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Later that evening, once Matt had finally warmed up from the dunk tank incident, he headed over to Rachel’s house. No need to bust down any doors. She answered on the first knock.

“Matt. Hi. What are you doing here?” Rachel stood on the other side of the screen door, her hair piled high in a crazy bun with gray paint smudges all over her cheeks and chin.

How could anyone look so beautiful with paint smeared all over their face?

He cleared his throat. “I thought we were painting your living room tonight. I brought pizza.” Matt lifted the carboard box for evidence. “We talked about this. Remember?”

She obviously remembered. She held a wet paintbrush that was dripping all over the floor.

“Right. I just wasn’t sure if you were still coming since... you know, we hadn’t talked about it since we first talked about it.” She opened the screen door and waved him in, accidentally brushing his left arm with paint on his way past.

“We first talked about it yesterday.” He examined the streak of paint on his arm, then noticed two giant drops on his shoe. Which led him to discovering a trail of gray-painted footprints all over her carpeted living room floor. Way things were looking, he’d be lucky to snag a piece of pizza that wasn’t splattered in paint by the time he made it to her kitchen.

The screen door slammed shut as her footsteps creaked after him from the entryway. “Yeah, but a lot has happened since we first talked about it yesterday. I mean, for starters you were out in public wearing nothing but your undies again. Which I can’t help thinking is starting to be a habit for you, one you should definitely kick before winter arrives.”

“I’ll work on it.” He slid the jar of flowers on her kitchen table over so he could make room for the pizza and the real conversation they needed to have. The one about Aimee. And everything she said before he fell in the tank earlier this afternoon.

Admit it. You love Rachel. You’ve always loved Rachel. Just say it. Say it, say it, say it. You love her. You want her. Just say it.

Yeah, definitely something they needed to address. Would have earlier if it hadn’t taken him so long to dry off and return to regular life-sustaining temperatures again. “So, hey. About earlier.”

“Paper plates.” Rachel snapped her fingers and spun for the cupboard. “Can’t eat pizza without paper plates. I know I’ve got a few here somewhere.”

“Right. So, the whole dunk tank thing.”

“Oh my goodness, yes. Congratulations,” she said, her voice much louder than it needed to be as she continued opening and slamming cabinet doors. “I heard you raised close to a thousand dollars between Abe and all those other donations. Even sold some cats. That’s great.”

“Well, we didn’t technically sell any cats. They were free for adoption. And Wombat was the only one who took one. But anyway, that’s not—”

“Eureka! Knew I had some. Shoot, they’re on the top shelf. You mind grabbing them?” She must not have realized he had already stepped behind her. She spun and stabbed his chest with her paintbrush.

All he could do was look at his shirt. Look at her.

She grabbed a paper towel to clean off his shirt, and in the process somehow managed to swipe a streak of paint on his jeans. “I should probably just set the paintbrush down, shouldn’t I?”

“What is your problem?” And he didn’t just mean her uncanny ability to touch everything but the walls with her paintbrush. Why was she avoiding this conversation and yelling out words like Eureka!

She held his gaze, her dark eyes pensive. Undecisive. As if she couldn’t decide whether to call out the elephant in the room or just dump a bucket of paint over it instead. She took a step back and swallowed so loudly it could be labeled a gulp. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” Matt lifted a shoulder, not at all liking the sudden tension permeating the air between them worse than paint fumes. Not at all liking how Rachel was looking at him like a student about to get her score back on a test she hadn’t studied for. And trust him, he’d seen that look plenty enough times on her face throughout their four years of high school French to know it.

What was going on? This wasn’t their relationship. Awkward. Strained. Stiff. No. Their relationship was fun. Relaxed. A breath of fresh air. That’s why she’d always been his favorite friend. His best friend. That’s why he loved her.

He inhaled a slow breath, afraid he was about to start making gulpy sounds if he wasn’t careful.

Oh, wow. Aimee was right. He loved Rachel. Had for a long time.

Which is why he couldn’t afford to rush things and lose her. Even if that meant staying in the friend zone a lot longer than he wanted.

He blew out his breath. “You have lit-er-ally”—he made a great show of enunciating the word as he circled his finger in the air around them—“left a crime scene of paint throughout this entire house. Don’t act like you don’t have a problem.”

And just like that, it was as if the windows opened, clearing all the tension-filled fumes right out of the room.

Rachel’s shoulders relaxed and her eyes took on their usual playful glint. “Um, excuse me, but I don’t have to act like I don’t have a problem because I don’t have a problem.”

She folded her arms over her chest, smearing her inner arm with paint since she was still holding the paintbrush. She slanted a look at her arm. “Okay, I might have a problem.” One of her trademark giggle-snorts followed.

“You do understand the idea is to get the paint on the walls, right?”

“I was getting to that. I just had to get everything prepared first.” She dropped the brush in the sink and started washing her hands.

He stepped next to her and scraped a finger over a crusted glob behind her left ear. “Is dunking your head in the paint can part of the preparation process?”

More giggles as she finished washing her hands. “There was a little bit of an issue when I poured paint into the roller cover thingy.”

“Uh-huh, and did this little issue cause you to step in the roller cover thingy and leave gray-painted footprints all over the carpet?”

“I saw a mouse. I can’t be held responsible for what my feet do in a moment of crisis.”

“Really?” Matt opened the fridge and grabbed two of the root beer cans he’d left behind the other day when he started repairing her front porch. He handed her one. “I would’ve thought we set enough traps earlier this week to put mice on the endangered species list.”

She sank into a kitchen chair and snapped back the tab. “All right, fine. It technically wasn’t a mouse that I saw. It was the black hair scrunchie I flung in the air this morning when I freaked out over seeing a legit mouse.”

He leaned against the counter and narrowed his gaze at her. “And by legit mouse, you mean...”

“The gray ankle sock I whipped on the floor two nights ago to kill a spider.”

“And when you say spider...”

“I mean black sock fuzz.” She opened the lid to the pizza and pulled out a slice, the cheese stretching all the way from the box to her plate. “Now can we be done with the interrogation and just enjoy a fun evening eating pizza and getting at least one streak of paint on the walls?”

Matt joined her at the table. Someday he really would like to have more with this woman. But for now, for tonight, he lifted his root beer. “To a fun evening eating pizza and getting at least one streak of paint on the walls.”

She clinked her can against his, then lifted her pizza to her mouth. And Matt didn’t know what he was going to do with this girl. Especially now that she had just as much tomato sauce on her chin as she did paint.