Page 64 of Like A Daydream
Danielle:title of your sex tape
Andy:okay, Jake Peralta
Danielle leaves the front door open, screen door protecting them from the summer bugs that swarm her porch light. One thing about living in the mountains, you’re going to get mosquitos no matter what you do to combat them.
It doesn’t take long for Andy to show up and knock on the door three times. She takes a breath, stands up, and heads down the hallway, only to see that Andy has retreated back down the porch steps and is pacing back and forth on the path.
“Hey,” she says, stepping outside. She rubs her hands up and down her arms against the chill of the night.
He stops where he is, looking at her like a man starved, like they hadn’t just spent the day at the bookshop together, like if he doesn’t look now he might never get the chance again.
“Hey,” he says. He looks down at the ground and lets out a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“I get ahead of myself,” he says, not looking at her. “When I do relationships, or want one, I tend to jump in head first and not really look around before I do. I said a lot to you at the lake the other day, and I think it scared you, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“You didn’t,” Danielle says, shaking her head. “It takes a lot more than honesty to scare me off.”
“I know it’s not a good time,” he says, shaking a head and running a nervous hand through his hair as he starts pacing again. “I shouldn’t have said anything, and I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what to do with all these…feelings.”
Danielle needs him to stop moving, but she doesn’t think he can.
She walks down the porch steps as he turns back towards her, and she grabs his elbow as he passes her, pulling him to a stop.
“Andy,” she says. He turns to face her and she takes his hands in hers. They’re shaking, and she can feel the thundering of his pulse against the skin of his wrist. “Breathe. In for seven, out for seven.”
His eyes meet hers, and he closes them, breathing slow as she counts quietly.
“Good?” she asks, after several repetitions of the cycle.
He opens his eyes. “Good.”
“You didn’t scare me off,” she repeats, shaking her head at this idiot man with his big feelings and heart on a silver platter for her. “I had to think for a minute. It’s a lot, Andy. We’ve only known each other for two months and I’ve been grieving the entire time. You’re asking me to take a jump that I didn’t know if I was ready for.”
“Did you?’
“Did I what?”
“Think?”
“I did,” Danielle says, squeezing his hands softly. “And I talked to Harper.”
“She’s a good sounding board,” Andy says, nodding with half a smile, “even when she calls you out on your BS. What did she say?”
“She said,” Danielle swallows hard, “that you treat me the same way Jack treated Emerson, and that you’re good for me.”
“She told me that you need a little bit of fun in your life,” Andy teases, taking a step closer to her. His breath quickens again, but this time it isn’t because he’s anxious.
“Of course, she did,” Danielle says, rolling her eyes. “She said she’s okay with it.”
“She did?” Andy asks. He’s breathing as if he’s run a marathon to get to her, and she feels like her heart could explode it’s beating so fast in her chest.
“I’m a bit of a mess, and I’m trying to work through something monumental. You’ll be taking on me, and a first grader, and I don’t even know how going back and forth between New York and North Carolina is going to work.”
He looks up at her, eyes shining with hope.
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy,” Andrew says, staring directly into her eyes. “When have our lives been that way? It’s going to be hard. I know it is. It’s going to be back and forth, New York, North Carolina, halfway across the country and back again… my schedule is going to be packed, and I don’t know how often I’ll get to see you.”
