“I have something for you,” I tell Gabe.
I run back into the Airstream—my mom follows me in, giving me a big smile and a shoulder squeeze. I find what I’m looking for and bring it out. Hold it up for him. It’s the woven wall hanging from Five Rivers Arts & Crafts that he admired at the Spring Festival.
He takes it from me. Touches it like he can’t believe his luck.
“I saw you looking at it that night at the festival. I even thought I saw you go for your wallet. I know you like the just-moved-in look—”
He wrinkles his face at me.
“—but I thought maybe you could try hanging this and see how you feel about it.”
“I fucking love it.” He ducks his head and kisses me. Hard. “Let’s go home.”
“About home,” I say. “Hanna says her roommate is moving out next month.”
“Hanna?”
“Yeah.”
“Hanna wants you to move in with her?”
I shrug. “Unless someone makes me a better offer.”
“Oh, City Girl. I am going to make you an offer you can’t resist.”
I don’t doubt this.
However, his offer-making is delayed slightly because we have to pick up Buck on the way back to Gabe’s.
Amanda comes running full tilt out of the house and hugs me so hard the wind gets knocked out of me. Then she punches Gabe in the arm. Hard.
“Asshole!” she says.
“I got her back, didn’t I?”
“You cheated! You should have had to go all the way to New York.”
Gabe has apparently just realized something. “Wait a second,” he says, slowly. “You knew she was here? And you were going to let me fly to New York…?”
“You walked out on her at the hospital,” Amanda says. “You owed her a really, really good grovel. And having to fly all the way to New York only to realize she was here would have been a pretty great grovel, you have to admit.” She frowns. “I feel like you’re going to have to do something else epic to make up for it now. I was trying to save you that brainstorming session. It was in your best interest, I swear.”
“I’m so sorry about the hospital,” Gabe says to me. “I mean, like, really, really, really sorry. I was being a straight up idiot—”
Normally I’d say, “It’s fine,” because the part that matters is that he was coming for me, but this time I say, “Yup!” and Amanda laughs her ass off.
Then someone lets Buck loose and he barrels out of the house over to us. He completely ignores Gabe and throws himself at me, almost knocking me over and then almost knocking me over again by trying to lift me off my feet with a nose in my crotch.
“Buck!” Gabe chides, but he’s laughing.
“You secretly want to do the same thing,” I murmur to him.
“Not so secretly,” Gabe murmurs back.
“TMI!” Amanda howls. “Get out of here. Go do all the things! And don’t tell me anything about it! That’s the one limit on my friendship with you, Lucy. I cannot know anything about my brother and underpants games. Otherwise, you can tell me anything.”
“Understood,” I say.
She gives me a big hug. I hug her back.
Gabe and I load Buck and all his stuff in the Jeep and drive back to Gabe’s house.
“You gave a really good speech back at the Airstream,” I tell him in the car on the way back. “But you actually had me at I need Lucy’s address in New York. Maybe I’m too easy.”
“I like you exactly the way you are,” he says, giving me a brief but heated look.
“Gabe,” I say. Because he got to say his piece, but I have a few things to say, too. “It’s not all on you. I should have told you how I felt. I’m going to get a lot better at that.”
“You can start now,” he says hopefully.
“I love you.”
“Damn, that sounds good,” he says. “It is going to sound even better when you say it when I’m inside you.”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh, yes, it will.”
I get distracted for a moment thinking about that, but then I snap back to the present and explain my plan to Gabe. I am still going to open my marketing consultancy. I’m just going to do it here, out of the new space I leased over Nan’s bakery for a very special friend-of-the-owner rate. I’ll still help Rush Creek and other Pacific Northwest businesses market to women. And in addition? I’ll specialize in helping East coast-based clients reach Pacific-Northwest-based audiences.
“So basically, I’m a translator,” I say. “I translate Fifth Avenue and Dior and Louboutin into rain jackets, undyed hair, and…”
“Geoducks,” Gabe suggests. “We can still grab a little bit of the clam season. We’ll go on a field trip to the Seattle area—”
“No boats.”
“You’ll like the ferries, I promise. No engine smell, no rocking, and no whitewater.”
“I’ll take it under advisement. Anyway, yes, you’ll have to finish my Pacific Northwest education.”
“Happily,” he says.
He parks in front of the house, and Buck sprints for the front porch and then hangs there, patiently waiting for us to let him in. Gabe does, and then scoops me up and carries me over the threshold. And up the stairs. And straight into his bedroom.
He deposits me on the bed and begins stripping off my clothes.
Then he makes me an offer I can’t refuse.