Page 19 of The Good Guy on My Porch

“I didn’t know they have ice cream.”

She shook her head in dismay. “You’ve lived here a year and you don’t know about Maxwell’s ice cream? I’m getting the feeling you’re one of those guys to whom dessert is not such a big deal.”

It was true, I rarely got dessert. I preferred real food to sugary fluff. “I guess you’ll have to teach me.”

“Someone certainly needs to.”

I started the car and drove us back down the mountain and into town. Dilly fiddled with the radio and found a pop station playing a song I know she liked, because she bounced in her seat and then sang along at the top of her lungs. When the chorus came around the second time, she smacked my shoulder and gestured for me to sing.

I shook my head. I didn’t sing. Ever. My singing had been known to scare small children and baby animals.

She turned the volume down and twisted in her seat to face me. “Sing with me,” she said. “If you’re singing, you can’t hear how bad I sound.”

“I like how you sound,” I said, completely serious.

I glanced over to see her face scrunched in annoyance. “Trust me, no one likes how I sing. And if I can sing, with my terrible voice, you can, too. It’s the least you can do for me since I went on your hike.”

“How long are you going to milk that?”

She shrugged and spun to face forward again. “As long as humanly possible. Now. Sing.”

She turned the volume back up, and a new song was playing. She gave me time to learn the chorus, which wasn’t hard since the entire song seemed to consist of the same three words repeated over and over. I mouthed the words, pretending to sing, but she slapped my shoulder again and glared and I sang for real.

I wasn’t a fan of pop music, but I had to admit it was kind of fun, singing along to the radio with Dilly, laughing at her silly hand motions and the exaggerated expressions she pulled whenever I looked her way.

By the time we arrived at Maxwell’s we were both laughing so hard my cheeks hurt.

“You really do have a terrible singing voice,” she said, once I’d parked and turned off the radio.

“I warned you.”

She grinned. “It’s okay. I like it. I mean it’s truly terribly, but that deep voice singing along to pop music is…” She shook her head like she couldn’t figure it out. “I just like it. I’m making a rule that whenever we ride together, we must always sing together.”

She spit on her palm and stuck her hand out. I just stared at it, confused. She rolled her eyes. “All new rules must be agreed upon with a spit shake.”

Dilly seemed lighter, happier and, as much as I’d liked her before, I knew I could fall for this Dilly before I even realized what was happening. I spit on my palm and shook her hand.

She grinned and wiped her hand on her shorts. “The new rule is official and unbreakable.”

Her phone buzzed and her smile cracked when she looked at it. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll meet you inside?”

I wanted to argue, hating whoever was on the other end of that call for making her sad, but her phone was still ringing and it wasn’t really my business. I got out of the car as she put the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry,” she said. “The movie was longer than I’d expected.”

I shut the door and my hands curled into fists. There was something wrong with a man who needed to know where his girlfriend was every second of every day, something wrong when a woman who had to lie to her boyfriend about where she was.

I also knew, from growing up with four older sisters, that straight-out telling her the guy was acting like a jerk would get me nowhere. Probably less than nowhere because she wasn’t my sister and could just avoid me if she didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I stalked into Maxwell’s and got us a table near the window.

“Didn’t you order?” she asked when she came in fifteen minutes later, her earlier happiness and calm gone, replaced by sadness and a crinkle of worry between her brows.

“You’re the expert here.” I forced a smile. “I was hoping for some advice about what to order.”

Her smile grew and appeared more genuine. “What do you like?”

You. I really, really like you.“I don’t know,” I said, just to make her smile. “I’ve heard vanilla is a good flavor.”

She mock gasped and slapped a hand to her chest. “Bless your cotton-pickin’ heart. You are in serious need of help. You just stay right there, and I’ll bring you something delicious.”

She paused before heading to the counter. “Do you have any allergies?”

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