Was he actually shushing me?
CHAPTER 5
Dalton Deangelo seemed to be shushing me. Which I do not like, not even from someone with a face so handsome you want to crush it up and eat it.
I continued, around his fingers mashing my lips, “But thanks for the nice evening and the r—”
“Shush.”
I shoved his hand away and stepped back. “Don't shush me. You're not the boss of me. Feel free to interrupt me, like a regular person, but don't you dare put your hand on my mouth.”
Dalton grinned like a kid being caught with his hand up a vending machine, his fingers wrapped around a stolen chocolate bar.
“Whoops,” he said.
“Uh, whoops?”
The moment of romance was gone, and my passion morphed into something else—something defensive. His arms around me no longer felt like heaven, but like a mousetrap. I shoved against his chest and wriggled myself free.
“I'm sorry you're offended,” he said.
“I'm sorry you think shushing a woman is appealing in some way.”
“You're cute when you're mad.”
“You're not,” I lied.
He stepped back, taking an audible breath. “It was nice to know you.”
And then began the speedy getaway I’d been anticipating all day.
He backed away over the hedge and onto the sidewalk. The driver was already circling around to open the car door for him. I could sense Shayla's presence on the porch behind me, but she was staying quiet for now.
Something about the way Dalton was grinning and backing away from me set me off even more. He was treating me the same way he had that girl Alexis, who probably had good reason to be angry at him. What a smarmy creepazoid!
“Good to know you,” he repeated awkwardly.
My head started to move from side to side with all the attitude that had to go somewhere. “Oh, you don't know me,” I said.
Shayla chimed in, “That's right. You don't know her.”
He glanced up at her and shrugged. “Your loss.”
Shayla murmured behind me, “Oh, no, he didn’t.” Louder, she called out to him, “More like your loss.”
“Yeah!” I added. “Your loss, mister. I would have rocked your world.”
Dalton shot me one last smirk, then he climbed into the back of his fancy car with the tinted windows and shut the door.
Getaway complete.
As the red taillights disappeared down the street, Shayla traipsed down the front steps and slipped her arm around my back. “Let's get you out of these wet clothes and into a shot of tequila. Or wine. We don’t have tequila, but we do have wine.”
“Oh, Shay. What did I just do? What's wrong with me?”
“You have too much pride,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You could have had your meatflaps moistened by Mr. Smoldering Eyeballs himself, but I can loan you Drake for the night if you run him through the dishwasher.”
I patted her hand. “No thanks, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“He was taller than I expected. A lot of actors are quite short, you know.”
I followed her into the house and back to the kitchen, where she found the big bottle of red we'd started the night before. We’d planned to make sangria, and bought the cheapest red in the store, but then we decided it was okay on its own, and nobody needs extra fruit juice calories in their drink.
We raised our glasses in a toast, standing by the fridge.
“You're perfect,” Shayla said. “Guys like him think you'll be so impressed he’s even talking to you, that you won't say shit if you have a mouth full of it. But you sure showed him.”
I swirled the wine and started drinking as Shayla unzipped the back of my dress and peeled the damp fabric away. I felt warmer already in just my underwear plus the wobble-taming waist shaper. I took a seat at the walnut pedestal table in the kitchen.
She’d heard a few details from the driver, and I filled her in on the rest, from our odd bookstore meeting to him accompanying me to the wedding.
Giggling, I said, “And tonight, I was going to sleep with him. Dalton Deangelo. With his penis right up in my vagina and everything.”
“And you would have rocked his world. You would have spoiled him for all other women.”
I finished the red wine and got my glass refilled.
“Who are we kidding? I would have turned out all the lights, then lay there with my bra still on, holding absolutely still to reduce jiggling, and faked an orgasm so it could be over.”
Shayla giggled into her glass. “And you would have been so good, so convincing.” She rolled her eyes up, fluttering her eyelashes. “Oh, Dalton, you're an animal! I don't know if I'll be able to walk tomorrow!”
“Gross!”
We laughed for a bit, and when the giggles died down, she said, “Too bad you didn't saddle that one up. Would have made for great stories. He’s bumpy all up and down his front. They don't make 'em like that around here in Beaverdale.”
“No, they do not.” The wine was warming me up, and I thought about getting a robe or something to throw on over my underwear and Spanx, but my room was up the stairs, which was too far. “You know, I forgot to ask him why he was even in town.”
Why had Dalton Deangelo been in little Beaverdale, Washington, population 14,041?
I guess I haven't told you much about Beaverdale, also known as The Beav or B-dale to locals. The town was incorporated in 1898, and the main street was named after the father of the town, Mr. Leonodis Veiner. In 1942, the street was accidentally renamed Leonardo Street when City Hall contracted out the new street signs to a sign maker up in Seattle. A copper-haired city clerk by the name of Donovan Monroe (my great-grandfather), rushed his paperwork that day so he could get to the pub and await the news of his first child's birth, surrounded by his friends. The pub was on the opposite side of town as the hospital, and the bartender kept the telephone line clear for the news, because that was how they did things in those days.
My grandfather, Arthur Monroe, came into the world at three in the morning on January 7, 1942, and the pub never closed that night. My great-grandfather did, however, disappear for a few hours that evening to find some trouble. The kind of trouble who hangs a red light in her window.
Nine months later, my grandfather's yet-to-be-named half-sister was born at the town’s only bawdy house.
On the very same day, the sign installers got their packages and did their installation, renaming the following streets:
Leonodis Veiner Street became Leonardo Street
Orchid Drive became O Drive