Chapter Eight

· Eight ·

Will

I’ve never done this before, outside of business at least—sat across the table from a woman besides my sisters and mother and talked with her, one-on-one.

I’ve had my share of experience with women over the years, women who weren’t looking for romance, who wanted physicality and nothing else. But this is different. I’m physically attracted to Juliet, and that is familiar, but…the longer I sit here, the more I feel this attraction snowballing as it rolls down the hill of minutes passing while we talk. This is how I’ve experienced attraction, and yet it isn’t just that. It’s more.

I find myself breathing in not just Juliet’s faint floral scent but the sound of her laugh, mingling with the warm July wind; counting every point of contact between our bodies, knees bumping under the table, her hand brushing mine as she picks up the pencil and tries her hand at my sudoku, yet the number that stands out is how many times she’s smiled since we sat down.

Six times. Each of them bigger and brighter.

“That has to be eight!” she yells, jabbing at the paper.

“You’re rushing,” I tell her. “It could be eight. You’ve got to rule out all the other numbers that could be in that box, too. You only know eight goes there when you’ve figured out nothing else does. It’s process of elimination. Takes patience.”

She chucks the pencil on the table and harrumphs. “Patience is not my strong suit.”

I set a hand over my mouth so I won’t laugh. She’s too damn cute. “Sudoku is not an ideal first-date game. Noted.”

A pigeon hops toward us, and Juliet leans off her chair, shooing it away. “At least not with me.”

Another pigeon waddles toward us, on her other side. Juliet turns and shoos that one away, too.

I grimace. “They’re surrounding us.”

Juliet turns back to me and sighs. “Yeah, they kind of are. Want to move on? Take a walk?”

I shoot out of my seat, slipping the pencil in my shirt pocket, folding the sudoku in half and stuffing it in my jeans. “Ready when you are.”

Juliet stands, a small groan leaving her as she does. I frown, a pinch of worry in my chest. Is she sore? Hurting?

“So.” She curls her hand around my biceps as we start to walk. “How do you want to do this?”

I peer down at her. “How do I want to do what?”

“Practice,” she says. “How meta do you want it to be? Do you want to just…do it?”

My cheeks heat. “Um…what is… it ?”

Juliet’s eyes widen. She slaps a hand to her forehead. “Rusty moment. I didn’t mean to sound like I meant that we should, you know, do it . I meant just do it as in, just go on dates and do our thing. Or, instead, do you want to talk about it as we go?”

My cheeks are still hot. I clear my throat. “Right, gotcha.” I think about the last time we talked about what we were doing, when she walked in and I choked and offered her a handshake hello. How she made it easier for me to weather that embarrassment by being a goofball herself, rewinding across the coffee shop, giving me a second chance.

Her playfulness helped me not get hung up on it, but the fact that I flubbed it and we both talked about it, well, it stung my pride, I can admit that. All of this stings my pride a bit. I don’t like doing things I’m bad at. It’s always been easier to tell myself that if I think I’m bad at something, I don’t want it, that it’s not something I care about.

But it’s not that simple. That’s why I’m here, practicing with her right now.

It’s going to take getting used to, talking it through with her, revealing these parts of myself that I usually keep tucked away tight. It feels like that time I was going through airport security and my luggage was randomly selected for an in-depth search. I had nothing to be ashamed of or incriminating, but it still felt uncomfortable and raw as I watched my suitcase being flung open, my private contents dragged out for all to see.

I’m not used to that feeling, especially with a woman I’m attracted to. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it’s…hard.

She squeezes my arm. “Where’d you go?”

“Sorry. I’m…thinking through my answer.”

“Take your time,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Juliet tips her head back to glance above us. I glance up, too, just briefly. The last thing I want is to trip on the sidewalk when I’ve got Juliet hanging on my arm.

The trees overhead sway in the breeze, lime-green leaves, mud-brown branches, dancing against the sky. I have a vivid memory of walking this stretch of the city when I first moved here for college, peering up and watching the leaves wave in the wind, a gemstone tapestry of peridot tipped with gold, bronze, and ruby. Just the beginning of autumn that would never quite match the grandeur of fall upstate but was lovely in its own way.

My gaze slips down to Juliet, her eyes still set on the sky. She looks so peaceful, so reflective. I want to know what she’s thinking, feeling, wondering. I want to know so much.

The only way I’ll learn any of that is if we talk, if I’m brave and I put myself out there, the way she is. And she is brave. I’ve been harboring an adolescent grudge that made me write off romance my entire adult life. Based on what she told me, she went through hell with the person she loved just last year, and here she is, already trying to come around to romance again.

Juliet’s being brave, and dammit, I’m going to be, too.

“I think we should do a little of both,” I finally tell her.

She glances my way, her eyes fixed on me as she listens.

“I think the default,” I tell her, “should be we both just…go for it. But when I’m struggling—”

“When either of us is struggling,” she says.

“I’m the one learning to ride the bike,” I remind her.

She lifts her eyebrows. “And I’m the one who’s going to fall off it.”

I nod, conceding that. “When either of us is struggling, we get meta, we talk about it. How’s that sound?”

Juliet smiles. “I think that sounds perfect.”

I stare at her as she glances back at the sky, drawn by the sound of two birds arcing and weaving toward the clouds. The wind snaps her hair around her face. I want to run my hands through it, feel it cool and soft across my fingers.

She catches me staring at her and tips her head. “What is it?”

I stare at her, the sun sparkling in her eyes, dark hair whipping in the wind, those soft dimples always waiting in her cheeks. “You just look…real lovely.”

Her cheeks turn a faint rosy pink. She turns and stares ahead, watching where she’s walking. “Yeesh, that got me good. Excellent practice flirtation.”

I don’t tell her I didn’t even mean to say it, that my brain was thinking it and my mouth just said it.

I don’t tell her I wasn’t trying to practice at all.

—

“What’s your favorite season?” I ask.

We’re walking toward her place, after I started to feel her slowing down on our stroll around the park. I offered to drive her home, but Juliet said the day is too beautiful to spend in a car. So instead, I’m walking her home—she doesn’t live far from the coffee shop where we met.

She peers up at me. “My favorite season? Spring.”

“Why?”

She smiles my way as we turn the corner onto the next block, passing a stretch of hedges that stand like sentinels protecting towering brownstones. “It’s the season of hope and new beginnings,” she says. “The promise of life turning lighter and lovelier. Green grass and fresh flowers everywhere and lush gardens. I’m a sucker for flowers and gardens, though all I can swing at the apartment is a few window boxes and some houseplants. What about you?”

An image jumps into my head—Juliet walking through the wildflower field back home, past the cultivated gardens, up the path to my house. Standing beneath the rose and wisteria trellis that flanks the pavers leading to my front door. I swallow thickly. “Spring,” I tell her quietly. “Spring’s my favorite, too.”

She smiles. “Spring supremacy. Thank you!”

The door of the next house—on second glance, building—down swings open, drawing Juliet’s attention, and the smile drops from her face.

And that’s when Juliet yanks me into the hedges.