Then she gasped. Then she laughed. Then she cried. Then she did everything all at once. Because it was Strawberry Shortcake perfume. The kind she’d loved as a kid.
“So I was thinking.”
“Ahh!” She was full on crying now, but she didn’t care because there he was, casually leaning against the fence that separated the two yards.
“No matter what else happens, you can’t go the rest of your life smelling the wrong way.”
…
When Amy Morrison flew into his arms, Dax’s fears evaporated like a mist of strawberry perfume.
“I’m sorry!” she said through her tears.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry.” He pulled back enough to frame her face with his hands and use his thumbs to brush her tears away. “That’s my line.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and tilted her head, as if savoring his touch. “It needs to be said, though,” she whispered when she opened them. But she was smiling now, so that was progress. “I should never have let you go this morning.”
“I should never have left. I should have just parked myself there in that sea of rich white-wearing motherfuckers and refused to leave until I’d said my piece.”
She brought her hands up to cover his, which were still resting on her face.
He took a deep breath. It was T-in-the-road time. “Amy, I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Hearing those words was like setting down an enormous boulder he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. “I think maybe you misunderstood what I was saying,” she said. “I was never going to back to Mason. I was just so…overwhelmed. But I should have told you how I felt ages ago.”
“I should have told you. I should have seen what was right in front of my face.”
“I know why I didn’t,” she said. “Why didn’t you?”
“You were always talking about how you weren’t looking for a relationship.” He paused. He could leave it there, and she would never know. “But also…” God, this was hard.
“Allison?” she said softly.
She understood without him having to say it. “Yeah. I was scared. Hell, I am scared. But I have a feeling you’re going to be worth it.” He cleared his throat. “Now your turn.”
She screwed up her nose and laughed. “I was trying to convince myself about this whole casual sex thing, I think! I mean, who meets the love of her life the day she gets left at the altar?”
The love of her life. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick. “Who meets the love of his life the day she gets left at the altar?”
They kissed for a long time. They kissed until he remembered that Gary was hiding on the other side of the house—his yard was such that there was only one way in, and they were blocking it.
He pulled away from her, throwing an arm around her shoulder and pointing them toward the gate. “Gary, it’s safe to come out!” he called over his shoulder.
“Oh! Wait!” she cried as she ran back to where she’d been sitting by the machine. “I brought you something.” And goddamn if she didn’t present him with a huge tub of movie popcorn. “Layered with a revolting amount of real butter,” she said, popping a few kernels in her mouth and scrunching her nose in disgust. “I hope I get to eat lots of it in the future.”
She could have been handing him the most precious jewel. A high-end surfboard. An investor for the new app. None of it would have been better than that bucket of popcorn, because the popcorn was her version of beef stroganoff. Dax couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but a sharp pain in his throat suggested that they’d better move things along if he wanted to retain his dignity.
As he grabbed her hand, she said, “What’s next?”
He looked down at her. Red-lipped Amy Morrison. His office frenemy, to use her term. “I don’t know what’s next,” he said, needing to tell her the truth. “But I meant what I said: I love you. Whatever happens, I promise to love you.”
“I promise to love you, too.” Something mischievous flashed in her eyes. “But that wasn’t exactly what I meant. I was talking more about right now. Like, the immediate future. What’s going to happen right this very minute?”
He played dumb. “Well, it is Sunday, and, oh my God, you’re going to make my mother the happiest woman in the world.” He looked at his watch. “But it’s only nine o’clock. We have hours before we have to leave for Harris family dinner.” She swatted his shoulder as he waggled his eyebrows and said, “However will we fill the time? Kayaking, perhaps?”
She turned bright red. Ha! He was never, never going to get tired of this. “No to kayaking? Hmmm…” Bending over to speak low into her ear, he whispered, “Shall I take you home and make love to you?”
She bit her lip and shook her head.
“Still no? Not exactly what you want?”
Another shake of the head, this one accompanied by a grin.
He performed a theatrical shrug. “Oh, well, I aim to please, so you’d better tell me what it is you do want.”
And then she stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear and did just that.
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About the Author
Jenny Holiday started writing at age nine when her fourth grade teacher gave her a notebook and told her to start writing stories. That first batch featured mass murders on the loose, alien invasions, and hauntings. From then on, she was always writing, often in her diary, where she liked to decorate declarations of existential angst with nail polish teardrops. Later, she channelled her penchant for scribbling into a more useful format, picking up a PhD in geography and then working in PR. Eventually, she figured out that happy endings were more fun than alien invasions. You can follow her on Twitter at @jennyholi or visit her on the web at
jennyholiday.com.
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