I’m still fighting off tiredness as Payne pulls me through the apartment. The lights are off, and a flash of lightning hits the sky outside, lighting up the space. Including a very large something hunched over in front of the sliding doors.
My first thought is dragon! but thankfully I manage to keep that one to myself because duh, Beau, dragons aren’t real. But … what is it?
I squint into the shadows as Payne pulls me closer.
“What am I looking at?”
He turns to face me, large hand still warming mine, and I can make out a hint of his features in the low light. “Well, the original plan was a picnic under the stars, and then this happened.” He waves his hand toward where the storm is coming down outside. “So I improvised.”
“Okay …”
“You’re worried about your date tomorrow, right?”
My lips part, but nothing comes out, because I’m not sure what to say. Yes, I’m dreading it, and not only because I hate dating, but also because it’s not with you probably isn’t the response he’s after. So I hum what I hope is an affirmative sound.
“Well, I thought tonight could be a practice run.”
“A practice run?”
“Sure. We’ll pretend this is a date. Make small talk, practice flirting, whatever you need.”
I give him a cheeky smile. “Do I get a good-night kiss at the end?”
“Now you’re pushing your luck.”
But as he turns to crawl into a little pink tent, I mourn the shadows hiding that gorgeous ass from my greedy view.
I grab my glasses from my desk, then follow him.
One side of the tent is open onto the glass doors, and the floor is covered in pillows and cushions that look familiar.
“Are those the girls’ things?”
“Yup.” Payne flicks a switch, and through the flimsy roof of the kiddie tent comes the glow of twinkle lights. He points at them. “As close to a sky as I could get for you.”
“If it wasn’t pink,” I point out.
His laugh is warm and happy. It lights me up inside. “Apparently they don’t make kids tents in black. Who knew?”
I watch while he grabs a picnic basket and sets it on the strip of floor in front of the doors. Another flash of lightning lights up the space, but even with it gone, my eyes are adjusting to the low light, and Payne is coming into focus.
“You did this for me?” I ask.
He clears his throat as he sets out the food. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t have a whole lot of other things happening in my life.”
He’s trying to brush it off as nothing, so I’ll let him, but this is possibly the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. I want to close the small space between us and kiss him, but that’s not going to convince either of us that I’m getting over my crush.
“Well, cheers to that.” I reach over and take the glass of wine that he’s poured.
“To having no life?”
“Exactly.” We tap our glasses together.
“So, Beau, was it?” Payne says. “How long have you lived in Kilborough?”
My lips twitch. “What are you doing?”
“Just play along.”
“Okay … ah, all of my life.”
A short silence follows my words until Payne leans in and whispers, “Now you ask me.”
“Umm … How long have you lived here?”
“Only a couple of months. You know, I really could use someone to show me around. Someone who knows the area …”
I nod along to his words, showing I’m listening.
“And this is where you offer to show me around,” he says.
I hang my head. “I’m terrible at this.”
“You’re not—you’re too in your head.” He points at the wine. “Have one at dinner. Just one. It’ll help calm your nerves. Then you need to get out of your head. Some conversation topics that usually go down well are sport, any viral video clips you’ve seen, work—if you’re desperate and need to get him talking—ideal holiday destinations and places you’ve traveled to … if you get stuck, ask him about his plans for the future. That should buy you a couple of minutes.”
“Huh.” I pick at the food he’s set out. “So what are your plans for the future?”
“That was good, but you don’t need to practice that one.”
“No.” I shift. “I actually want to know.”
“Haven’t I already told you everything?”
“Uh, yeah, you’ve told me about finding a job and moving out. That can’t be all though.”
Payne considers the question. “I guess those things are the most pressing. I’m still trying to get my head to stop spinning after my life exploded around me, so I haven’t thought about it much.”
“Yeah, but even before that happened, you have to have had some ideas.”
“Honestly, before all that, I thought my life would continue exactly the way it was pretty much forever. I’m a different person now, as douchey as that sounds.”
“I don’t think it’s douchey.”
His expression softens. “I think what I really want is independence. Sure I had things, but they were only partially mine, and when you divide your life into halves, it gets very dark when you realize it doesn’t leave you with much.”
“I never thought about it like that. Whenever I picture finding someone, I dunno, the whole sharing your life seems … nice.”
“And it is. Until it isn’t.”
My teeth clench as the familiar anger at Kyle tries to hit, but I push it back. He doesn’t get to interfere with this nice thing Payne has done for me. “Well, now you get to do that. Get your independence. You’ll feel better once your place has sold.”
“I will.” He sighs. “I would have been able to treat you to something more decent than this if it already had.”
“In that case I’m glad it hasn’t, because this is perfect.”
Payne’s bashful smile fills my gut with butterflies.
I nudge the food out of the way and lie down on my side. My feet poke out of the end of the tent, but it’s … cozy. The storm above my head, Payne sitting across from me. He hesitates a second before he copies me, bending his knees slightly so they almost hit mine.
He’s maybe a foot away, the shadows making the fine lines in his face deeper, showing his crow’s feet and the lines by his mouth and between his eyebrows. His stubble looks rougher, his eyes more piercing. I lick my lips, wishing I could kiss him again. Always, always wishing for that.
“Favorite ice cream flavor,” I ask. It comes out closer to a whisper, like my voice doesn’t want to disturb the calm air between us.
“Anything that has caramel in it. You?”
“Vanilla.” I try not to think about that in relation to sex. “Anything else is too overwhelming.”
“Bor-ring.” His voice has dropped to match mine.
“Simple,” I counter. “I don’t need much to be happy.”
“What are things that make you happy, then?”
You. Fuck, don’t say that. I swallow the word and think of specifics, then find myself saying. “Paper cranes. And sword fights. Reheating meals that have been made for me, even if I couldn’t eat them right away.”
“Beau …”
“Yeah?”
Payne swallows roughly. “Those things make me happy too.”
“It’s also nice to … to have someone who …” I take a deep breath. “Who gets me. It’s nice to not feel completely hopeless some of the time.”
His eyes bore into mine. The silence is weighted between us, and when he talks, his voice is a low rasp.
“You’re not hopeless.” His fingers brush the side of my face. “Far from it.”
I shiver and shake him off. “You and Marty are probably the only people who think that. And Marty only some of the time.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Are you kidding? You saw my place before you moved in.”
Payne gives me a skeptical look. “You think not being clean makes you hopeless?”
“Well, yes, that, but also, I’m not organized. I forget about things easily. Before you moved in, I’d order takeout or heat ramen for dinner every night. Even basic things like doing the laundry or changing my clothes feel too hard sometimes. That sounds hopeless to me.”
“Being clean and on time for things is overrated. Like, who decided that was the marker of a person with their shit together? Because in case you haven’t noticed, I tidy up and do those things you just mentioned, but I’m a complete mess. Most of the time I’m hanging on by a thread, and that’s scary as hell. If you’re hopeless, I’m a fucking wreck.”
Hanging on by a thread is a frequent feeling for me. Knowing that Payne feels like that too sometimes, well, it sucks of course, because I don’t want him to feel that way, but it also helps to make me not feel so alone. “Maybe we’re all a bit hopeless, then.”
“Probably. Which is why when you go on this date tomorrow, you should be yourself.”
“A hopeless mess?”
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
“I doubt that’s what most people are looking for in a guy.”
He shrugs, then chews on whatever he wants to say for a moment. “I think … I think you deserve that person. The one who’s looking for you.”
“Does he exist?”
“You won’t know unless you try to find him.”
“That’s true.” I chew on my thumbnail. Payne is that guy for me though. He’s the only one I want to be that guy, but Payne said I need to find the one who’s looking for me, and that just isn’t him. He’s a great friend; we’re close. He gives me so much of what I need already, but … I’ve probably missed out on a lot of good guys because of how hung up on him I am. “Maybe it’ll be Lee.”
Payne scoffs and then freezes, like it took him by surprise.
“You don’t like him?” I ask.
“I don’t know him.”
“Then what was that noise?”
“There was no noise.”
I lift my eyebrows because we both heard it, but instead of pushing, I let it go.
He sighs. “I hope your date goes well tomorrow.”
“Well, it has a lot to live up to.” I gesture toward the twinkle lights above us. It’s quiet and intimate, and maybe not anyone’s idea of a perfect date, but I couldn’t love this more. Being at home, somewhere I’m comfortable, with good food and a cozy setup and Payne lying across from me … it’s perfect.
“This was nothing.”
“To you, maybe.”
His smile is hesitant. “You really liked it?”
“I love it. And our date’s still going, right?”
“I’m in no hurry.”
“Me neither.”
We’re up most of the night, and while it might be a practice date, I know there’s no way any date could ever turn out as good as tonight’s has. There are no awkward lulls in conversation, no nervous rambling. Payne encourages my ideas and asks me questions; we talk about the things he missed in Kilborough while he was in Boston, as well as the things he loved while he was there.
It’s close to one in the morning when we crawl out of the tent and walk, side by side, back to our bedrooms.
“Thank you for tonight,” I say.
“Yeah, it was actually fun.”
“You doubted you’d have fun with me?”
“Well, you and everyone else have been telling me you flunk dates, so I thought maybe some kind of pressure was getting to you.”
“The pressure does get to me.”
“You were fine tonight.”
“Yeah, but—” I meet his gaze. “—that was you. That was easy.”
Something shifts in Payne’s expression, but he doesn’t look away. Neither do I. We just stand there staring at each other, and I really hope he’s not reading all the feelings on my face because I’m terrible at trying to hide them.
One side of his lips hitches up, and then he leans forward and brushes a kiss over my cheek, pausing when he reaches the corner of my mouth.
My lips tingle. My stomach flips. My fingers are itching to grab him, hold him, tug him closer against me until his mouth is right where I want it.
His breath fans over my skin, which reminds me that I’m not breathing at all.
Payne’s slow to pull back, and my brain is full of stop, wait, kiss me again, make it mean something this time, but I force myself to smile.
“I knew I’d get a good-night kiss out of you.”
He huffs a laugh. “Sometimes I think you could get anything out of me.”
“Anything?”
His teeth rake over his bottom lip. “Night, Bo-Bo.”
I’m smiling, heart happier than it probably should be. “Night.”
