Page 51 of Freelance Flirt
“Love you, Grace. You’re a better woman than me.”
“Love you, too, bestie. I have to go. I can see Piper waving at me from pickup.”
Piper’s teacher opened the back passenger door for her and helped her get buckled in.
“Hi, Mom! Are we still going to Dean’s tonight?”
I waved a thank you to Piper’s teacher, and waited until the car door closed to answer. “Yes. We’re still going to Dean’s tonight. And Carmen and Isaac will be there, too. And Lucy and her parents.”
Piper cheered. I gripped the steering wheel. I was excited, too. Just a little bit nervous for more reasons than I could count. Since Dean and I had missed the dragon-shifter movie night with the GoWithFriends group, he’d mentioned maybe streamingScales of Gloryon his big screen in his media room and inviting Isaac and Carmen to come make fun of it with us.
I did want to see it. The dragon shifter memes, and the Saturday Night Live skits, and the joking references were all going over my head since I hadn’t seen it yet, and I wanted to remedy that. However, it was not appropriate for my seven-year-old to watch with us.
Dean was the one who suggested asking Molly and her husband Miles to come, too. Dean had a sitting room with a TV right next to the media room, and bam, a plan was born. Piper and Lucy would get to watch their own movie with their own bowls of popcorn in the room next to us, and we would watch ours.
I wasn’t afraid of looking like Dean’s date. It made sense to make even numbers. And we were friends now. I just didn’t know if I wanted to put what our friendship looked like on display for anyone else. Did I want anyone else knowing we sometimes slow danced in the dark at my house after Piper went to bed? No. No to infinity.
I mean, we talked business first. But yes, it had happened again. We’d exchanged “Thriller” and Usher for “You Can’t MakeMe Love You” and “Thinking Out Loud.” I had closed my eyes and let myself just feel.
If people knew, they’d analyze. They’d want to know things. And I had no good answers. I didn’t want them yet.
Chapter 24 – Dean
Carmen and Isaac had no qualms about throwing popcorn around my media room. It was already all over the floor where it had hit the screen and fallen, and we were only halfway through the movie. They were on the far end of the long sectional we’d dragged in front of the projector screen. Usually, I had two large movie-theater chairs in front, one for me and one for Henry when he’d come over to watch sports with me, but we’d rearranged for tonight. Molly and Miles were in the middle of the couch with their footrests popped out, and Grace and I were lounging on the left side.
I was half watching the movie and half watching her, hoping this couples thing wasn’t weirding her out. She’d dressed up kind of date-night-esque, with dark wide-leg jeans and a light blue button-down blouse that cut down just enough in the front for her to show off a couple of delicate gold necklaces against the olive tone of her skin. She’d left the wedge shoes she’d worn here by the front door.
“Come on!” Carmen called out when the dragon in human form continued to sleep while his love interest watched overhim. They were stuck in a cave, waiting for the dragon hunters to leave so they could fly away to safety. “Wake up and kiss her already.”
“I think it’s kind of cool that his snoring causes smoke to drift out of his nose,” Molly said.
“That’s the first time ‘kind of cool’ and ‘snoring’ have ever been used in the same sentence.” Miles bumped shoulders with his wife. “When I snore, all I get is a pillow to the face.”
“It was one time, and I was going on two hours of sleep. Lucy was teething.”
“Shh,” Grace whispered. “Something’s about to happen.”
“It’s about time,” Carmen grumbled. “I’m with Miles. It’s gross that she keeps playing with the smoke coming out of his nose.”
Isaac laughed. “And yet you want them to kiss.”
“Yes. I want them to do normal couple things.”
Grace shushed everyone again. Someone was creeping into the cave to kill them. Finally.
“Please let them die,” I whispered in Grace’s ear.
She clutched my wrist, her eyes never leaving the screen. “You wish. They’re not going to die. We haven’t seen the kiss with all the flames bursting around them yet.”
The bad guy on screen pulled out a knife and crept closer. The pressure on my wrist increased. Grace talked a good game, but she was a scaredy cat. Interesting.
I stayed awake for the knife fight and the injured flight out of the cave. The dragon guy passed out after landing them on a beach and turning back into his shirtless self with perfect abs and a small knife wound in his side. And then I passed out, too. From boredom.
I woke up when someone shook my shoulder sometime later. Grace was curled up against my other side, warm and soft, and very much asleep.
“Hey, thanks for inviting us. We’re gonna go.” I looked up at Molly and Miles and the blank screen behind them and started to sit up.
Molly put out a hand. “You’re fine. Carmen and Isaac just left. We cleaned up the mess the girls made in the other room. Piper’s out. She conked out in a chair.”
