Page 56 of The Backup Plan

He tilts his head. “What’s wrong with that?” He gestures to my leggings and oversized tee.

I roll my eyes, pointing to his towel. “About the same thing that’s wrong with wearing that out.”

“I’ll wear just the towel if you wear that. It’ll save us the time to change.” His eyes and smirk meet mine in challenge.

“Give me ten minutes.”

“Five,” he counters.

“Ten.”

“Seven.”

“Lucas—”

He laughs. “Ready. Set. Go.”

He goes back to his apartment, and I retreat to my bedroom, but my heart is racing, and I’m smiling like an idiot.

When I open my door—hair done, outfit changed, a touch of makeup on—he’s in the hallway, fully dressed waiting for me like this was always the plan.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod.

And for the first time in a long while, I shut the door behind me without thinking about everything I still need to do.

Just about where we’re going.

And who I’m with.

Emery

It turns into one of those days.

The kind you don’t plan. The kind you don’t schedule or squeeze into a color-coded calendar. The kind that just . . . happens.

Somehow, we end up at a swap meet on the edge of town after afternoon coffee that turns into breakfast tacos that Lucas sweet-talked the restaurant’s owner into making because they were his favorite.

She was a fan of his. We got the breakfast tacos.

The swap meet is large with aisle after aisle of booths full of treasures and crap. We wander through them with Lucas stopping every ten feet or so because apparently everything deserves commentary.

“That’s hideous,” he says, holding up a ceramic rooster with one cracked eye.

“It could be vintage.”

“Or haunted. Maybe even cursed,” he says but buys it anyway.

I laugh so hard my stomach hurts, and it surprises me—how easy it comes. How unguarded I am with him. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this. Not politely. Not carefully. But the kind that makes you bend over and steals your breath.

“Look at this!” he shouts and motions for me to come over. He’s holding up a piñata in the shape of a cactus. The cactus happens to be wearing sunglasses with every inch of it covered in brightly placed tissue paper.

“What are you going to do with a piñata?” I laugh.

“I don’t know but like you had to have those pillows in the home goods store earlier, I have to have this. More like you have to have this.”

“No, I don’t. You are not buying that for me.”