Single Dad Seeks Juliet Page 24

  She huffs then and sinks to the ground, pulling her bag off her shoulder and setting it down beside her.

  I glance at it briefly and then look her directly in the eyes. She’s waiting for an apology. Apparently, she’s learned me well enough to know it’s coming.

  “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t put you in the water with your bag, huh?”

  “Yep,” she agrees, “Good thing.”

  I chuckle and watch the profile of her face as she turns to look at the ocean with a sigh.

  “Why did you want to come here so badly anyway?”

  My answer doesn’t take any consideration. It’s a simple fact. “It’s my happy place.”

  She looks from the ocean back to me, but with the only light being that from a teeny sliver of moon, it’s hard to really see her clearly. I wonder if she can tell I haven’t taken my eyes off her.

  “It’s also one of the best places to see the stars around here,” I add. “And I felt like you and I needed to see them tonight.”

  “Why?” she challenges immediately, surprising me with the intensity of the question.

  I search my mind for the right words, but I’m not sure they’ll ever come. There are a million and one tiny fragments that make up the complex reason I do anything I do when it comes to Holley, and yet, I can’t put concrete words of validation to any of them. They’re locked up, trapped in the feelings I’ve yet to figure out how to emote. Instead, I settle for a cop-out. “Because, why not?”

  Holley considers me closely, trying to read between the lines I’ve done such a poor job of drawing. I don’t dare speak, for fear it’ll shift the way she’s looking at me like an earthquake would tectonic plates, but she finally puts words to her thoughts with a whisper.

  “What are your tattoos?” She pauses as I pull up my arm between us and roll up my sleeve. “I…just realized I’ve never asked about them.”

  Starting at the top, I work my way down slowly, telling her about each of them in the order I received them. “This is the SEAL trident. I got it when I graduated BUD/S. A whole group of us went together to commemorate making it through hell.”

  She smiles softly, reaching out to run a finger along the edges of the design, leaving a trail of heat in its wake.

  “This—” I run my fingers around the bright sunflower below the trident “—was Wendy’s favorite flower.” Holley nods in the low light, pulling her hand back and away from my arm, and without thinking, I reach out and pull it back, using her fingers to trace the rest of the designs. “This one is for Chloe, a sunrise over a turquoise sky, because she was the light beyond the clouds, and she was born in December.” I can feel the buzz of Holley’s heart in her fingers, the blood zinging wildly enough to make them pulse. “The astronaut with the flag is a really more of an inside joke with myself—a milestone tattoo for planting my flag in new territory by starting my own business—and the spilling ink at the bottom is a canvas, just waiting for the rest of the story to be written.”

  Holley’s quiet, but the volume of her emotions is dialed up loud enough for me to feel.

  Sitting there, together, with nobody and nothing around us, the sky starts to feel a whole lot less huge. Like the stars above us and the inky blackness of beyond are all just greater pawns in the creation of this moment between us.

  My body sways toward hers, drawn to the current tethering us together. She follows suit, leaning in toward me to meet me in the middle.

  My heart thrums in my chest and my stomach dances with possibility, but a car honks a horn on the street, yanking Holley’s attention away harshly. The emotional band between us snaps, breaking apart right in the center and allowing reality to invade.

  I know it was real—that the moment between us existed—because my heart still beats with the same intensity. But for Holley, our bubble has burst. When she looks back, she clears her throat and pulls her notebook out of her bag to get back to business.

  My chest deflates immediately.

  “So…” she starts, opening up to the page with Lydia’s name at the top, and taking out a pen. “Did anything else happen on the date tonight that I need to know about for the article?”

  On a sigh, I fall back into the sand and look up at the sky, trying to gather my thoughts. Thoughts about a date I can barely put together a sentence to describe; thoughts about why I wanted that moment with Holley to continue so badly. “Not really. What you saw is what you got, I’d say.”

  Lydia is an attractive, bubbly woman whom I have zero interest in. What I remember about our date is waiting for it to end.

  And for this time with Holley to start…

  That world-shaking thought makes my chest grow tight, but Holley is completely oblivious, currently focused on the notebook in her lap.

  She hums, making a few notes on the page and flips to the next one. “All right then, what do you want to do for your next date?”

  Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

  The mere idea of another date feels absurd—completely contrarian to my feelings right now. Feelings that are very much rooted in the woman sitting beside me. I breathe through the matrix of emotions and try to act like my mind isn’t fucking reeling.

  “Who’s…uh…who’s this date with?” I force myself to ask.

  Holley starts to dig around in her bag, no doubt pulling out Date Number Four’s file.

  I hear the sound of a folder being opened, and I almost roll my eyes. I don’t, though. I wait patiently as she scrolls through it, listening to the ebb and flow of her smooth voice. For as much as I don’t know what to make of my current dating situation, the calming effect of Holley’s presence on me is undeniable.

  “Let’s see. Her name is Elle, which is cute. And she’s a pastry chef.” As the words she’s reading hit her, she breaks into her information with excitement. “Ooh! I wonder if she knows how to make donuts!”

  “Maybe you should date her instead of me.”

  “Very funny.” She reaches out to smack a playful hand against my shoulder. “Anyway, what do you think you want to do with her?”

  I consider it for a moment, but when nothing comes to mind, she offers up something for me.

  “How about a cooking class?” she asks. “That might be really fun.”

  “Sure.” I act like I’m on board. Honestly, I’d probably agree to anything just to have Holley keep talking.

  “Great. I’ll get that set up.” She scribbles something in her notebook. “And while we’re at it, we should go ahead and figure out what you want to do for your fifth and final date.”

  I turn my head at the sound of her voice—an unmistakable, nervous timbre that says there’s more to this story.

  “And why is that?”

  “Well…” She pauses, nervously glances down at her notebook, and digs her teeth into her bottom lip. When she finally looks over to meet my eyes again, I don’t miss the way her gaze shines with apology. “The Bachelor Anonymous Reveal Party has been moved up.”

  Jesus. The Reveal Party. I’d almost forgotten about that. I cringe. The fact that I’m supposed to choose one of the five women to take out on a second date with the intention of pursuing something further at this thing has never seemed more ridiculous.

  “Moved up? What are you talking about?”

  She grimaces as she answers. “I just got word that there’s been a bit of a miscommunication with the event coordination team, and instead of the party being September 4th, it’s going to be August 28th.”

  “Well, shit,” I mutter. I don’t like the sound of that. That’s one less week I have with Holley around. “Maybe we should just skip date number five,” I suggest, trying to find some kind of silver lining.

  She shakes her head, a painful mix of a smile and terror and melancholy all warring on her face. “Sorry, but my editor is expecting five dates, despite the change in timeline. Which really only leaves one solution.”

  I raise my eyebrows in question.

  “Instead of one d
ate this weekend, you’re going to have to squeeze in two.” She grimaces again but quickly switches gears. “Saturday, you’ll go to a cooking class with Elle. And Sunday, you’ll go to one last place of your choosing with…” She pauses and digs around in her bag again for another folder. “Lucy.”

  “Two dates, Holley?” I question. “Back-to-back? I think you’re going to have to find a better way.”

  “It’s the only way, Jake,” she whines, and it reminds me so much of Chloe when she’s trying to get me to agree to something that a soft spot pulses in my chest. “If you don’t fit in both dates this weekend, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hit my article deadlines. If I don’t hit my deadlines, my editor is going to ream my ass. And trust me, no one wants their ass reamed by Gloria. She never, ever uses lube.”

  Shit. This is her job, I remind myself. And you’re the one who agreed to do this whole Bachelor Anonymous fucking shebang, you bastard.

  “I hope you realize you’re going to owe me so big for this,” I agree, her joke about her editor making a smile invade my face uninvited. “Like, big, Holley. Huge.”

  “Anything you want,” she says in a rush.

  As if her words just unlocked Pandora’s box of dirty fantasies, all sorts of NSFW forms of repayment threaten to come to mind, and it takes the strength of ten fucking men not to fall down that sexual rabbit hole.

  Still, I can’t stop myself from saying, “I’m going to hold you to that.” My voice is gravelly with sexual hunger to my own ears; I don’t think she notices.

  “Good,” she responds without hesitation, but she changes focus so fast to contestant number five that it gives my brain whiplash. “Now, Lucy,” she says, scanning through the new folder. “Even though she doesn’t have any pets, she loves animals. Especially dogs… A dog park, maybe?”

  “But I don’t have any pets either.”

  “So?” she questions, but her eyes keep scanning Lucy’s information. “A dog park could still be fun.”

  “Just out of curiosity, Holl, would I put the collar and leash on her or me?”

  Instantly, she meets my eyes and bursts into giggles. There’s a shimmer in her jade-green pupils, and I have to wonder if it’s because she’s imagining me in a collar. “Okay, yeah, no dog parks.”

  I smirk. “Is there anything else she likes besides animals she doesn’t own?”

  “She’s an avid reader,” she updates, sliding her finger down the page. “Loves hiking, bowling, danc—”

  “Bowling,” I chime in before she can continue rambling on about Lucy’s hobbies.

  “Wait…you didn’t hear the rest—”

  “Because I don’t need to. We’ll go to Strike Lanes.”

  Holley searches my eyes for a brief moment before shrugging one relaxed shoulder. “Okay, then, Strike Lanes with Lucy on Sunday, it is. I’ll work on getting it all set up.”

  “Sounds great.” I flash a smile I don’t really feel and turn my head back to the sky, looking up at the sheer number of stars. There’s so much out there—so much beyond our little world, it isn’t even funny. And yet, somehow, the tiniest of things—like the two of us sitting here on this beach together—can feel so huge.

  But when I hear the sounds of her packing up her bag, I turn my head back to look at her.

  “Ready to go already?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” The corners of her mouth form a little frown. “I have to be up incredibly early tomorrow for an insanely busy day filled with finishing this article and heading into the office for several meetings. I really need to get some sleep.”

  I nod then, curling my abs to sit up and then rocking back to throw myself to my feet like a fighter.

  Holley yells, eyes wide and smile bright.

  “Holy shit!”

  I laugh and stretch a hand down to her to help her up.

  “I had no idea you could do that!”

  “Me neither,” I reply. “First time I’ve tried.”

  “God, you’re really, like, not real, I swear.”

  I shake my head and then follow it up by shaking my whole body like a wet dog. For as much shit as I gave her, I am definitely covered in sand.

  “Jake!” She giggles and shields her face with her hand, backing away from me.

  I crowd her unnecessarily just to mess with her, and before I know it, we’ve ended up shrieking our way into the parking lot in fits of laughter.

  She climbs into her car, and I shut the door for her, but she rolls the window down when I don’t move away immediately.

  “I’ll see you Saturday?” I say, for lack of anything better.

  She nods and smiles, and I take in a deep breath to calm the unexplained burn in my lungs.

  “See you then.”

  Two fucking dates this weekend sounds so painfully awful. I’m looking forward to it about how I’d look forward to a short bout of water torture.

  So, why is it then, that Saturday doesn’t seem soon enough?

  Jake

  Holley’s smile is infectious the minute she steps into the large, industrial-style kitchen with her bag on her shoulder and her hair down and curled to her shoulders. It looks like she’s done it on purpose today, rather than letting it fall into its natural waves, and I’m excited to see the new look.

  We’ve texted a few times since we saw each other Wednesday night—mostly about Making a Murderer since we’ve both been watching it—but seeing her in person makes me realize just how much I’ve missed her.

  I lean into the stainless-steel table in the center of the room and smile back at her as she trips over nothing, spins around to see what it was, and then laughs at herself when she realizes it was just air.

  I’m equal parts amused by how fucking cute she is, but also a little scared for her life in a room with things like hot stoves and sharp, chopping knives.

  And I can’t seem to wipe the smile off my face.

  “Easy there,” I tease good-naturedly. “I don’t want you to split your head open on the table.”

  She pretends to slow her steps dramatically, but really, the way she does it just makes her look like a robot. I chuckle.

  “You look beautiful,” I find myself saying as she tosses her bag onto the table in between us. I didn’t plan it, didn’t even really realize I was thinking it—but neither of those makes it any less true.

  She blushes and drops her eyes to the table to dig out her notebook as she speaks. “Thanks.” She giggles. “I had to go into the office today. And since I had a meeting with my editor about how everything is going with Bachelor Anonymous, I tried to look human.”

  I grin as she finally meets my eyes, the pressure of my compliment fading enough to make her feel comfortable again. “Human?” I ask, pretending to wince. “I mean, you look beautiful, but I’m getting more of an alien vibe.”

  She punches me in the shoulder without hesitation, and I reach up to grab it while I laugh.

  “Don’t be such a punk!” she threatens, and I have to bite my lip to keep myself from disappointing her by revealing just how intimidating she isn’t.

  “Sorry,” I apologize instead. “I couldn’t help it.”

  She rolls her eyes and opens her notebook to a fresh page to get prepared for today’s date. I watch as she writes Elle’s name at the top of the page and underlines it twice.

  “Is that a cheat sheet for me?” I ask sarcastically, and she shakes her head.

  “You’re bad.” I wink as she continues. “And brave. I can’t believe you wanted me to schedule a cooking-class date with a pastry chef.”

  “Pretty sure this was your idea, Holl.”

  “Yeah,” she retorts with a sassy hand to her svelte hip. “But you agreed to it.”

  “Well…” I pause and waggle my eyebrows. “I guess this is a case of go big or go home, then. Which just so happens to be SEAL Team Nine’s motto.”

  “Nine?” she questions.

  “Top secret,” I whisper with a wink, just as the door at the front of the room op
ens and a couple women step inside. They’re chatting with each other animatedly, and it brings Holley’s and my conversation to a hush.

  When they look up and notice us, the one with the long blond hair’s eyes light up. Her attention is solely on me as she closes the distances, bites her lip, and breathes, “You must be Jake.”

  I nod, glancing to Holley, who’s now looking on from behind with raised eyebrows.

  “I am. You must be Elle.” I reach out a hand for a shake, but she takes it between both of hers and clasps it.

  “I am,” she agrees, a huge smile curling her cherry-stained lips upward. “This is Gail, she’s our instructor today, but we actually went to culinary school together. Isn’t that wild?” I smile, sticking out a hand to shake Gail’s when she offers it.

  I turn to introduce Holley too, but by the time I’m done exchanging pleasantries with Gail, Holley’s retreated to the very back corner of the room.

  I frown at her, but she waves me off, mouthing, “It’s fine.”

  I frown harder at the word, so she rolls her eyes and smiles, pointing at her mouth with a finger as if to say, “See?”

  When Elle grabs my arm and drags me around to the other side of the table, I have no choice but to take my eyes off Holley and focus on the dish we’re making for the day.

  It’s steak with a garlic demi-glace and fajita corn and potatoes. Safe to say, I don’t know how to make that one, so I do my best to pay attention. Elle is extremely flirty and affectionate, and while those are normally markers of a good date, I have to admit, on this one, I’m left feeling inexplicably uncomfortable.

  She’s very pretty, well-spoken, and intelligent, and yet, I couldn’t be less into her if I were an inanimate object.

  When we get the sauce or demi-glace or whatever-the-hell-it-is together, Gail steps out of the room momentarily to take a phone call, and we each take turns testing our product.

  I put the tasting spoon to my mouth and take a taste, but when I pull it away, Elle makes a face pretty much immediately.