, which she read until well after two in the morning, devouring the words, the swoons, the arc of the characters’ relationship.
The sex.
Dear god, the sex.
Within the span of just a few hours and a couple hundred pages,she had to stop reading to get herself off. Twice. What’s more, she didn’t picture some nameless, faceless person when she slipped her hand into her underwear, as she circled her middle finger around her clit. She didn’t picture the characters in the book.
She pictured Jordan Everwood, every single time.
Chapter Twenty-one
JORDAN WAS PRETTYsure she’d never felt this nervous. She stood in the inn’s kitchen, her laptop resting on the piece of plywood they’d used to cover the counter-less island as a sort of makeshift desk for today’s meeting. As she clicked through room after room on her laptop, checking for any last-minute irregularities in the design, her stomach threatened to reject the avocado toast she’d eaten for breakfast.
The morning had started out a bit differently. As soon as the light had shone through her window, she’d leaped from her bed, stretched luxuriously as though she were a Disney princess getting ready for the day, andsmiled.
She smiled while she showered.
She smiled while she brushed her teeth.
She smiled while she put on her favorite print button-up, white with colorful merfolk of various races, ethnicities, and genders dappling the cotton.
She told herself that all this infernal smiling—which was honestlystarting to hurt her out-of-practice face—was because the design for the inn was done, it was glorious, and she and Astrid were presenting it to her family and Natasha on film today after lunch. She knew what she and Astrid had created was breathtaking, the Everwood through and through, and for the first time in over a year, she felt pride in her work.
But as she had left her bedroom and made her way to the kitchen for some coffee, her work wasn’t what kept tugging at her mouth. No, that honor went to a leggy, shaggy-haired, vampire-toothed pain in the ass, standing in front of a rainbow bookshelf and talking about cakes, whom Jordan could not seem to get out of her head.
She thought about Astrid a lot lately. Too much. It scared the ever-loving shit out of her, all these thoughts, but she couldn’t stop them. She meant what she’d told Astrid back in the Lapis Room nearly a week ago—she wouldn’t kiss her until she was sure Astrid wantedher.She knew herself, and she couldn’t afford the heartache when—if—Astrid decided,Oh, hmm, never mind, I don’t like the ladies after all.
But that didn’t keep her from daydreaming, from pining, because goddammit, the way Astrid looked at her lately—the way she always seemed to make sure their shoulders brushed when they were both at the laptop, how the woman could not carry a tune in a bucket, but that didn’t stop her from singing along to Tegan and Sara’s latest in Jordan’s truck when they ran errands, how she could think through every single moment of a guest’s day to determine the best placement for a bed, a desk, a dresser—stirred up emotions in Jordan she’d missed so damn much. She’dmissedliking someone, that flare of hope and terror in her gut whenever she thought of the person, the glances and smiles.
Hell, she wasn’t even sure ifmissedwas the right word. She remembered bits of these emotions with Meredith, but they’d met inmiddle school, Jordan had all but followed Meredith to Savannah College of Art and Design, and then they just sort of fell into being lovers one night their senior year after prepping portfolios, kissing slowly over a box of leftover pizza.
She and Meredith had been a matter of course.
And that was what did it—that thought right there had halted her steps halfway down the cottage’s hall that morning.
I don’t want a best friend. I want a destiny.
She’d felt her smile slip down to her feet, where it stayed all through her coffee, through the toast she choked down while Pru eyed her worriedly, to right now as she frowned at the design plan, sure she was somehow going to crash and burn and fuck everything up.
