A minute later, she’s closing her front door and locking it before practically skipping over to me. She pulls on her old hot pink helmet, strapping it under her chin, and slips behind me.
“Where’re we going?”
“Does it matter?” Because I have no idea.
“Fuck no. Take me away, Huckleberry.”
17
CRAIG
YOU WRECK ME
We don’t go far. I weave us through downtown, past the tourists, bachelorette parties, and circus of lights and music pouring from every doorway. I drive us over bridges, through neighborhoods, and finally out into the open road. We don’t talk, but at some point, she wraps her arms more snugly around me and I press my arm over hers, lacing our fingers together.
I write words for a living. Words that people all over the world use to access their feelings. But right now, with her, I’m speechless. My feelings have been too much for too long. I choke on them whenever I try to explain myself. So instead, we ride, twined together like this, until my stomach growls and I make the impulsive decision to pull off at a roadside ice cream stand.
“Dinner?” I ask, grinning.
Her matching smile looks genuinely happy, and I’m flooded with relief. “You read my mind.”
We get a couple of enormous tin roof sundaes （cashew vanilla ice cream for hers） and perch on the top wooden rail of a fence, letting the breeze cool our skin.
We’re gazing out into a large expanse of rolling green hillsides when I finally speak up. “I’m sorry for the other night.”
“You’re okay?” she checks. Not “What the hell is wrong with you?,” I notice, which is what I fully deserve.
I nod. “I got in my head. Just real good at overthinking.”
“That’s new. You didn’t used to do that, if memory serves.”
I don’t say anything, because the truth is I started overthinking the day she and Drake broke things off, and she doesn’t need to hear that. Bad enough I have to know it.
“You don’t, um…”—she captures a loose strand of dark hair and tucks it behind her ear, blushing—“you’re not regretting what happened, are you?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“But you probably don’t want to do it again…”
“Do you?” I ask, disbelieving. “After I got all awkward and practically shoved you out the door?”
She smirks. “Well, that wasn’t great, true. But prior to that, things were going all right.”
This time I’m the one who’s blushing. “I can do better.”
She pulls her hair back again, revealing a raised eyebrow. “I find that hard to believe, Huck.”
Yep. I’m definitely red, but I’ve managed this much. “I want to prove it to you, but…” I blow out a breath. “The thing is, I don’t have a lot of practice being fuckbuddies…”—I wince at the crass term—“with an actual, uh, buddy. I can do it, though,” I rush to assure her. I’m determined to. If that’s all I can have, I’ll take it and be happy about it. It’s the conclusion I came to on my long ride down the mountain this morning. “I think I just panicked because we work together, and I don’t want to make things uncomfortable. Plus, Drake—”
Lorelai, who has been listening intently, her eyes focused on her sundae, snap up, her gaze meeting mine. “What about him?”
Great. I don’t need her to think I’m a jealous idiot. Because I’m mostly not.
“Nothing. I don’t know why I said anything about Drake. He’s got his lawyers breathing down my neck about song rights and his name just came out…”
“Wait, what?” She holds up her hand, halting my rambling. “Hold on. What do you mean, he’s got lawyers breathing down your neck. Why?”
“He’s up for Song of the Year for ‘Best Worst Case,’ and he wants me to sign off on something that says he’s the lyricist.”
She hisses like a bobcat, and I can’t help but grin at the sound.
“So it’s your song. Obviously,” she says. “Like ‘Jonesin’。’”
I feel my cheeks flame, but I nod. “And pretty much all of his top hits in the last four years.”
At this, she outright shrieks and smacks my shoulder. “Craig Huckleberry Boseman! What the actual fuck?”
“I know,” I say, grimacing. “Believe me. It’s my own fault. I let it go uncontested for the first album, including ‘Jonesin’，’ since I felt bad for leaving him hanging before the tour.”
“So basically the equivalent of a pity fuck, but in songs.”
I give an internal shudder at the image. “I guess. Sure. But it’s getting old, clearly, and not only is he not paying me for my work, he’s not crediting me for it, either. Eventually, he’ll run out of my material, but asking me to sign off on ‘Best Worst Case’ when it’s up for Song of the Year is out of the question.”
“Jesus, Huck, Song of the Year,” she whispers.
“Yeah, I know it seems petty, but the validation would be huge for On the Floor Records.”
“No, you misunderstand. I wasn’t calling you petty. You’re a fucking genius, is what you are. You amaze me. Every day.”
I side-eye her, feeling pleased, and dig my spoon into the rapidly melting ice cream. “Yeah. Well, it’s mutual, Jones.”
“So what are you gonna do?”
I shrug. “Not sure yet. I’m running out of time.”
“He invited me on tour this winter.”
“I wondered if that was what he was talking about on Instagram.”
She makes a face. “Ew, you saw that?”
I don’t respond and she sighs, using her spoon to chase down a maraschino cherry at the bottom of her dish.
“I told him no. I told Jennifer hell no. She wants me to try this apology tour first … I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want to think about it right now. We were talking about sex,” she reminds me, exasperated. I choke on a chocolate peanut, and she laughs. “How’d you let me get so far off track?”
“Sorry?”
She gives an affected sigh. “Guess you’ll just have to make it up to me. After you let me make it up to you.”
Her words shoot right to my cock and her triumphant smirk tells me she knows it. Hell, she’s sexy.
“Dinner first?” I offer.
She presses her lips together, but I see the smile she’s hiding. “Can we take the bike?”
“So you like the bike?”
“I fucking love the bike.”
“This weekend, then? I have late nights the rest of the week to make up for leaving town.”
“Where’d you go?”
“My cabin. Maybe I’ll show you sometime. It’s pretty rustic, though,” I warn her.
“Bed?”
“Yes.”
“Shower?”
“Lake?” I answer her question with another question.
Her eyes spark with interest. “A Harley and a cabin in the woods. Any other secrets you hiding in there?”
“I mean, you already know the dirt on my poetry account.”