“Okay. Do I need a dress?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SUMMER, TWO YEARS AGO
“Hey, Dad, I’m back. I asked Lex’s parents to just drop me off at the shop and…”
I feel the breeze of the half door swing open and the clunk of a duffle bag drop near my feet as he roots to the spot.
“Teddy,” he says, making startled eye contact with me. “I didn’t know you’d be…” His voice dies with his sentence.
“At the shop?” I finish. “I kind of gathered that.”
“It’s just, my dad hadn’t mentioned?—”
“That I’ve been working with him the last week? I can see you’re real thrilled about it.”
I push past his shoulder, partway through the half swinging door. There’s a lull in customers, and now seems like the perfect time to mop the scuff on the floor I’ve been meaning to buff out.
My eyes drop to the place where his palm grips my forearm. The warmth of his hand seeps through the linen of my button-down shirt, and I close my eyes like I could sunbathe in it. It’s wild how months apart only make my heart grow fonder with him.
“No, I am,” he argues. “It’s good to see you.” His hand falls away, signaling the end of his moment of vulnerability, and he wraps his arms across his chest to confirm it.
“You too, Miles.” I turn back toward the dusty old broom closet where I have to step over at least a dozen different spider and mouse traps to get to the bucket and scrub brush I’m looking for.
“How’d farm life treat you?” I ask, making small talk from the crack in the door. I can see him sweep his hand through his hair out of the corner of my eye. It’s longer than it’s ever been as it threatens to hang down in his eyes.
“Oh, it was… good. No, actually… it was awful.” He chuckles to himself. “I am not cut out to shovel manure for a living, that’s for damn sure.”
I turn up my nose. “That’s why you smell so bad.”
He draws his shirt to his nose. “I do not!” he calls after me as I drop to my knees and begin working the scrub brush in firm circles with a smirk on my face. I slow the strokes and stare at a different spot on the floor, working up the courage to ask him the question I don’t care to know the answer to.
“How’s Lexi?”
He pauses to look down at me.
“She’s Lexi. I don’t think there’s a single thing in her life she’s not bubbly about.”
That holds true to even the version I know of her.
“Have you and Reed been hanging out?” he asks.
I pick up the speed of the brush strokes. “Yeah, we’ve gone boating a couple of times, swam once, had milkshakes at LaBeau’s…”
“Wow, so you guys went on that date after all.”
When I stop scrubbing to look up at him, he’s scrutinizing me like he’s holding a magnifying glass.
“He said that’s where he’d take you.”
“You talked about it?” I ask.
“Come on, Teddy. We’re best friends. It’s no secret he likes you.”
“What? No, he doesn’t,” I argue.
“Yeah, okay,” he scoffs.
