Page 38 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

He pulled a face. “Don’t get me started. I had to ask fifty hotel employees before I found a housekeeper who was about Pete’s size. His proportions are inhuman.” He tore his eyes from the happy couple, and I realized that we were sitting even closer than I’d thought, but neither of us made any effort to move. “The housekeeper said she’s going to check with a black light to make sure we actually clean it, by the way, so …”

“Can’t say I blame her.” Despite the fact that I was fairly certain Jo didn’t actually have a maid kink—at least not so far as she’d ever told me—it looked like she was sort of getting into it. Peter was bent over in front of her stool, hands on his hairy knees as she spanked him with the feather duster, laughing maniacally. I’d created a monster. “I’ll take it to the cleaners first thing tomorrow.”

“Hey.” Declan nudged my knee with his own. “We make a pretty good team.”

I grinned, reaching for the glass in front of him. “Don’t get too excited. This was a special occasion. I have no interest in helping you with your day-to-day pranks.” I stole a sip of his bourbon and he made no effort to stop me, that familiar dimple shadowing his cheek as he watched my lips meet the glass. I used to hate that dimple. When had I stopped hating his dimple?

“Please, enlighten me,” he said. “What exactly are my day-to-day pranks?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, aware of my own cheesy grin but making no effort to rein it in as I set his drink back on the counter, a faint lipstick print now staining the rim. “Saran-wrapping toilets and replacing shampoo with Nair, probably.”

“I would never replace shampoo with Nair.” He reached to twist a lock of my hair between his thumb and forefinger, and my heart beat faster. “That’s just cruel. And I like your hair too much.”

I combed my own hand through my hair, sliding the lock from between his fingers in the process. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to touch me. It was just that my hair was completely fried and I couldn’t imagine that was very attractive. “So, you’ll let me eat mayonnaise in place of pudding, but you draw the line at making me go bald.”

He lowered his hand, still smiling. “Everyone has to draw the line somewhere.”

Another chorus of cheers erupted and I tore my eyes from Declan’s to see the source of the excitement. The DJ had switched over to a Megan Thee Stallion track and Peter was attempting to twerk while Jo swung the feather duster overhead like a lasso. Our work here was done. “Thank you for your help, by the way,” I said, realizing I hadn’t thanked him earlier.

Declan followed my gaze for only a second before turning back to face me. “Happy?” he asked in a low voice.

“So long as I’ve succeeded in making my best friend happy?” I said. “Yes.” I was certain pictures of tonight would find their way to Twitter by tomorrow morning, and there was no telling what people would have to say. But right now, I didn’t particularly care.

He watched me with an unreadable expression, hazel eyes searching my face. “How about we do something to make you happy?”

I gave him a quizzical look. “But I just said I was—”

“I mean something specifically for you,” he interrupted. “No worrying about what Jo thinks, or whatever your social media people think, or even what I think. What would you do right now, if you could do anything in the world?”

I swallowed. There were a lot of things I’d be more than happy to do with Declan, and he was giving me an easy opening. My eyes trailed to his lips. Scattered freckles traced the curve of his cupid’s bow, more on one side than the other, which gave his mouth a permanently crooked look like he was always holding back a smile. It would be so easy to answer his question with a kiss. Break a few rules. Actually do something worth talking about for Season Seven, instead of dancing around it and making excuses.

But for some reason, I found myself saying, “I’d go to the arcade.”

“I’m gonna be honest,” Declan said as soon as we stepped through the door. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.”

“We can do something else, if you want,” I offered, feeling more than a little self-conscious about my choice. The arcade was smaller than I remembered—island-sized, I thought—but that didn’t make the flashing rainbow lights and the overlapping eight-bit noises any less jarring. It was empty at this hour, save for a worker at the deli counter, guarding paper soda cups, giant pretzels, and monstrous slices of lukewarm pizza. The whole place smelled faintly of ranch and garlic bread.

“No, it’s not that.” He walked over to the token machine and swiped his debit card. The old machine had been replaced with a fancy touch screen that spat out a preloaded card with credits instead of actual tokens. “Just … what made you pick the arcade?”

It was another of those questions that would’ve been easier to answer with it’s complicated rather than try to explain myself, but I’d been doing that a little too often lately. It felt like I was overdue to be straight-up about something. “I used to come here when I was a kid. I guess I’ve just …” I shrugged, not quite sure how to put it into words. “Missed the more nostalgic side of the island, if that makes sense.” Missed the days when my biggest problems were learning long division and choosing whether I wanted mint chocolate chip or cookie dough for my ice cream cone. Before the podcast, before my parents’ divorce, before I’d learned to worry about the future, and the uncertainty of it all.

“Yeah, I get that.” He watched me for a moment, his expression thoughtful before clearing his throat and sizing up the arcade. “Okay, here are the rules. We each pick a game we think we’re good at. If I win both, then you have to buy me a slice of pizza. But if you win both, I buy you a slice of pizza.”

I’d been stuffing my face with nachos and crab dip all night, but miraculously, I was still hungry. And pizza sounded pretty amazing right about now. Free pizza? Even better. “What if we both win one?”

“Then we each buy our own pizza.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. He was wearing this silly flamingo-print shirt with the top button undone, a small bit of coppery chest hair visible. He should have looked ridiculous, but instead, I was having thoughts of grabbing him by the collar and pulling him close. “Why?”

He frowned, oblivious to the images racing through my mind. “Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Maybe because it seems like you’ve been doing a lot of things for other people lately, and I get the feeling it’s been a while since you’ve let someone do something for you.” For a moment, the look he gave me was so earnest and intense that I thought my legs might give out. It was like a curtain had been drawn back, all the banter and lighthearted jokes stripped away, leaving only the man beneath them. But then, he winked, and the universe righted itself. “Or maybe I just want you to buy me pizza.”

“Fine,” I said, tearing my eyes from him and scanning the arcade for my game of choice. I was sobering up a little, or at least I felt like I was, jolted awake by the noise and lights and the strange jittery feeling in my chest. “I choose Skee-Ball.”

“What’s Skee-Ball?”