There aren’t that many left, though, so I text them just to let them know we’re not at the lighthouse and we’re out running errands in town. I tell them we’re getting a few things on my list tonight.
Nobody texts me back right away, which I hope doesn’t mean anything ominous has happened or anything adjacent to raccoon chaos, although with Posey and Hazel there’s no telling.
Before I know it, the driver’s side door is opening again and Caleb climbs in, holding not just one bag stamped with theboutique’s logo but a garment bag and a second bag that looks to be filled with shoes and other small things that are not clothes.
“Caleb, what the hell is this?” I say.
“Well, I figured you could put on a fashion show for me later once you get bored out at Watchmere,” he says nonchalantly.
“Caleb, please tell me you didn’t buy me all this stuff.”
“I didn’t buy all this stuff,” he says, pausing and staring at me. “I stole it?”
“You are the worst.”
“Fine, you caught me, I bought the stuff.” He grins at me, sets the bags in the back, and pops out a hanger from the garment bag and hangs that up.
“Caleb, I cannot keep all this. I do not need clothes.”
“I thought you would look nice in them. I missed your last, like, ten years’ worth of birthdays and Christmases, so consider this me making up for lost time. And guess what? I think you look pretty in all of it, but I also think you look pretty in nothing, but you said the town wouldn’t like you like that, so here we are.”
“Now you can either take it back, or I will?—”
“Did you eat the whole apple pie?” he interrupts.
Unable to process anything other than the fact that he’s bought me three bags’ worth of clothes on a whim, I hand him the apple pie because it’s the least I can do.
I pick up my root beer float to have something to do with my hands and drink it because I don’t trust myself to speak.
No one’s ever bought me so much as underwear, let alone three bags’ worth of whatever the heck it is that the sales associates in that cute little boutique talked Caleb into.
“If you don’t like it, I can return it,” he says quickly. “Don’t get freaked out,” he adds.
“I’m not freaked out. Why would I be freaked out about my new boyfriend who is my ex-boyfriend calling me wifey and then going and buying out the whole store for me? And you know thewhole kraken in the shore thing and having to call the corners and do some kind of dangerous magic that was so scary?—”
“Ivy. Stop right there.”
Caleb steals the root beer float from me and then takes a long drink of it.
I just stare at him.
He grins at me, leans over the center console, and kisses me full on the mouth.
If I was startled before, now I’m completely without any thoughts. No thoughts, no words, just vibes. Brain overloaded, 404 error.
He finally pulls away, my heart beating twice as hard, heat rising up and unfurling into my chest that has nothing to do with hot apple pies and everything to do with the man sitting next to me who just gave me one of the best kisses of my life.
“Quite a scientific find. If I’d known it was that easy to get you to stop arguing with me, I would’ve tried it a long time ago,” he says, happier than a duck in a puddle.
He puts the car in reverse, slowly backing out of the spot before driving back onto the main road.
“Where are we going now?” I ask.
“It’s not too far,” he says. “And don’t worry. The clothes was really the big surprise. You’re not mad at me?”
I stare at him. “You’d care if I was mad about the clothes?”
“Of course I care. I’m not taking them back until you look at them, but I don’t want you actually upset with me.”
