Page 64 of Lovewell Lane

He nodded hesitantly. “Friends, then?”

“Friends,” I finalized. I lifted up my hand for us to shake on it. This would be good. No one would get hurt. I’d never been hurt by a friend before.

He looked appalled at the idea of doing a business handshake over it, but he did it anyway. I clapped my hands and dusted them off. “Let’s eat!”

Derek passed me a roll, one that looked suspiciously like the ones I made earlier that day at the diner, and our hands brushed. My heart fluttered a little at the touch. I put it to the back of my mind, blaming it on my lack of physical touch since moving to this town. Maybe I just needed to get laid.

Something about clearing the air did wonders for me. It was like all the holding back I had done over the last few months when we were together with Tessa or we crossed paths at the diner flooded out of me. I told Derek about Lucky’s, and I asked him about regulars from Honeyfield. He told me all of the lore about the characters I remembered along with their dirty secrets, like who hooked up in high school and who fathered secret babies in other towns.

It was magical. We had a great time. My cheeks hurt by the end of the dinner from smiling so much. Derek was smiley too. Well, he did his classic Derek smile which involved his cheekbones showing a little and the corners of his mouth tilting up. By any other person’s standards, it would’ve been a non-bothered blank face. On him, it meant he was elated.

Our plates were both cleared, but neither of us stood up from the table. After a lull in the conversation, Derek looked at me and asked, “Have you ever caught lightning bugs?”

I shook my head. “Fireflies?”

“Yeah, come on.” He stood and reached for my hand. “You live in a small town now, you’ve gotta do small town activities.”

I followed his lead, and he brought me to his four-wheeler. “Why don’t you wear a helmet?” I asked as he handed me one to put on.

“I grew up driving this thing when I was Tessa’s age with no helmet. I only put it on you two out of an abundance of caution.”

Oh. He cared about my safety. That was sweet. Any good friend would do that. Then I climbed on the four-wheeler, and instead of sitting on the back corner like I had in the past, I sat behindDerek with my legs on both sides of his. To make it friendly, I grabbed onto the railing behind me rather than wrapping my arms around Derek’s waist. Our thighs pressed against each other were already enough to have me second-guessing this whole friend thing an hour after we agreed on it.

Then he reached for my arms and pulled them around his waist anyway. “Safer this way,” he grumbled. “Hold on.”

He took us out to one of his strawberry fields. There were no lights or buildings in sight, apart from his barn in the far-off distance. The sun had just set, so the sky was still filled with swirls of beautiful pink and orange hues, lighting the sky and fields with a dark mural of colors.

We hopped off, and I slid off my helmet. Derek pulled out two small mason jars that he’d stashed in his pockets while we were in the garage. “Wanna race?”

“Race?”

“To see who can get to twenty the fastest?”

“Oh, you are so on, Weston. I’m going to crush you.”

He pushed a jar into my hands and sprinted off into the field, chasing the spontaneous yellow lights twinkling throughout the field. I’d seen a few fireflies by the house in the evenings since it started getting warm, but nothing like this. They danced around the strawberry fields in a synchronized pattern, swaying to the music the crickets and frogs made.

I stood in awe for a moment, before watching Derek catch a few in the span of a minute. He waited for them to come to him and would gently cup his palms around the bug before guiding it into his jar. Realizing I was up against the clock, I sprung into action.

My catching technique was a lot more chaotic than Derek’s. I chased the same bug around through the rows of strawberries before finally catching my first. I laughed and raised my fist in victory only to turn around and find Derek staring at me with a real smile.

We sat on the back of his four-wheeler, kicking our feet and staring down at our jars filled with lightning bugs. The glow lit up our hands, and when I looked over at Derek, he looked magical. The warm yellow lighting lit up his whole face.

“What do we do with them now?” I asked.

He looked over at me with an emotion that I couldn’t read. He relaxed as he leaned his side against mine. “We let them go.”

I nodded. “Count to three?”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three,” we said together in unison.

Lightning escaped our bottles and flooded into the sky. I helped the last few stragglers escape into the night air and looked over to Derek. Only moonlight illuminated us now, it’d been at least an hour since the sunset.

His gaze flickered from my eyes to my lips. I could tell he wanted to kiss me again. I wanted him to. Fuck being friends, I wanted this every day. Beneath his standoffish demeanor, he looked a lot like someone I would want to spend the rest of my life with.

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