“I’m sorry,” he apologized.
It was just a shirt and he was just a kid. It wasn’t the end of the world. “It’s fine.”
“I promise! I didn’t eat anything!”
“I believe you. You probably just held the ketchup bottle too close to you, you sloppy mess.” I stared at him for a moment longer before telling him, “Come here. Maybe I can wipe off the worst of it with a napkin.”
He tipped his chin down to try and see his collar. Without a warning, he poked at the button closest to his neck, tugged the material away from him and stuck his tongue out. He licked at the ketchup spot. Over and over again.
“Louie! Oh my God, give me a towel. Don’t lick it off, Jesus.” I laughed, knowing I shouldn’t but not being able to stop myself.
One blue eye peeked at me as he licked it again. “Why? I’m saving water. I’m saving the Earth.”
Saving the Earth. If I hadn’t just spent twenty minutes putting on makeup, I would have smacked myself in the forehead. “Stop. Stop. Leave it alone. It’s fine. You can save the Earth another way.”
“Are you sure? I can lick more.”
That really made me laugh. “Yes, stop. Put your tongue back in your mouth, nasty.” I laughed even harder as the tip of it peeked out between his lips.
Louie cracked up as he inched his face closer to the spot, as if daring me.
“Stop. Just pretend there’s nothing there now,” I ordered him, right before he gave the ketchup stain one more lick. “Oh my God, look at that! There’s no stain anymore!”
“What are you doing, ding-dong?” came Josh’s voice from behind where I was standing. “Why are you licking your shirt?”
“Ketchup,” was the boy’s reply.
I looked at Josh as he muttered, “What a weirdo.”
Dressed in black pants my mom made him wear when they went to church, a blue long-sleeved shirt, and a black vest, my little Josh looked so much like my earliest memory of Drigo it nearly took my breath away. I had to bite my lip to keep from saying anything. “Looking good, J-Money.”
He rolled his eyes. “I look stupid.”
“And if by stupid you mean really handsome, you’re right.”
He rolled his eyes so far back I was surprised they managed to make their way forward again.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes.” He paused. “Do I have to go?” he asked for the fourth time since I’d told him we were all going to Ginny’s wedding.
I told him the same thing I had when he’d argued that he could stay with his grandparents, or that he could stay with my parents. “Nope.” But I did tell him something I hadn’t before. “Dean is going to be there.”
That wiped the frown off his face just enough. “He is?”
“Yes. Trip texted me and asked if you were going.”
His response was a grunt that I chose to ignore.
“All right, let’s go, gangsters.”
Louie hopped to his feet. “Okay, gangster.”
Grabbing my purse and Ginny’s gift, I corralled the boys outside, trying to balance everything under my armpits as I made Louie lock the door behind us. Josh was already at the back passenger door of the SUV when I heard, “Diana!”
I couldn’t help but smile as I turned in the direction of the person yelling. Not “the person.” Dallas. Sure enough, striding across the street in the way that only someone so tall with his kind of confidence was capable of, was my neighbor looking better than ever. And that was saying something since I’d seen him shirtless. In charcoal gray dress pants, a white shirt, and lavender tie, he was the best-looking man I’d ever seen.
Coming toward me.
Smiling.
Who said he was in love with me.
And looking at me with this focus that almost made me break out in a sweat. He’d shaved recently, his facial hair more of a five o’clock shadow than the neat beard he usually kept.
“Hi, Professor” I called out to him as he took a step onto the sidewalk directly in front of my house.
“You mean Coach,” Josh suggested.
I shook my head, still watching my neighbor. “No, I meant Professor.”
Dallas must have heard us because I spotted him smirking and shaking his head.
Louie immediately asked, “Are you coming with us?”
Dallas touched Josh on the back of the shoulder as he approached us, one of his hands extended out toward me. He took the gift from under my arm as he answered, “If you guys don’t mind.”
Like I would ever mind.
“Come with us!” Louie agreed.
“I don’t care,” Josh added.
I swallowed the knot in my throat as Dallas leaned forward and kissed my cheek for one brief moment that would be etched into my memory forever and ever even as Josh made a gagging noise. “Of course you can.” I gave the keys a jiggle. “Want to drive?”
He looked me right in the eye as he took the keys. “Tell me how to get there, Peach.”
*
I’d been to a lot of weddings in my life—my parents used to drag me to every single one they ever went to when I was a kid—but even if I hadn’t known Ginny, I would have thought it was the most beautiful wedding I’d ever been to. There was a reason why she’d been so tight with money for so long. She’d splurged. A lot. But as I sat in the banquet hall following the ceremony, which had taken place in another section of the facility, I had a feeling she was going to have zero regrets about all the struggling she’d put herself through. Gin was beaming. Her happiness was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
It made my heart swell. I hadn’t known Ginny back when she’d been with her ex, but I’d heard why they split up. They’d both been young, and by the time they decided to go their own way, they were completely different people. No shit. You weren’t the same person you were at seventeen that you were at thirty-three.
I thought about Trip and Dallas’s dislike of her new husband—of why they felt the way that they felt—but all I could think to myself was that, if she could be so happy with someone who had “been around the block” a few times, what did it matter what someone had done before you? No one ever succeeded at anything on the first try.
“Saving your first dance for me?”
I blinked from the empty plate of food in front of me and gazed at the man standing beside my chair. I smiled at Trip. “You dance?”
“You bet your ass I do. Come on.” He flexed his fingers at me in an invitation. There was a slow country song playing through the speakers, following the couple’s first dance.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I got up and followed him, setting one arm on his shoulder and letting him take my other hand in his. He grinned as he took a mini step away from me with a wink.
“I don’t feel like dying tonight,” he explained, like that made any sense.
“Who’s going to kill you?”
“Dal.” He peeked over his shoulder for a moment before glancing back at me with a smile that reminded me of a little boy who knew he was doing something bad. “I give him two minutes before he’s over here.”