Dave burst out laughing, that joy-filled sound infusing Brooklynn’s soul. She laughed too, something she felt like she hadn’t done in a while. Surely she had, she just felt like she hadn’t.
But with Dave, the perpetual darkness that plagued her seemed to be gone. Just poof. Not there anymore.
“So you order it when you go out. Hey, you do what you need to do,” he said, sliding to the end of the bench. “Should we go get some food?”
“Yes, food.” She joined him and headed for the cold bar first. There were shrimp and cocktail sauce, the smoked salmon she was after, and deviled eggs. All of her favorite things, though she skipped the smoked salmon for now. Dave hadn’t been being literal when he said they couldn’t talk about serious things until the smoked salmon, but she was going to save the second confession for a few more minutes.
If she said it at all.
Her mind whirred as she made her selections and returned to the booth. Dave followed a minute later, a sigh coming out of his mouth.
“Can I confess something too?” he asked, opening a napkin on the table beside him.
“Of course.” But her heart vibrated in her chest, sending weird pulses through her veins.
“I’ve had a huge crush on you for years,” he said, that charming smile making an appearance. The dimple in his left cheek was still there, and how he hadn’t been snatched up was a complete mystery.
“That’s not a confession,” she said, spreading her napkin across her lap. “You’ve asked me out nine times in the past year. You think I didn’t know you liked me?”
He shrugged one powerful shoulder. “It was one year.” He put a bite of biscuit and gravy in his mouth and watched her.
Realizations hit her, and Brooklynn felt like a whispering breeze could knock her over. “How long?”
He swallowed and reached for the orange juice the waitress had brought while they’d been getting their food. “I was going to ask you out the day I got back to Hawthorne Harbor.”
“But I was with Ryker.”
“Right.”
“And then I got married.”
“Mm hm.” He focused on his food then, either unable or unwilling to look at her. Guilt tripped through her, and she didn’t even know why. It wasn’t her fault she’d been in a relationship with Ryker when Dave had returned to town. They’d been engaged for ten months before getting married, and Dave had been in town for all of that too.
“You came to the wedding.”
“I did,” he said. “We’re friends, Brooklynn. We’ve been friends for a long time. I mean, I know I left town, but we weren’t really together.” He lifted his eyes to hers. “Were we?”
“No,” she said, her voice almost trapped in the back of her throat. “We went to a few dances together.”
“Kissed a couple of times,” he said, and heat shot through her body at the memories still there, shelved in the back of her mind.
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat.
He continued to eat, and Brooklynn wasn’t sure what else to say. She finished her shrimp before he said, “I believe there were two confessions.”
“I don’t even have smoked salmon yet,” she said.
Dave slid out of the booth without another word and returned a few seconds later with the desired delicacy.
She tried to glare at him, but a smile played with her lips, making it impossible to convey her mock annoyance with him.
He ducked his head, an adorable move to conceal his own smile. She still caught sight of it anyway. “I’m just…I’m wondering if this is a one-time thing or not,” he said. “So I want to hear the confession, because then maybe I’ll know.”
Brooklynn didn’t even know if this date was a one-time thing or not. Part of her wanted it to be. The other part thought it might die if she didn’t see Dave every single day for the rest of her life.
“Okay,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “It starts with my horrible fear of the ocean.”
Dave pulled his soda closer and unwrapped a straw, silent.
Brooklynn touched the smoked salmon, but she didn’t have an appetite for it anymore. “The ocean killed Ryker.” Around them, people chatted and laughed, having a great time. She felt removed from the world again, and she hated that.
She blinked, and Dave’s face appeared before her in full-color. She wanted to live in full color. All the time. Every day. Every night.
With him?
He’s a start, she thought, and she tried to focus on those dark eyes that seemed to see everything she was going to say anyway.
“And you work on the ocean,” she said. “And I’ve rejected you for a year, because I can’t stand the thought of falling in love with you and then losing you the way I lost Ryker.”
There. She’d said it.
Now, if only Dave would say something back.
“That’s a tough one,” he finally said, dumping the rest of his orange juice in his soda glass now that it was half empty.
“Yeah,” she said, feeling like she’d put a damper on their fun brunch date. Dave recovered quickly and moved the conversation to something else. She let him, because it was easier to talk about their families than their feelings, and Brooklynn needed easy.
Once they’d finished and he’d driven her back to her house, he walked with her all the way to her front door.
“I had a great time,” he said, folding her into the strong safety of his arms. She loved the way he held her so close without being demanding that she stay.
“Me too,” she said, backing up a step. “Did you get the answer to your question?”
He cocked his head and watched her. “I haven’t decided yet.” He touched his temple in a soft military salute, and added, “See you later, Brooklynn.”
Oh, he wasn’t playing fair when he said her name like that. All soft and melty and full of emotion.
“Bye,” she murmured to his retreating back, and she managed to get inside the house without making a fool of herself. No, she’d done that plenty at the restaurant.
“So, how’d it go?”
The sound of Julie’s voice startled Brooklynn enough to elicit a yelp from her. She pressed her palm over her pulse and said, “You’re still here.”
“Duh,” Julie said from the couch. “You just had your first date since Ryker’s death, with the hottest man in town. I wasn’t going to miss how it went.”
“He’s not the hottest man in town,” Brooklynn said, coming around to sit beside her best friend.
Julie cocked her head and lifted only her right eyebrow as if to say, Really? Are you blind?
Brooklynn couldn’t help it. She started giggling, because fine. Dave was the hottest man in town, and she’d had an amazing time with him, confessions and all.
“Hey, Mama.” Brooklynn leaned down to give her mother a kiss on the forehead. She’d gotten all of her height from her dad, who was nowhere to be found in the kitchen. “Where is everyone?”
“Late,” she said with a shake of her head. “Laci had to stay after work for a few minutes. Erika is out with someone and didn’t want to leave. She might not come at all.” She rinsed the pot she’d been washing and put it on a towel beside the sink.
“Mike’s working tonight, and Scooter’s picking up Tilly.”
Which left Brooklynn, the oldest of the Magleby children in this small branch of the huge family tree. “Who’s Erika dating?”
“John Marstrup,” her mother said. “And apparently she really likes him.”
“She’s been out with him before,” Brooklynn said in a dry tone. “She didn’t like him then.” She’d need to text her sister later. Erika had been through some hard stuff in the past few years, and she sometimes looked for validation in the wrong places.
Brooklynn understood. Coming from the most notable family in town wasn’t easy. People looked at her for a certain standard, and the pressure to do good, always be perfect, was intense.
A moment later, her youngest brother entered the house, his daughter’s shriek announcing their arrival. “Gramma! Did you see there are turkeys out by the road?” The six-year-old came into the kitchen at a run. “Turkeys!” She made a sound that was probably supposed to be a gobble, and Brooklynn laughed.
See, she laughed.
“Hey, Scoot,” she said, accepting a side-hug from her brother, who’d entered the kitchen at a much slower pace.
“I know, baby,” her mom said to Tilly. “I texted your daddy and told him about them. Grandpa’s been out there, trying to get us one.”
Tilly looked mildly horrified for a moment, and then her whole face lit up. “To eat?”
“That’s right, hon. Now go into the pantry and get your gramma some cups. The pink ones.”
Tilly skipped off to get the job done, and their mother asked, “How’s Heather?”
Her brother’s ex-wife and Tilly’s mom. “Fine,” Scooter said as he sat at the bar with Brooklynn. “She’s taking the medication. She did great this past weekend with Tilly.”
“She’s been there since Friday, right?” Brooklynn asked.
“Yeah,” Scooter said, wiping his hands through his hair. “It was harder on me than I thought it would be.” He looked at her with his hazel eyes, deep and dark and full of worry. “But Tilly said things were fine, and the social worker that was there had good things to report.”
Their mother patted his hand. “Good. It’s good for her to be with her mom too.”
“I know that,” Scooter said, danger in the edges of every syllable. “I’m going to go find Dad.”
“Oh, he’s out in the fields,” their mother said. “Take a vest with you so he doesn’t shoot you.”
Brooklynn chuckled as her brother left the kitchen, and she thought now might be a good time to bring up Dave. No one else was here, and she wouldn’t mind if Laci knew at this point in the relationship.
Relationship.
She couldn’t believe she could possibly have another one of those and survive.
“Mom,” she said, something in her voice drawing her mother from the butter she was stirring into the rice.
“What is it?” she asked, abandoning the task altogether.
“I went out with someone,” Brooklynn said, trying the words out in her mouth as she said them.
Her mom—always the theatrical one—gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. Her wide eyes stared back at Brooklynn. “You did? When? Who?”
Her mother may not be the Magleby, but she did love a good, juicy piece of gossip. Before Brooklynn could answer her, the front door opened again.
“Mama,” Laci called. “Come help me for a minute. Aunt Mabel needs—”
“I don’t need help.” Aunt Mabel’s voice filled the foyer just outside the kitchen. “I can walk up stairs, girl.”
Brooklynn got up anyway, her exchanged glance with her mother begging her not to say anything. “Hey, Aunt Mabel.” She embraced her aunt, taking in a long, deep breath of the honey and lavender scent of her skin. “You’ve been using my soap.”
“Oh, I love that stuff,” Aunt Mabel said, but if Brooklynn hadn’t known her, she’d have thought the older woman hated it, what with the way she scoffed and waved her wrinkled hand. “I’ll tell you what I don’t love.” She teetered over to the kitchen table. “This rain. It’s killing my arthritis.”
“I’ll get you some tea, Mabel,” her mother said, pulling down a mug and setting the kettle on the stove. “So Brooklynn was just telling me some big news.”
“Mom,” Brooklynn said, but the words had already been spoken. Laci and Aunt Mabel watched her now, and a squirmy feeling moved through her stomach. “It’s nothing, really.”
“She went out with someone,” her mom practically yelled as she filled the tea kettle with water. “She was just about to tell me who.”
Brooklynn looked at Laci helplessly, but Laci only reached up and took out the elastic keeping her hair in a ponytail. The blonde tresses came down, and she raked her fingers through her hair. “I bet I know who it is.”
“I do know who it is,” Aunt Mabel said, her eyes closed as if she were meditating and had discovered who Brooklynn had gone to brunch with a few days ago.
“Who?” Brooklynn asked. “If you guys think you’re so smart.”
“David Reddington,” Aunt Mabel said at the same time Laci did, except Laci said Dave, so their voices were off by a syllable.
Horror hit Brooklynn smack dab in the chest. “Fine,” she said. “So you’re smart.”
“He had that look in his eye when he came to the shelter last week,” Laci said, shrugging.
“I heard it at Duality on Monday morning,” Aunt Mabel said. “I was there getting one of their fantastic pancake sausage sliders, and overheard a couple of women talking.”
A couple of women talking. Brooklynn didn’t know what to think. Honestly, she should be used to being the focus of talk in Hawthorne Harbor. People she didn’t know had showed up at her house and brought her dinner for a solid two months after Ryker had died. So her going out with someone new?
“I’m surprised it wasn’t on the front page of the newspaper,” she said dryly.
“Oh, old Bob Townsend will never allow that.” Aunt Mabel shook her head. “He hasn’t got a romantic bone in his body.”
Brooklynn looked at Aunt Mabel, who watched her with open eyes now. “You think it’s romantic?”
“Of course I do,” Aunt Mabel said. “That man has had a crush on you for years.”
“Yeah,” Brooklynn murmured. He’d said that. She’d known he was interested in her for a year. But one was different than many, and she still hadn’t worked out how she felt about being in a real relationship with him.
“Tell us about it,” Laci said. “Because when I saw you on Friday, you two did not have plans to go out.” She motioned to her mother that she wanted tea too, and Brooklynn got in on that too.
“It was….” Her phone went off before she could classify it, and she glanced down at where it sat on the counter.
Dave’s name winked back at her before the message was whisked up and off the screen. “It was nice,” she finally said. “I really like him.”
“Hallelujah,” Aunt Mabel said, definite sarcastic undertones to the word.
“I just…don’t know if it will work out.”
“No one knows that,” Laci said. “I mean, look at me and Quill. We’ve been together for years.” Her voice choked, and Brooklynn hurried to put her arm around her sister.
“I know,” she said softly. “It’s okay.”
The conversation shifted from Brooklynn to Laci, and then to which type of tea bags her mother bought. Aunt Mabel had never had such delicious tea. Then her father and brother came in with one of the wild turkeys, and mayhem ensued. By the time Brooklynn remembered to look at her phone, hours had gone by.
Still, Dave’s text brought a smile to her face, and she opened it while she sat in her driveway at home.
The moon is full tonight, and I love a good full moon.
He’d texted her a little bit—insignificant things like that. Things about himself, and he’d asked her a couple of questions since Sunday.
Me too, she tapped out, adding Sorry I missed this. Family dinner tonight and it was crazy.
His next text made her blood run hot and cold at the same time, which was quite discombobulating.
Wanna come over and look at the moon and tell me about it?