Page 93 of The Hot Shot

“Pretty sure there are taco lovers who would defend their own hometowns.”

“They can try.” I wink. Looking her over, a swelling sense of rightness fills me.

I’ve had moments I thought were perfect. They were preludes to this, to truly being with Chess.

“Our first date should have been like this,” I tell her.

Chess quirks a brow, but she’s still smiling. “I thought this was our first date.”

“Our first date was eating fried fish and talking about bad sex. We just didn’t realize it yet.”

“We didn’t?”

“Nope.” Slowly, I shake my head. “It was a date, but the execution was all wrong. I shouldn’t have made it a friend thing. I should have gone up to you and said, ‘I like you at lot, Chester Copper. Will you go out with me for, like, real?’”

She snickers, but it sounds suspiciously like a happy giggle. “How do you know it would have worked?”

God, I love her smile. I want to keep teasing her just to see it bloom again and again. “It would have worked. I would have kissed you the way I’d wanted to since we met, and you would have been mine.”

“Oh, really,” she deadpans, but I see the knowledge in her eyes.

“Really. I was made to kiss you, Chess.”

She goes soft at that, giving me those bedroom eyes. Her voice grows husky, making me hard and tight with anticipation. “Maybe I was the one made to kiss you, Finn.”

Emotion rushes through my chest, taking my air, and I breathe deep. “You were.”

The waitress arrives to take our order.

When she’s gone, Chess looks out over the water, giving me her profile. She’s flustered, her fingers tapping the glass in her hand. Neither of us has been in a relationship, me becauseI didn’t want to, Chess because she never found anyone she wanted. In a way, I’m glad that we’re both new to this. We can be each other’s only. But part of me wishes we both knew more, or at least one of us had some knowledge of how to play this.

But it is what it is, and I’m content to drink my beer, watch the sunlight dance in my girl’s hair. Our food arrives and we eat with gusto, talking about nothing in particular. The sun sinks behind the horizon, and the string lights twinkle overhead.

A dance floor is set up on one corner of the patio. Mostly older patrons are slow dancing to a Sinatra song. Chess watches them, the corners of her lips tilted up. “I wish I brought my camera. That couple there...”

I glance back and see a man and woman who must be in their eighties. He’s dressed in a light gray three-piece suit, an honest-to-god red carnation tucked into his lapel. The woman’s dress looks like something out of the ’40s. They move together in perfect harmony, his hand in hers as they smile at each other.

Chess glances at me but then her gaze goes back to the couple. “What must that be like? To spend an entire lifetime with someone, and the threads of who you are have become so interwoven, you can’t part without unraveling.”

I don’t know. But I want to find out.

The song ends and another begins. It’s slow, the woman’s voice filled with tender love and bittersweet nostalgia as she sings along to the piano. I listen to the lyrics and start to smile. “This song was playing when I walked you home that first night.”

Chess’s brows draw together. “It was?”

“Elvis was singing it then.”

Her expression clears as she listens. “‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’ I remember.”

I put my napkin down on the table and stand. “Dance with me.”

Chess blanches. “What, here?”

“That’s the idea, yeah.”

Her gaze darts from the dance floor to me.

I’m patient, but I’m not letting this go. Not when it’s this song, in this moment. “Some things you don’t take a picture of, Chess. You live them.” I reach out to her. “Take my hand.”