Jada and me and just gave a curt nod. “Sounds like a plan.”
Dawson’s phone rang, and I caught a glance of a picture of Leena before he answered it. We could all hear the “Congratulations!” that was screamed at him from the other end. Dawson’s face lit up in a soft smile.
“Thanks,” he said. He listened, put his hand over the mic, and said, “They want me to put it on speaker. You good?”
I nodded.
“Are you taking Dawson to the Crab Shack to celebrate, Violet?” Mandy asked.
I felt like an awful human being. I’d done nothing to help him celebrate this momentous occasion. Sure, there was the party the next day, but that was Jada’s doing. I hadn’t done one thing. Mandy was right. We needed to go to the Shack. We’d celebrated every big occasion there for as long as I’d lived with them.
“The Crab Shack, yes!” I said with a smile.
“What else are you doing to celebrate?” Leena asked.
Dawson’s eyes caught mine, sliding down to my lips and then back up, and even though the room was scattered with other human beings, my body still reacted to that glance. A celebration. I was all for celebrating with lips and bodies tangled.
A smile hit my face for the first time since Jada had all but yanked me out of the garage that morning.
“Well…Jada is throwing us a huge party tomorrow night,” Dawson said, voice gruff.
“Hi, Leena. Hi, Mandy,” Jada said into the phone.
“Oh, Jada! Hello, honey,” Leena greeted back.
“We wish you were here,” I said, but in truth, I think everyone was glad they weren’t. If they’d been involved in all of this, it would have been heartbreaking.
“We wish we were too,” Mandy responded.
“You’d love the party Jada is organizing,” I said. “It’s Great-Gatsby-themed.”
“Ooh, that does sound like fun!” Mandy, the book lover, said wistfully.
They talked for a few more minutes before hanging up.
“We do need to go to The Crab Shack,” I told Dawson with a smile. “They’re right. We can’t pass up a celebration without it, but I can bring the food back here if you’re too tired.”
He did look tired—dark shadows under his eyes, a paleness to his otherwise tan skin, and his beard, which was well past the stubble mark, only added to the raggedness of his appearance. I was sure the number of hours he’d slept since Monday was in the single digits.
“I’ll go with you, but I’m all for bringing it back here,” he said.
I turned to the other people in the room. “What can we bring you?”
“Now that we’ve neutralized the bomb, we’re heading back,” the man who’d gone into the garage said.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. It wouldn’t go off.
Jada looked at Dawson and me, still standing so close we could have entwined pinkies if we moved our hands a hair, and said, “I’m honestly going to try and take a nap. Hosting the party of the year on little sleep isn’t smart.”
I knew she was doing it as much to give Dawson and me time alone as she was serious. She hadn’t had much sleep in the last few days either, and it showed in the dark shadows under her eyes as much as Dawson’s did.
Dawson left two of his phones on the table. The other, he shoved back into his hoodie’s pocket and grabbed the minivan keys from the hook by the door.
“This good?” he asked Nolan, waving the keys in the direction of the van, an unspoken question about whether it was bugged. I hadn’t even known Nolan had scanned it, but he nodded an all clear.
“Lobster roll for you?” Dawson asked him.
“That would be great. Thanks, man.”
I hung the “Be back in thirty” sign at the reception desk, in case any of the guests came back and needed something, and followed Dawson out to the van.
I smirked as he all but bent his body in half to get into the driver’s seat because I’d driven it to Jada’s the day before. He backed the seat up as far as it could go and still almost looked too big for the seat.
“Do you want me to drive?” I asked. “I’m sure you’re almost delirious.”
“No offense, Vi, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let you drive me anywhere again.” He said it with a tease, but it was also the truth. “I still have nightmares about it.”