‘Sure.’
Lexi is suspicious, though. ‘Wait a minute. Are you punishing him because this is all his fault?’
‘Ha. You got me.’
She squeezes Oscar tighter. ‘I forgive you,’ she tells him. ‘Don’t listen to Daddy.’ And that is how she knows she is, if not concussed, then seriously damaged. Lexi doesn’t believe in referring to humans as relatives of animals.
‘It’s okay,’ she tells Sam, turning down his generous offer. ‘You’ve done more than enough. Just don’t think that this gets you out of Independent Bookstore Day planning.’
Sam looks at Erin; Erin looks at Sam. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I think she’s probably fine.’
They laugh, a little gang of two. Lexi doesn’t like it. Erin is meant to be onherside.
‘Call me if you need anything, okay?’ Sam says, and this makes up for it a little.
‘You mean at the shop? I don’t have your personal number.’
He grabs his phone to punch in Lexi’s number and give her a missed call, and Erin catches her eye and mouths,Smooth. Like all of this was a plot to get Sam’s contact details and insert herself further into his life. As if.
‘Okay,’ Sam says, bending over Lexi to pick up Oscar. His breath on her face is comforting and energising at the same time, if that is even possible.
‘Get some ice on the back of your head ASAP,’ Sam calls from the hallway.
‘On it,’ Erin says, heading to the freezer to grab a packet of cold peas. She wraps it in a tea towel and hands it to Lexi. ‘Sorry I’m not a hot dude leaning over you tenderly as I do this,’ she says, helping Lexi to arrange herself so that the peas become a pillow.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lexi, of course, knows exactly what it’s supposed to mean. But she’s lost all powers of debate.
‘Oh, nothing. Just– this all reminds me a lot of Marianne Dashwood.’
‘Marianne who had Willoughby carry her home after she twisted her ankle in the rain and fell in love with him even though he quite clearly wasn’t The One?ThatMarianne Dashwood?’
‘Precisely. She was obsessed with him and blind to truth and logic, if I remember correctly.’ Erin looks at Lexi over the top of her glasses as if to underline the point she’s just made.
‘I’m not obsessed,’ Lexi says. ‘Or blind. And I still hate him. He was just steadying me and making sure I was okay.’ She can hear a hint of petulant adolescence in her own voice and she doesn’t like it.
‘Uh-huh,’ Erin says, nodding. ‘Let me ask you one thing, though. What did he smell like?’
‘Coffee. Fresh laundry. And— Wait. This is a trap, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t call it that, exactly. A test, maybe. Which I’m sad to say you’ve just failed.’
Lexi sticks her tongue out at her roommate. ‘Not fair. I’m concussed. You shouldn’t be mean to me right now.’
‘You’re concussed, yet you can remember the exact combination of scents that make up Sam.’
‘I’m just observant, that’s all. Anyway, don’t you have work to do?’
Erin shrugs. Safeguarding democracy can obviously wait. ‘It’s a quiet day. I’ll warm up some soup for you, okay? And then we can make a list of all the reasons why it’d be a bad idea for you to further pursue this plan of yours.’
Lexi is starting to regret how much she tells Erin.
Lexi Austen’s plan to woo Sam Dickens:
Drop a handkerchief (greeting card) in front of him
Take a turn about the park
Bonus swoon into his arms
