Page 74 of Dream On, Ramona Riley

“Nervous?” Butterflies swelled in Ramona’s own stomach. “Why?”

Dylan took a deep breath, kept twining that string around her finger. “Because with all the excitement this morning, I…well, I started thinking.”

They were larger than butterflies now. Some huge, winged creature flapping away in Ramona’s gut. Yesterday at Mirror Cove flashed through her memory—yesterday and eighteen years ago—two girls, lonely, hungry, free with each other in a way they couldn’t seem to find with anyone else.

“Oh?” Ramona said, but her voice squeaked like a prepubescent. She coughed, told herself to calm the hell down.

Dylan’s finger was now nearly purple from the string cutting off her circulation. She unwound it quickly, flung it to the floor. “Yeah,” she said, rubbing at her finger as it changed back to its normal color. “And…and I think we should go on a date.”

Even though Ramona was half expecting this exact thing, shewas also half expecting Dylan to say they shouldn’t hang out at all anymore, and she honestly wasn’t sure which one she preferred. Her brain and heart battled it out—practicality and emotion, Noelle Yang against comfort in Clover Lake, thirteen-year-old Cherry versus thirty-one-year-old Ramona.

“Oh?” Ramona said. Again. Seemed like that two-letter word was the only thing left in her vocabulary.

“Just casual,” Dylan said. “You know…fun. Not so different from what we’ve been doing, really. Just, you know…it’s like…different because, I might, I don’t know. Hold your finger.”

“My finger?”

“I meanhand. Jesus.” Dylan rubbed her forehead. “I’m very bad at this.”

Somehow, Dylan’s fumbling calmed Ramona down a bit—comfort that she wasn’t the only one who was freaking out here.

Maybe it was a bad idea, a colossal mistake. There was really no chance for anything serious here—they came from two different worlds—and Noelle Yang hovered in Ramona’s mind, an elegant ghost, a haunting of everything she wanted.

But she had to admit, she wanted this too.

It didn’t have to be a big deal.

Fun, as Dylan said.

The whole town already thought they were dating anyway, and Ramona was tired of saying no to things. For all the ways April drove Ramona bananas, she was right about one thing—Ramona had put her life on hold for Olive and her family.

But she didn’t have to do that anymore.

And if she wanted to hold Dylan Monroe’s finger, goddammit, she would do it.

For herself. And for Cherry, that thirteen-year-old girl who felt so forgettable, so…left.

“Yes,” Ramona said.

Dylan dropped her hand from her forehead. “Yes?”

Ramona smiled. “Yes.”

Dylan smiled too, her hand twitching in her lap, as if she wanted to hold Ramona’s hand right now. And maybe she would’ve, had April Evans not screamed “Yes!” from the other side of the office door at that very moment.

Ramona kept smiling serenely, kept her eyes on Dylan, then said calmly, “I’m going to kill her.”

Dylan just laughed, then reached out and took Ramona’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. It lasted only a moment before another knock sounded on the door—Laurel telling Dylan that Noelle was on her way for costume and makeup—but it was enough to send Ramona’s stomach into a free fall.

Noelle’s name echoed through her thoughts.

Casual, she told herself.Fun.

“Will you be here later?” Dylan asked as they stood up, their hands dropping away.

“Later?” Ramona asked.

“For filming?”