Boone’s gaze shifted from me to his place. A sigh followed. “To get this over with.” Offering nothing else, Boone continued toward his house, his pace slower.
The old truck he used to drive in high school was parked off to the side, looking exactly as I remembered it, save for the addition of another rust spot or two above the wheel wells. There was a detached garage behind the house, just as well tended, and in addition to the glider on the house’s front porch, I spotted two rocking chairs on the other end.
Boone caught me looking at them as we climbed the front steps. “For when I have company,” he explained, like owning two rocking chairs was a crime. “Every decade or two.”
I fell a step behind him thanks to my lungs being about to give out from the sprint through the field. “At least the kind of company that doesn’t come tiptoeing through your back door in the middle of the night, clutching their panties in one hand and their stilettos in their other, right?”
Boone’s back seemed to stiffen, but I couldn’t tell if that was because he was wrestling a set of keys from his pocket or because of what I’d just said. It had been more in jest than anything, but jokes aside, there had been no shortage of girls who’d wanted in Boone’s pants when we were teenagers. I could only imagine how much longer that list had become since he’d become a man.
“You can just wait out here for me and stay cool. I’ll be quick, and the furniture out here is the most comfortable stuff I have anyway.” Boone turned the lock over with the key, but he didn’t open the door. It seemed like he wasn’t sure how to open it with me standing right beside him. “You should wait here. I won’t be long.”
“It’s a furnace out here, Boone. I think I’ll wait inside.” I wiped at my forehead to prove my point. It was a rare day when it was anything cooler than a furnace during the summer in Charleston, but I could tell he didn’t want me to go inside. That made me want to go in that much more. It wasn’t like I was going to snoop through his dresser drawers or anything. I just wanted to see the place he’d spent the last five years of his life in.
“I turned the air conditioning off when I left a couple of nights ago, so it’s going to be stifling inside. At least out here you’ve got air movement, and I’ll bring you a cold glass of lemonade. Unless your preference has changed and you’d rather have sweet tea now.” Boone rubbed the back of his head with his hand, his other hand still stalling with the key in the lock.
“I lived eighteen years in the South and never once did I take to drinking sweet tea. If that didn’t have the ability to change my tastes, seven years in the anti-sugar state certainly won’t either.” I leaned into the side of the house and gave him a pointed look, but he wouldn’t look at me. “I’d love a lemonade, thank you, but I’d love to have it inside. I’ll take my chances with the stifling.”
Boone exhaled.
“Come on. Do you think I’m really going to care if you’ve got a bunch of dirty laundry piled around the place? Or if every dish you own is piled up in the sink?” I shook my head and waved at the door. “I just want to see inside for a minute. No snooping around, I promise. I won’t round up the dirty underwear and start a load of wash either. Or run a sink of soapy water for the dishes.”
“You? Willingly clean up a mess—someone else’s or your own?” Boone pushed on the door, opening it a crack as he smiled at me. “Yeah, that’s something I’m not worried about.”
My mouth dropped open right before I gave him a shove. “Is that your way of hinting that I’m messy? Because in case you were wondering, it hasn’t been the Cleaning Fairy visiting and picking your clothes off of my bedroom floor.”
Boone’s eyes rolled. “Just that you’re not a clean freak. Nothing more, nothing less.” The door was halfway open, but we were both still on the porch.
“We all have our downfalls,” I said. I might have been a tad on the messy side as a kid, but that had changed, which he might have realized if he’d stopped to think about who’d picked up his discarded clothes and shoes every morning.
“Yeah, and we all don’t grow up with a houseful of maids trained to clean up our every mess, further enabling us.” Boone fired a wink at me before lunging through the door before I could take a swing at him.
I was too busy chasing him, pretending to be outraged, to realize I was inside his house until I was halfway through the living room. Boone had already disappeared down the hall and rounded into what I guessed was his bedroom when I slowed to a stop to look around. Boone’s house. I was standing in the middle of it.