He stayed at the railing, motionless. “Is that a bridesmaid dress you're wearing, or did someone invite you to prom?”
“Very funny. It's a bridesmaid dress. My cousin Marita got married today.”
“Oh, really? Was it a big wedding?”
“Um…” (You know, some people in the city complain they don't know their neighbors. I really can't say the same. My neighbors were born to be neighborly—to spend nine out of ten Sundays digging around in the front yard for little reason other than to be available for chats. If Shayla and I go out in her Rav and don't luck into a parking spot directly in front of the house, we have to factor in an extra twenty minutes to say hello to everyone on our way to and from doing errands.) I answered Mr. Galloway, “Not too big. Maybe two hundred people.”
He nodded. “Good weather for it.”
The petite, muddy woman before us reached her hand up to get some help up, then yanked the driver’s arm and pulled him to the ground again. Throughout all this, Dalton was dumbstruck, just watching. She was reaching for the hem of my dress just as the driver brought her under control, both of them grunting near my feet.
I felt conflicted, because this woman Alexis was the aggressor, but seeing her get held down by a man struck something in me. A deep, girl-power something. I grabbed the driver and tossed him into a hedge.
Everyone got really quiet, including Mr. Galloway on his porch.
Dalton helped extricate his driver from the hedge, Alexis got quietly to her feet, and everyone turned to stare at me.
“You are one bad ass girl,” Dalton said.
“Thanks.” I attempted to smooth down my hair and look demure.
The door of my house opened and my roommate and best friend, Shayla, burst out in a sleeveless T-shirt and boxer shorts. “What the f**k are you all doing on my lawn?” She spotted me and her expression became more confused. “Peaches! You look so good in that dress. I don't know what those other girls were complaining about.”
Cold water blasted me. I yelped and started running for cover. Everyone was yelling and colliding with me, and I basically ran blindly in a circle until somebody tackled me. We fell to the ground, and the hose-blasting stopped.
Wiping the water from my eyes, I said, “That was refreshing.”
The sound of shoes slapping against the pavement echoed through the night air as Alexis made her getaway down the street.
I couldn't get up from the muddy lawn, pinned as I was by a body. At least it wasn’t the driver with the ponytail, but Dalton.
I’d wanted to get him on top of me, but not like this. Not in the mud on my front lawn. Or maybe in the mud, sure, but not with all my neighbors watching.
Dalton got up and helped me to my feet. “I am so sorry about all of this. That Alexis!” He shook his head, and in the dim light, I couldn't tell if he looked guilty, or embarrassed.
Shayla stepped down from the porch and stood on the round, cement paving stones, staring at us. Unlike the older generation at the wedding, she knew exactly who Dalton Deangelo was.
I looked up at his gorgeous face. So much for sneaking him into my place, unnoticed, for the one-night tryst of a lifetime—the type you hint about to your children after a couple of drinks, much to their horror.
“I apologize for all this,” he said.
“This kerfuffle?” I looked down at my muddy bridesmaid dress. “So much for wearing this dress again.”
“I’ll pay to have it cleaned. No, I’ll buy you a new dress. Unfortunately, if you hang out with me, this is the sort of thing that happens.”
“Your life must be very interesting,” I said.
He pursed his lips, his eyes twinkling at me. “Let's trade lives. Give me the keys and I'll go open the bookstore tomorrow.”
As I stared up at Dalton, the rest of the world disappeared. I was dimly aware of Mr. Galloway calling his cat and going back into his house, and of the driver apologizing to Shayla and explaining what was happening, but all that chaos was happening outside of a world-dampening bubble surrounding the two of us.
“You would muck everything up,” I said. “In the bookstore. I have everything just how I like it.”
He brushed his warm hands along my upper arms, sweeping away the beads of water on my skin. I shivered at his touch.
“Is that a metaphor?” he murmured. “Are you afraid I'm going to muck up your life?” He kept running his warm hands up and down my arms, heating me up in more ways than one. Apparently getting sprayed with a garden hose doesn’t put you out of the mood for sex, which explains why it rarely works with stray cats.
He continued, “Is your life too perfect without me?”
“Thank you for being my date for the wedding, and for the ride in your car.” I bit my lower lip, embarrassed at the memory of him touching me so deliciously in the back seat, just moments earlier.
“You say that like we're saying goodbye.” He reached behind my back, pressing the chilly, soaked fabric of my bridesmaid dress as he pulled me to him. “If this is goodbye, give me a kiss to remember.”
He didn't have to ask twice. I stood up on my tiptoes in the wet grass, mud on my feet, and kissed him with all the pent-up passion I had in me, from all the guys I should have kissed but didn't. I should have kissed tall, scrawny Adrian Storm in twelfth grade, when we were working on the yearbook together. He owned an obnoxiously loud, gas-guzzling muscle car, and we had the exact opposite taste in movies and music. We seemed to have nothing in common, but he did have a lip ring, and I had an interest in his lips.
Back then, Adrian’s lip ring clicked against his teeth sometimes, and he'd flick at the metal hoop with his tongue when he was waiting for the slow computers in the library to load up photos. We had little to talk about, and he always looked bored when he talked to me, but I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him so bad, and I never did, because I wasn't the fun girl.
That night after my cousin’s wedding, as I stood in the mud of my front lawn, with a sexy actor, I kissed him with all the passion my lips could handle, and then some. My hands slid up along his chest, feeling the hard muscles just beneath his shirt.
He broke away just long enough to say, “This doesn't feel like goodbye.”
My hands roved down, over the ridges of his lean stomach, then around to his back so I could hold on to him for balance.
“I can't invite you in,” I said. “That's my house, and my life, and—”
He stopped me with a finger to my lips, while saying, “Shh.”