“Stop correcting me and help me set this stuff up.”
“But you’re doing such a good job,” she says, fluttering her eyelashes.
I smirk. “Oh, look who’s embracing being spoiled.”
“Itiskind of nice,” she muses.
I smile to myself, continuing to pull things from my backpack. I don’t tell her that it secretly thrills me that she would even joke about it—because I meant it when I said that Abby does deserve to be spoiled, even if just a little. I feel like a lucky son of a bitch for being able to be the one to do it.
I spread out the blanket over the grass and start pulling the containers with the food out to set them on top, working quietly as Abby moves closer to the large tree that sprouts up near the edge of the rocky cliff that overlooks the forest below, leaning against it with her shoulder as she gazes out at the skyline. Even from here I can notice a pull at her lips that has them turning down, a slight furrow in her brow that wasn’t there a moment ago.
I abandon what I’m doing to move closer to her, wrapping my hand around her elbow. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh.” She shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”
“What have we said about pretending?”
Her lips twist in a grimace. “That’s my line.”
“Go on, Thompson. Spill.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Not to me,” I say, curling my arm around her waist to pull her into my side.
“I just…This feels so normal. People do this all the time.Families take their kids…I just…I never had that, you know? I was so young when Mom got her diagnosis, and she was always so tired, and my dad…”
“Abby,” I sigh.
“It’s really nothing. It’s just that…sometimes I wonder what my childhood might have been like if things were different. If my mom hadn’t been sick. If my dad had been better. It’s hardnotto think about it sometimes. Would we have done things like this? Would I have known this place existed?”
I hold her a little tighter. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“No, no.” She gives another vehement shake of her head. “I’m glad you brought me out here. Really. I needed to experience it at least once.”
“I just thought…You’re always so cooped up in the apartment. I thought being outside might—”
She turns to press a hand to my chest, looking up at me. “Seriously. I’m glad you brought me. It’s gorgeous out here, Jack.”
“I guess you have that in common then,” I murmur.
Her mouth curves upward, her eyes softening. “Flirt.”
“Just honest,” I assure her.
She looks at me with a wrinkled nose, almost as if assessing me. “How did I ever think that you were an asshole? Are you actually…really sweet?”
“Shh.” I furrow my brow, looking around. “Someone might hear you.”
“Oh, right, you mean all the people we passed on the way here?”
“You never know when someone is listening,” I say seriously.
Her grin is wide and open, and she shakes her head just a bit. “You really are a flirt.”
“Only with you,” I tell her, not at all surprised to find that I mean it.
I mean, I’ve flirted before, sure—who hasn’t? But I can’t remember a time when I got such satisfaction out of coaxing a smile out of a woman. Each one feels hard-won, like I’ve earned it, and all they do is make me want another one, to make her smile again and again.
