P. Hoover - Solstice

“I’m sorry,” I say because I know I sounded bitchy. “The last week has just been a little crazy.” It’s a mild way to put things. I fumble in my purse for the keys and pull them out, but I drop them on the porch.

He picks them up. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be checking up on you.” He hands me the keys, and I put them in the lock, and the door swings open.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask quickly before I can think too much about it.

He looks into the warehouse. It’s still dim, but he takes his time looking around. “Maybe not. I should probably get going,” he says.

I step to the side and try to calm my heart when I answer. “I could make coffee.” The night has been nothing but hazy, and coffee should help. Coffee is safe. Plus he’d suggested getting coffee sometime.

Shayne hesitates, shakes his head, but I motion for him to come in, so he finally does. The door swings shut behind him leaving the two of us alone in the dark. He stands a couple feet away looking at me, and then shifts his eyes down.

“I’d love some.”

“What?” I say.

“Coffee. I’d love some.”

In the space of seconds, I’ve forgotten all about it. “Oh, yeah. I’ll run upstairs and make it.”

I turn before I say something stupid and ruin the entire moment. But my hand catches on the counter, and the pink calla lilies Reese brought me fall to the ground. The glass vase shatters on the tile below, and water splashes my feet. Reese’s cut flowers lay crossed over each other, staring up at me.

Not only had I gone on a date with Reese, I’d enjoyed it. And I’d kissed him like there was no tomorrow. When I think back, it’s like I’m watching actors on stage. Like it was someone else and not me. And what about Chloe? She’s the one who likes Reese. I haven’t even thought about her since I got in the car. For the last few hours, all semblance of common sense has vanished from my mind. What kind of friend am I? It must have been the wine.

I close my eyes and blow out a breath. “Ugh.”

“You broke your vase.”

I can’t help but laugh at his matter-of-fact tone which totally simplifies the whole night. “Yeah, I’ll clean it up later.” And I head upstairs to the kitchen.

I make the coffee as fast as I can. Shayne is downstairs—waiting for me. I hardly believe it’s real. But I don’t want to jinx it, so I hurry and go back down.

He’s near the counter, bent over with a broom.

The bulb from upstairs casts enough light to see his outline. I set the coffee on our small ice cream table and walk over to him.

“You don’t have to clean that up.” I grab the dustpan off the ground, but his hand reaches out and covers mine. In seconds, he loosens the dustpan from my hand. It falls to the floor and makes a clattering sound which probably would wake Randy Conner’s family next door.

I feel something move through me, starting at the hand he’s holding. The sensation is moving up my arm and into my torso, and when it settles in the center of my soul, I have to work to make sure he doesn’t hear my breathing.

“I don’t mind,” he says.

“It’s my mess,” I say. Kind of like this whole situation between me and Reese and Shayne is becoming. A tangle in my mind.

Shayne shakes his head and finishes cleaning the glass off the floor. He reaches for the flowers, but I take them first.

“I’m not a big fan of cut flowers,” I say.

“I know.” And his words echo truth, like he really does know. Like he can see behind my eyes. Which makes me a bit insecure. My thoughts have always been my own.

I move around beside him and set the flowers in the sink, and when I turn, he’s looking right at me. I don’t say anything. And I don’t move. His eyes settle on my face, and unlike Reese, Shayne has no confident outer shell. He’s wearing his inner self on the outside. Like he’s baring his soul to me.

The silence grows with each second until he reaches up and touches my hair.

“You have it down.” He twirls a piece of my curly hair around his finger and then lets it go, watching it bounce back.

I feel my face flush but know with the darkness he can’t see it. “Yeah, I—”

I see his outline nod. “I know. Your date. Did you have fun?”

“I wished it were you instead.”

And the second the words are out, I can’t believe I’ve said them. He’s going to think I’m a pathetic, desperate girl. He probably has girls flocking around him at every turn.

Shayne lets go of my hair and brushes his fingers against the skin of my tattoo. “I wish it were me instead, too.”

My face betrays me, because a grin starts to form there no matter how cool I attempt to act. And Shayne must see it because he smiles, too.

“The coffee’s ready.” I walk back toward the ice cream table. I’m not looking behind me, but his footsteps echo on the tile floor. He’s following me. Which still seems unreal. I sit in the purple seat and leave the yellow one open for him. Both face the forest of plants I grow. I slide one of the cups closer to him. “Do you like it black?”

“It’s the only way to drink it,” he says. When he sets his mug down, I notice his eyes travel back to Reese’s flowers, but he doesn’t say anything.

I’m so tempted to reach out and touch Shayne’s face. He’s so close—just across the table from me. “Are you guys friends?” I ask.

Shayne takes another sip of his coffee. “Reese and I?”

I nod and set my hands on the table to keep them from shaking.

Shayne’s hand moves toward mine, as if he wants to take it. But he doesn’t.

“It’s a complicated situation,” Shayne says.

I open my mouth to ask more, but his hand lifts off the table and his fingers move to my lips. “And not the conversation I want to have with you.”

I don’t move a muscle because I don’t want his hand to leave my mouth, but it does, so I take a sip of the hot coffee to again clear my mind. “What conversation do you want to have then?” I ask.

Shayne leans back into the heart shape of the chair. “Tell me the funniest thing that ever happened to you.”

My mind starts churning as I attempt to piece out something funny that’s happened to me in my life. “How about a different topic.”

“There must be something.”

“I haven’t led a very funny life.” Between homeschool and moving, humor’s been a low priority. But I don’t want him to think I’m a total bore.

He purses his lips. “You have a whole lifetime ahead of you to change that.”

My heart skips at the thought of my future. And I’m reminded I am eighteen now. I need to get away from my mom. “How about you?” I say. “Tell me something funny about your life.”

Shayne seems to consider this for a moment. “You’ll think I’m horrible.”

“No way,” I say.

“Promise?”

I nod.

“Okay,” he says. “There was this time when I was little. I was hanging out with my best friend. And, well, my father had this one clock that he just loved. It was huge.”

“Like a grandfather clock?”

His arms circle way up toward the ceiling. “Way bigger. It was as tall as this room. My father’s got this fascination with time. Can’t get enough of it. He has about a million clocks and spends every waking hour making sure they’re perfectly synchronized.”

“Sounds like a fun hobby.”

“More like an obsession,” Shayne says. “Anyway, this one day, my dad was gone, and my best friend was over, and we climbed to the top of the clock and changed it so it would be a few seconds off.”

I can almost picture Shayne at the top of a huge grandfather clock. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You wouldn’t think so, but the first time it chimed after all the others, my dad couldn’t believe it. He checked and rechecked all those clocks for days. And then he finally got them synchronized up again.”