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She winked at me, blew me a kiss and everything. I should have told her off for it. Instead, my brain actually went blank—all the thoughts in my mind just fizzled away, and I was left staring wide-eyed. She laughed, walking past me, and she slipped her hand into mine.

“C’mon, dork. Let’s go.”

I stumbled as she pulled me by the hand up the stairs, my heart in my mouth, wondering what people would say if they saw us walking in hand-in-hand like this—Ireallyshould not have worn the blazer—but I relaxed when I realized, with an odd sensation, that nobody was… actually going to realize this was Paisley.

Well. Maybe I’d be able to spend the evening with this mysterious woman, then.

Chapter 14

Paisley

I was gonna freak.

My heart was racing so much it felt like it was going to pop like stepping on a cherry, walking up the cramped, creaky wooden steps to Honey’s, but my mastermind gambit had paid off—the looks people gave me were like they’d give a stranger.

Damn. I knew it wouldn’t last long, once people found out my hair was blonde now, but… I wanted to enjoy the moment. Just me and Harper looking obnoxiously beautiful in a blazer.

Honey’s was so cute, I was literally obsessed—I used to hit it up all the time when I was new in town, a bar and a cheesy arcade in one, but I hadn’t been in a hot minute. It had been where I’d met Annabel for the first time, when she’d tried hitting on me. I’d hit her with the all-powerfulthanks but no thanks, and we’d been friends for life.

So there was something about using it as one of Harper’s goodbyes to Bayview. But if I thought about that too much then I’d turn into a sentimental little blob and wail on the floor and then everyone would know it was me, so… that was out ofthe question. Instead, I bought Harper the Honey Special, their signature cocktail—even God was powerless to know what was in the thing—and I dragged her to the back corner, shrouded in low light and shadows, to watch her drink it.

“It’s, uh… what’s in it?” she said, holding the thing up to look in the side.

“Deliciousness and love.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t answer much.”

“Just drink it and let your life be changed. Oh! But we’ve gotta take a pic first.”

“Well, of course. We’d die otherwise.”

I elbowed her lightly. “See? You get it.”

I got a picture of us with our Honey Specials, and I spent a second after just staring at the picture.

I looked… different. And even though it was scary, I think I looked kind of good.

Harper had certainly thought so. She’d just about tripped over herself to tell me not to go get changed. I wanted to bottle up the way that moment felt and hold onto it forever, getting complimented by a beautiful woman.

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing at the sheer amount of trepidation she had going into her drink, but she eventually took a sip and agreed that it was good—I couldn’t get her to acknowledge that it was made of deliciousness and love, but I got all I could out of her—and we hit up the vintage arcade cabinets after our drinks, Harper showing off her skills like the annoyingly talented beautiful woman she was.

It took another drink and a bit of dragging her to the dance floor for me to realize I kept thinking of her as beautiful, and suddenly it was all I could focus on—a track on repeat in my mind, every time I looked at her, fixating on the shape of her face, the curves of her lips, the lift of her cheeks, the slight pointto the outsides of her eyes that made her gaze look so sharp, so… beautiful.

I kept replaying the moment of her asking if I had feelings for her in my head, and if I was being totally honest, it kind of scared the life out of me.

At the end of the night, both of us a couple drinks deep and a little delirious on having danced too much, we slipped out of the bar and around back to the park overlook, breathing in the cool, brisk night air, clean and fresh coming in off the park, and she leaned against the railing next to me, looking out over it all. The park sprawling below the boardwalk overlook was pretty and all, but… somehow I couldn’t keep my eyes off Harper.

“So, enjoyed bucket number three?” I said, and she laughed.

“You suck at figures of speech.”

“What?”

“A bucket list isn’t… a list of buckets. It’s a list of things to do before you kick the bucket. As in—die.”

I scowled. “We’re not dying.”

“Well—no, but you’re the one who decided to use it as a metaphor here.”