Page 73 of Tangled Up In You
“If this works, I’m taking you out for a fancy dinner after.”
“I thought you were doing that anyway.” She grinned over her shoulder, teasing and flirty, and she probably had no idea the power she had over him. When she finally learned how to harness it, he was done for.
“Extra fancy, then,” he answered.
She nodded for him to go back inside the car. “Keep it in neutral and turn the key to the on position, just so everything lights up. Let me know when you do.”
He kissed the top of her head and then ducked into the driver’s seat. “Okay,” he called to her.
“Go ahead and turn it all the way.”
He closed his eyes, hoping he didn’t manage to inadvertently zap his new girlfriend, but he heard her happy whoop when Max’s engine roared to life. Ren closed the hood and bent to kiss it, saying, “Good boy.”
Three hours later, Ren fell back in her chair, clutching her stomach and groaning happily. “That was the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
Dressed in a new set of secondhand clothes that they picked out on the drive back from the lake—a cream silk skirt and green top that complemented Ren’s eyes, a nice pair of jeans, and a linen button-down that she’d said made Edward’s tanned skin look golden—they’d parked along a quiet street lined with older homes and small businesses and walked to a brick building fronted by a mixed garden of flowers and vegetables. Inside, the decor was as welcoming as being in someone’s home. Heavy dark tables encircled an open kitchen with a wood oven in the center, its copper chimney stretching to the ceiling. Ren had been delighted, fascinated by the staff waiting and busing tables, by the food she could see being prepared and how much organization it took to make something like this look like no work at all. Observing the world through Ren’s eyes made Edward realize how often he didn’t really pay attention to what was going on around him. He moved through life constantly on the offense and went into every interaction with an objective. It meant he missed the details, missed the moments that made life worth living.
Edward gazed at the destruction all around them: crumbs from the world’s best salted butter rolls, only a tiny fatty scrap of an impeccably cooked steak, some stray radicchio from a delicious salad, a few tendrils of linguini, and two empty red wineglasses. There wasn’t birthday cake, but the waitstaff lit a candle in the center of her decadent Bananas Foster bread pudding. He’d pulled out his phone to capture her expression as they’d set the plate in front of her, the candlelight reflected in her wide, tear-rimmed eyes. That was one moment he wasn’t going to miss.
Now she looked at him from across their small table. “You’ve absolutely ruined me.”
That was too tempting a sentence to dwell on. Planting his elbows on the table, he leaned in. “Did I hit number one yet?”
She winced, clucking her tongue. “It’s going to be really hard to beat the year I turned thirteen and Steve let me drive the truck to and from town, and then I saw a meteor shower that night when I was out at the pond.”
“Skinny-dipping, engine victories, and those buttery salted rolls don’t beat that?”
She pressed her lips together, fighting a laugh. “Mm-mm.”
He drummed his fingers on his chin, pretending to think. “Okay, I have one more idea.” He tossed the napkin to the table and reached for her hand. “Let’s go.”
The field was dark and deserted—just like he’d expected. With a tiny, nervous smile, Ren climbed out of Max, but stayed close to the door. “Where are we?”
“It’s called Percy Warner Park,” he explained. “It’s huge, and I knew it would be pretty empty tonight—perfect for what I want to do.”
“Hmm.” She squinted out into the darkness while he grabbed a blanket, a sweatshirt, and her gift from the trunk. “I haven’t seen any, but I’ve read that this is how horror movies begin.”
“I’ll protect you.” He gently tugged her forward, using the flashlight on his phone to lead them to a paved trail and out onto the lawn, where they hiked up a small hill.
Edward spread the blanket on the soft, dewy grass. “Did you bring me out here to see stars?” she asked.
“Not exactly.” It was true that the stars were more visible here than downtown, but excitement rose in him as he pulled her gift from his back pocket and turned to shield it from her view. Opening the box, he pulled one long stick free and slid the purple Bic lighter out of his other pocket to ignite it.
Light popped and sizzled, and he held it up to Ren, witnessing the moment her eyes went round and then immediately filled with tears. She clapped a hand over her mouth, turning to look at him, the sparkler reflected in a million golden flashes in her eyes.
“Happy birthday, Sunshine,” he said quietly.
She reached out, grasping it, and then held it in front of her, staring in awe. Tentatively, she waved it around, drawing a figure eight in the air. It burned down to the end and her expression fell. “That was so beautiful. Thank you so much, Ed—”
He lit a second sparkler and handed it to her.
She gasped. “Another?”
“I got a box of a hundred,” he said, laughing. “It’ll take us an hour to get through all of them.”
And it very nearly did. They lit two at a time and wrote their initials in the sky. He handed her two, one for each hand, and she stood, waving her arms wide, forming perfect circles while he captured the image on his phone: her beatific smile and the two cones of fire on either side of her. They ran streaks of light down the hill and back up again. And every time they were ready to light a new sparkler from an old one, she said, “Let them kiss.”
When they lit the final one, she watched it burn all the way to the end before releasing a tiny, happy cry. “That is absolutely the best present anyone has ever given me.”