Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(56)

“It’d be nice to have some muscle. I’ve heard cons aren’t always cool places for women.”

“So, like, your bodyguard.”

“Basically.”

“Who you’re having an affair with.”

“Gross!”

“Too far?”

“Just.”

“Your bodyguard who you kiss.”

“I’ll reluctantly allow that. So?”

“So.”

“You wanna come?”

“Hell yeah, I do. If Delia’s cool with it.”

“Drop me by her work on our way back and I’ll ask her.”

We pay for Lawson’s book and walk out of the cool of the store into the sultry dusk heat of the parking lot. It smells like warm tar and french fries. The sun is setting orange in the pollen-hazed sky.

Lawson suddenly falls quiet. The sort of silent that calls out, that demands an explanation.

“What?” I pinch at his arm playfully.

He smiles a little, wistfully, and shakes his head.

“Come on! What?”

Same smile, still looking away from me. “There’s something I want to tell you, but you can’t joke.”

He has a vulnerable timbre in his voice. Things are going great between us, but it’s way early for him to be telling me he loves me. I’m definitely not ready to hear it or say it. My heart quickens. “Okay.” Fingers crossed it’s not that.

He takes a deep breath, like he’s steeling himself for a punch. “I’ve never had someone I could go to the bookstore with. My brothers used to give me tons of grief for loving to read, and I guess I didn’t have the right friends? Anyway.” He looks at me and back down. “It’s good when your life starts turning out how you want it to. When you get the right people in it.”

I’m deeply relieved not to be dealing with a premature I love you. I measure my response carefully, making sure there’s no hint of teasing. I don’t say anything for a second but grip his biceps and rest my head on his shoulder as we walk. He rests his head on mine. He smells like icy, clean, neon-blue deodorant.

Finally, I say, “I’ve had boyfriends who liked to go to the bookstore, but mostly so they could pretend to be smarter than me and brag about all the Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski they’ve read.”

“Who and who?”

“You can’t imagine what a relief that question is.”

“No guy who tries to make you feel dumb deserves you.”

“Extremely agree.”

“Bet I can plank longer than any of them.” Lawson plays it as a joke, but there’s a territorial edge to his voice that I haven’t heard before, and I like it.

“And isn’t that what really counts?”

We reach Lawson’s truck, and he comes around to open my door for me. I lean back against it. The metal’s warm on my skin through my sundress. I reach out and gently take Lawson’s book and hold it away from him. “Keep away. You gotta kiss me if you want it.”

He smiles, puts one hand on my hip and one hand on the book, and presses into me. It makes me ache.

“Oh no, anything but that,” he says softly, leaning in.

And now we’re “that couple” in the parking lot, but who cares?

Here’s what it feels like: he’s the first days of summer, when I would play outside until my heart pounded with hot blood and sweat plastered my hair to my face and I’d come inside and watch TV and sit by the air conditioner and eat lemonade popsicles so tart they’d make tiny beads of sweat well up on my eyelids.

And while we’re kissing, sweet melancholy wells inside me. The kind you get when you’re already reaching the end of a beginning.

I don’t want to grow up.

I want to keep living in this moment forever. With Lawson. With Delia. Take the hourglass and lay it on its side.

“I still can’t believe where Bermuda is,” Lawson says, pausing the kissing.

I’m about to say, “I know, right?” But his lips are back on mine before I get the chance, and it doesn’t seem that important anymore to say anything, even if I could.





“You’re depraved,” my boss Trish says. She takes another bite of baked potato.

“Am I, though? Baked potatoes taste like wet toilet paper rolled up in a wet paper bag. They taste like a hot mop,” I say.

“False. Put some butter and cheese and sour cream and bacon bits on one and get back to me.”

“Like, if you’re going to bury a hot lump of mud-flavored white starch in twenty delicious things, sure, maybe you can choke it down.”

“I should fire you right now.”

“But look how efficient I am.” I lean against the shelf I’ve just finished inventorying.

“Are you seriously done already?”

“Yep.”

Trish eyes the calendar. “So you’re gone this weekend.”

“Correct. ShiverCon.”

“Fun. You back by Monday morning?”

“Can be.”

“Good, I’ll need you.”

I give her a thumbs-up.

“Okay, I can finish up here if you wanna clock out,” Trish says.

“I’m gonna hang out for a bit. Josie texted me and said she’s getting dropped off here, and I’m giving her a ride home.”