“I like it,” I tell her.
“Thanks,” she says, and together, we consider the photographs for a long moment. “She mostly did weddings and babies and stuff, since that paid the bills, but the artsy, moody stuff was her favorite. Ready?”
I study the photograph for one more moment, then turn away, open the door for her.
“Ready,” I confirm, and we leave.Chapter Thirty-OneDelilah“You named them?” Seth is saying, face lit by the blue light of his dashboard.
“I couldn’t just call them that one, that one, and that one,” I say.
“You absolutely could’ve,” Seth says.
“We have a relationship.”
He just gives me a look.
“I bought them the fancy dog food!”
I get that look again, for an extra second this time.
“They eat garbage,” he says, sounding baffled. “They’re varmints.”
“You really are from around here,” I tease.
“Because I said varmint?”
“Because you said it with that tone of voice.”
“Tell me, Delilah,” he says, a smile on his lips. “What tone of voice do fancy city folks use when they call critters varmints?”
“I’m pretty sure most fancy city folks think that varmint is a flavor of chewing gum,” I say, laughing. “Anyway, Larry, Jerry, and Terry are very happy to be my masked backyard friends.”
Seth just shakes his head as he puts on his blinker, then turns off the main road and into a driveway.
Next to it there’s a big wooden sign that says FROG HOLLER in colorful letters, and suddenly, everything falls into place.
“We’re going square dancing?” I ask, turning to face him.
Seth just grins.
“You nerd,” I laugh.
“What’s nerdy about square dancing?” he teases.
“Besides everything?”
“You’ve never even been before,” he says, gravel crunching under his tires. “Square dancing is cool.”
“We had to learn it in middle school gym, and it is not cool,” I laugh. “I can’t believe you’re taking me on a date activity that I did in a gymnasium while the boys spent the week in health class learning about their dicks.”
“I assure you none of the boys learned a single thing that week that they didn’t already know,” Seth says.
I lean my elbow on the window ledge, looking over at him. He’s even hot when he drives, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other touching the gear shift with two fingers, relaxed and confident and in control.
“What?” he laughs, when he sees me looking.
“I don’t have a response that falls within the bounds of our agreement,” I tell him as he pulls up next to a pickup truck and shifts into park.
“Which part?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me. “The clean slate part?”
He shuts the car off, cuts the lights, pulls the keys from the ignition and suddenly it’s near-dark.
“The no sex part,” I tell the dark as I unbuckle my seatbelt.
“We agreed not to do it, not to keep from talking about it,” he says, and his voice is a lazy drawl, his features starting to come into view. “Unless you’re telling me you were about to say something about middle school sex ed so intensely erotic that I was going to throw the whole agreement out the window.”
“Ew,” I say, laughing.
“Good,” Seth answers, and I can hear the smile in his voice, nearly see it in the dark. “Come on, let’s go square dancing.”
Outside the car he takes my hand, and we walk toward the converted barn together.
“Unless,” I say. “You brought me here to do corporate espionage.”
Frog Holler is a cidery, so they make hard apple cider. Seth Loveless half-owns a brewery. Surely there must be some competition.
“Would that make it nerdier or less nerdy?” he asks.
“Depends on the espionage.”
“Which is it if you flirt with the owner while I break into the backroom to discover their brewing secrets?” he teases, and I laugh.
“I think you’re more Marcy’s type,” I say.
I wish I hadn’t the moment it’s out of my mouth. All I meant is that Marcy’s straight and Seth is male, but the moment I say it and he doesn’t respond that bright, ugly flower blooms in my chest.
“I doubt either would work,” he says, after a moment. “How do you know Marcy?”
“We took a — uh, a dance class together,” I tell him.
Did he fuck her? He can’t have. She’s married. He wouldn’t.
Right?
I take a deep breath and try not to show it.
Starting over, let it go. Clean slate.
“We hit it off and she ended up hiring me to paint the mural on the other side of the barn,” I go on.
Seth stops in surprise, looking over at me.
“The big one?” he asks, pointing off into the dark. “With the frog and the apples?”
“Is there another mural?”
“I didn’t know you did that.”
We’re almost to the barn, and from inside a voice calls: “All right, everyone, if you ain’t got a place yet, find one!”
I study Seth’s face for a moment.
“Is this a clean slate thing, or…”