Page 112 of Sunshine
“That’s fine. I’ll stay up. I just want to see you. Hang out. Watch a movie. Make things normal between us, okay?”
“Yes.” I don’t try to hide my grin. “I’ll be there.”
Daisy gets to her feet, and I follow.
“Good. Charlie’s having some work done on the private driveway, so you’ll have to use the main entrance to Silver Leaf—I’ll leave the gates open—and drive around the long way.”
“Okay. No problem. What should I bring?”
“Just yourself,” she says before she wraps me in a hug.
There’s a sparkle in her eye that I could read from a mile away. “You’re up to something.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” We start back along the dock, walking side by side to our cars. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“I thought we weren’t keeping the truth from each other anymore.”
“You owe me one last secret, don’t you think?”
I reach my car, open the door, and tilt my head at her grin. I can’t argue with her. I’ll owe her forever. “Okay. But after this—whatever it is—we’re even?”
Daisy shrugs as she slips behind the wheel of her car. “You might say that.”
I know her well enough to know that something’s going on—and well enough to know I can trust her.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she calls out the open window. “Now go home and get ready.”
“Get ready?” I call to her retreating car. “How? Why?”
“You’ll see.”
I follow her car down the road, hers turning left to Silver Leaf when I go right toward Aster Springs, tired and relieved and so wrung out that I’m all the way back at Mona’s when I think to text Dylan.
She forgives me! We talked, and we hugged, and everything’s going to be okay.
And Dylan’s swift reply.
Dylan
I love you, Sunshine. And everything’s going to be fucking fantastic.
thirty-four
Poppy
I drive past theturn I usually make to go to the Davenport house and circle Silver Leaf Ranch & Vineyard until I reach a set of familiar oversized, white-painted timber gates with stacked stone brackets and manicured hedges on either side.
I’ve got a box of cereal and a bag of candy in my tote because no matter what Daisy says, I’ve never shown up at our movie nights empty-handed, and I’m wearing my comfy pink sweats and fuzzy blue slippers. On the outside, everything about this moment looks normal and no different from the hundreds of nights I’ve stayed in with my best friend.
On the inside, it feels so different. I feel more alive than I ever have—awake and alert and ready. My heart thrums against my chest, and my thoughts scatter every time I try to catch one. Dylan and Izzy and Daisy and college and a new future and a new chance and a new adventure. One that will someday lead me to that happily ever after.
I navigate my car through the Silver Leaf gates and underneath the wrought iron arch that declares this to be Silver Leaf Ranch & Vineyard. My tires crunch satisfyingly over dustygravel as I ease onto a driveway that’s more like a long, wide country lane—and stop.
I’ve driven and walked and ran and skipped and laughed my way down this alley a thousand times. This dirt road bordered by old silver-leafed olive trees that have grown so tall that their canopies create an almost tunnel effect. I’ve always thought it was romantic—the silvery leaves and the thick trunks making this stretch of Silver Leaf feel like an enchanted forest—but it’s never taken my breath away like it does now.
