“Um… but they both thought you’d like the DreamWarp one. And I was thinking this one, for your bedroom.” Danica reached to lift the second framed image. Same size, another black-and-white photo with a white matte around it.
It was a photo I took myself. A beach on the Oregon coast; just an empty stretch of coastline. Gray ocean, a few giant rocks standing in the water. No one was in the photo, but Dylan was standing next to me when I took it, and I could remember standing with him on that beach. It was sometime on tour, maybe a couple of years after I met him. The two of us had taken off to the beach, a many, many hour detour from where we were supposed to be.
We did that a lot back then. Took detours. Together.
At that point, I was pretty sure that someday we were both gonna leave our bands and form a band together. Maybe I really wanted to believe that, for just a few minutes, standing there on that beach.
I’d told him we’d use that image for our album cover.
I knew as I looked at it, all framed in Danica’s arms, that he’d chosen this photo for me for a reason.
We’re not done yet, that image seemed to say.
Maybe he wanted me to remember the friendship we’d had. How close we’d been.
Before I fucked it up by kissing him.
I scratched my hand through my hair. “Cool.”
“Uh…” Danica moved to set the frame on the couch next to the other one. “Here’s the last one…” She picked up the last frame and presented it to me. This one was the same size, but the matte was wider. The image in the middle was smaller.
It was a black-and-white photo of my mom.
She looked young in the picture, the way I remembered her. I had no idea how Summer or Dylan had gotten ahold of that image, but there it was.
“I thought this one could go in the dining room,” Danica said. I looked up, meeting her eyes. She looked mildly terrified as she searched my face. “I mean, personally I always find it a little weird when people have photos of family members in their bedrooms staring at them when they’re changing and stuff…” She laughed a little, but it was forced. “Shit. These just keep getting worse and worse, don’t they?” She set the framed image carefully on the kitchen bar. “Honestly, Ashley, the framing is the most expensive part. If you’re not happy with any of the images, we can switch them out.”
“I like the images.”
“It’s okay, you’re not hurting my feelings. I’d rather that you’re happy with them. That they’re images youwantto see every day.”
“I want to see them every day,” I told her. “They’re perfect.”
She stared at me. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and went back to the dining room table. I was moved, actually, that they’d all done this for me. Wasn’t sure what else to say about it.
But I couldn’t handle Danica looking at me like that anymore.
Like she’d seen right into my most personal shit, andunderstoodor something. Like she understoodmeon some new level now.
It made me want her more… and I didn’t love that.
Already wanted her enough.
“I’ve, uh, got some work to do,” I muttered. “Let me know if you need help hanging them.”
“Okay. For sure. I should be fine, though.”
I turned up Summer’s playlist, which was still rolling along. And tried to tune Danica out.
The truth was, ever since she’d brought me those six pennies and a bunch of cool ideas about how to improve my home—which I didn’t even realize needed improving until she laid it out for me—I’d been thinking about her, way too much. And not just about what she’d look like with my dick in the back of her throat.
Bottom line, I liked the way my place felt when she was in it.
Since meeting her that night in the rain and thinking she was some girl I’d made out with years ago when I was drunk… or maybe some fantasy fuck… she’d become so much more than that.
She’d become a real person. A girl—no, a woman with a brain, a mind of her own, talents.
