“Good to hear.” The bookseller shrugged happily and smiled as she handed a bag with the book to Sophie.
As Sophie turned and walked toward the exit, she felt a new energy ripple through her. A kind of motivation to have another book on the shelves of this store that had meant so much to her. She’d dreamed of being the kind of author a store like The Ripped Bodice would carry. And here they were, encouraging her to write more. She wasn’t going to let this be the end of her story. She had a book nearly finished, and she planned to get to the end this time.
She made her way to the boba tea store down the block, ordered an oat milk boba for fuel, and sat at a cozy booth to write.
There was no hesitation when she cracked open her laptop. She had a fully charged battery, enough caffeine to fuel a jet plane, and fingers that were anxious to type. She was going to finish her new book, the one that was, more or less, about her and Dash.
A grumpy-sunshine, best-friend’s-brother story, all set in a spa. And the hero had tattoos and piercing blue eyes. And the main character was a wavy-haired health nut who had a Cinderella-esque charm over animals. She’d already written the loose framework—a humiliating meet cute, being forced to help each other, only one bed, and outside circumstances that took them apart. And as she sat, she started in on the ending she wanted her characters to have.
She found herself exploring the issues she’d faced through her TikTok experiment while she wrote. Her main character, like Sophie, was a people pleaser to her core and wanted everyone to like her. When things got hard, she bailed instead of dealing with the issues. But she was also a hopeless romantic with grand, sweeping dreams of what love could look like. And the hero of the book was able to make those dreams a reality. With him by her side, she was finally able to acknowledge what she wanted because he encouraged her to be exactly who she was.
She wrote until her fingers hurt and drank three bobas, shaking from the caffeine. But she felt wildly invigorated and knew that she could complete the book. She was going to finish this one, and her characters would get to live happily-ever-after, even if she and Dash didn’t.
It’s not that she’d lost all hope of them ever being together, but she also planned to respect whatever Dash wanted for himself once he got through his treatment plan. As she stood from the booth and packed up her things, she took out her phone, too. There was a text from Nina: a selfie of her, with Leo in the background as he assembled what looked to be a crib.
I’m going to have to hire someone to redo this so the thing doesn’t collapse, but it’s cute that he’s trying, right???
Sophie sent a thumbs-up back.
On her walk back to the subway, Sophie felt sure of herself, which was something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She was going to publish this new book—she just knew it—and she would write more books.
She stopped outside the window of a tattoo parlor. There were sample designs hanging from a board and, when she looked in, an artist gave her a smile. Sophie decided to just duck her head in to check the space out.
“Hey, we’re closing in thirty, but what can I do for you?” The woman wiped down a chair with a clean cloth as she spoke.
“I was thinking I might, uh, get my first tattoo?” Sophie’s voice went up a bit higher as she said the words because, she realized, she actually did want one.
Sophie felt one hundred percent sure that the tattoo she planned to get would be one she would never regret. It would have meaning, and importance, and she trusted herself to do this. For the first time in her life, she trusted everything she was doing.
And it was then that she realized something else: she loved Dash. She was in love with Dash.
“Oh, well, for something this momentous, I think I can stay open a bit longer.” The woman stood up with the rag at her side and took Sophie in. “What did you have in mind?”
Now that she knew she loved Dash, she couldn’t wait to tell him. She just hoped his feelings hadn’t changed. “One sec,” she told the artist.
Sophie took out her phone and typed in Dash’s name. She’d sent him a photo of Richard the Squirrel every day since he’d been gone. She knew he wouldn’t see anything from her until after his tech detox was complete, but still, she sent him one more.
Can I come visit you?
38
DASH
Dash had never been a morning person, but that didn’t seem to matter at The Well Center, because every morning at six he was woken by soothing bells and a light in his room that grew brighter over the course of ten minutes until he was finally surrounded by enough illumination to rival the Vegas Strip.
He’d also never collected chicken eggs, but there he was, standing in a henhouse with a basket gently gathering them up.
“Pardon me, Shirley,” he said to a red-speckled hen. He’d come to know the ladies over the course of the last two weeks, visiting them every morning as part of his daily tasks, and bringing the eggs to the center’s chef who would then use them as part of the breakfast-omelet selections.
And, he had to admit, there was a certain joy in getting to know his ten chicken friends—their names, their different markings, and their attitudes. Tia always seemed pleased to see him and even allowed a few gentle pets across her feathers, whereas Heather actively tried to chase him out with a series of pecks to his hands.
Still, he enjoyed the work, if only to keep his mind away from how completely and utterly he’d messed up his life.
“Now, Heather, we do this same dance every morning. I come in, you scowl, I reach for an egg, and you make an attempt on my life. Do you think we could try something new? Maybe you look away, I reach in, and we just pretend I was never here?” The hen only seemed to burrow deeper into the nest and on top of her egg.
Still, Dash reached under her and, as predicted, she viciously pecked at his hand. When he didn’t flee the coop, the chicken took his inaction as a sign to move on to phase two, which involved flying out of her nest directly at him. Dash ran for the door of the henhouse and escaped before Heather was able to follow.
“No offense, but you take way too long with those eggs, and I’m starving.” Geon was one of the program’s directors and, more immediately, made sure Dash did his job.
He wasn’t Dash’s babysitter, exactly, but he wasn’t not watching over Dash. And he was a big guy—well over six feet and built like a former football player, because he had been a pro baller before having an addiction problem and cofounding the program—so Dash wasn’t about to mess with him.
“Heather doesn’t like me,” Dash said as he brushed a rogue feather from his shirt. “I don’t know what to say about it.”
“Have you tried giving her a blueberry?”
Dash sighed. Blueberries, for some reason, reminded him of Richard the Squirrel. And Sophie. But, then again, everything reminded him of Sophie. “No. Why would I have tried that?”
“I mean, I did leave a pamphlet in your welcome packet with fun facts about the animals here, but clearly not everyone is as voracious a reader as I’d hoped.” Geon gave him a side smile as they walked. “Chickens have their little treats, like how you love cookies, and she loves a nice blueberry every now and then.”