Page 49

“Luke. My friend. I know you’d be there for me if I needed you. You know I know that. You and Margot are deep in love, you want to be with her all the time, I get it. I love this for you. Really.”

His face relaxed back into his dreamy smile. It would be annoying if she didn’t adore Luke with her whole heart. And she hadn’t seen him this happy in a very long time.

“Okay. Thanks. And…yeah, we are. I mean, I am, and I think she is, too.”

Avery laughed.

“You ‘thinkshe is, too’? Taylor told me that Margot got distracted halfway through a winery tour the other day and brought them back to the tasting room like thirty minutes early. It wasn’t until Taylor asked her why it went so fast that she realized and brought them back outside; they had to pretend it was a planned thing and give the guests a mid-tour glass of wine so they wouldn’t realize what happened. Does that sound like the normal Margot Noble?”

Luke’s surprised smile at that was frankly adorable.

“What? Okay, no, that is…not like Margot.” He suddenly looked up at her. “Wait.Taylortold you that? I didn’t realize you guys really knew each other.”

That was an opening if she’d ever heard one.

“We didn’t. But we talked for a while at the anniversary party, and we’ve been hanging out a lot more since then.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Luke said. “Taylor’s great.” Then he paused and narrowed his eyes at her. “What’s that look on your face? Is something going on with you two? Don’t get me wrong, I really like Taylor,” Luke continued. “But from what she’s said, she seems to, um, date around a lot, and I don’t—”

Avery patted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t want me to get hurt? That’s very sweet, but unnecessary. Don’t worry, nothing’s going on between the two of us, and I am very aware that she breaks a lot of hearts. No, it’s that—” Luke was the one person who would really understand why she was doing this. She could tell him everything. “Okay, let me back up.”

Luke’s eyebrows were sky-high now.

“I’m listening.”

“Are you ready to order?” the server asked. They both jumped; clearly neither of them had heard her approach.

“Let’s order now,” Avery said. “I’m starving, and this story might take a while.” They both glanced at the menu and ordered far too much food. When the server walked away, Avery started again.

“It began when I ran into Ms. Cunningham at the winery party. She said something about how she hears from my mom about how I’m doing and she’s so proud of what an upstanding citizen I am and how I was always such a well-behaved teenager blah blah, and all I could hear when she said that is that I’ve been boring my entire life.” She held up a hand when Luke tried to interrupt. “I know what you’re going to say; let me finish. I had a little too much wine after that and told Taylor that I was tired of being boring, and I wanted to flirt with people and get hobbies and make more friends and do things that weren’t related to work, but then I said I had no idea how to flirt. Then she asked if I wanted to know how to flirt with men or women, and I said both, but especially women, since—”

“Since you’ve had enough of men for a while, I get it,” Luke said.

“I was going to say since I haven’t had a lot of experience with women, but your version works, too. So, long story short, Taylor is teaching me how to flirt.”

“Are you kidding?” Luke looked at her. “You’re not kidding, oh wow. This is very unlike you, I’m impressed. How’s it going?”

“It’s going well?” She stopped to think about that. “At least, I’m having fun with it. Well, I am now. It won’t surprise you that I tried to talk Taylor out of this for a while at first, but she wasn’t having it.”

Luke grinned at her.

“No, as a matter of fact, that doesn’t surprise me at all. About either of you. Tell me more. How has she been teaching you how to flirt?”

Avery had been a little worried that Luke would be weirded out by all of this, but she should have known that all Luke cared about was that she was happy.

“First we went to a bookstore event with an author I like, where she made me talk to other people there, and then we did queer salsa dance lessons, where I had to ask people to dance.” Luke was very clearly fighting back a smile, so Avery threw him a glare. “Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Luke said, with almost a straight face. “It’s just that the tone of your voice when you said that you had to ask people to dance…I mean, you have to admit that was a little funny.”

Avery tried not to smile and completely failed.

“I will admit it was alittlefunny,” she said. “Anyway, we’ve done four total, and they’ve gotten less terrifying each time, which is nice. Oh! And did you know there’s a community garden right by my apartment? I found out about it from a woman I met at the bookstore, and now I’m sharing a garden plot with her there, and we’ve planted a bunch of vegetables and stuff. Some flowers, too.”

Luke smiled at her, with no laughter in his eyes this time. She knew how worried Luke had been about her since her breakup; shecould tell how glad he was that she was doing something so out of character for herself, something just for fun.

“That’s awesome, A,” he said after the waiter dropped the food off at their table. “I can’t believe this all happened in the last month. You’re learning how to flirtandhow to garden? So, what else has Taylor taught you? I feel like you’ve gotten a flirting expert to give you the secrets here; I want to know them, too.”