The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,23
the sink and the thrumming of my heart in my ears.
The corner of her mouth twitched. Then she started to laugh, and I mentally assigned the image to every smiling moment I’d imagined on the phone.
Beautiful.
“I’m glad you didn’t make things weird for our first appointment,” I said. “Just a run-of-the-mill, no-stress, first-meeting flood.”
She looked down at the water in her kitchen. “This is so messed up,” she said, still giggling.
“Do you have a shop vac?”
“I don’t know.” She put a hand to her forehead. “Brandon might have had one.”
“Where’s your garage?”
She pointed to a door. I went into the garage and immediately noted the man cave–like interior. Professional tools and an impressive workbench. A few neon beer signs on the walls. A dusty man’s jacket hung on a hook by the door and an empty open beer sat on the counter.
An old Corolla sat in the middle of the two parking spaces, with a duct-taped side mirror and a door that didn’t match the rest of the car.
After poking around, I found a shop vac. When I got back into the kitchen, Sloan was sweeping water out the back door with a broom.
The next half hour was spent sucking water off the floor while Sloan wrung out towels and set up fans in the doorway. We worked without talking. The vacuum was too loud. But we kept stealing glances at each other.
I helped her carry a huge armload of wet towels to the washing machine. When the door to the laundry room opened, Tucker spilled out, and I dropped my towels and crouched on the floor, laughing and letting him lick my face. God, I’d missed him. He made crying noises at the sight of me and all I could think was, This guy’s getting a major finder’s fee later.
Sloan watched us with a smile and started the load. When she closed the lid and turned to me, I leaned in the doorway with my arms crossed. Tucker stood between us and looked back and forth with the same proud face he always made when he’d retrieved a duck for me and dropped it at my feet.
“Thanks for all your help.” She looked up at me through her long lashes. “This house is a mess. It’s really old. Things keep breaking.” She seemed unsure what to do now that the crisis had been dealt with.
I smiled. “Go to dinner with me.”
She blinked.
“Dinner, tonight, a date. Not an appointment, a date.”
She studied my face.
“I want to take you out,” I said. “Let me.”
If she said no, I was pretty sure I was going to beg.
“Okay.”
I grinned. Good. Finally. “I’ll wait for you to get ready,” I said. “We’ll leave Tucker here and I’ll get him when I drop you off.”
“But what about you? You’re soaking wet.”
“You get ready, and then I’ll drive us to my place so I can change.”
She gave me a wide-eyed stranger-danger look and I laughed. So that was the face she made every time I asked her probing questions on the phone.
“Here.” I pulled out my soggy wallet and fished out my ID. “Take a picture of my driver’s license and send it to Kristen.”
I handed it over and she looked at it. “You really are an organ donor.”
“And not a creeper or a pirate. I hope you’re not disappointed.”
She laughed, and I couldn’t even take my eyes off her.
She smiled up at me. “Give me a second to get changed.”
Chapter 11
Sloan
♪ Name | Goo Goo Dolls
This place isn’t as crappy as I thought it was going to be,” I said, loud enough that Jason could hear me through the door.
Jason lived in a silver Airstream trailer parked behind some music executive’s mansion in Calabasas. An Olympic-size pool glistened within ten steps of Jason’s front door, surrounded by birds of paradise and waterfalls. The whole place was green.
I could only imagine how much it cost to water everything in the drought. There were penalties for using too much water. My lawn was dead. I’d like to say this was due to my support of water conservation, but my sprinklers were broken and I couldn’t afford the fix or the water to bring the grass back to life. Whoever owned this place must be loaded.
His trailer was small, but neat and comfortable. No frills. Kind of exactly where I would have expected Jason to live. He was a bit of a minimalist, from what he’d said to me during our talks.