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Chapter 39
She sat on the single step that led to her front door, watching other families, who were still trick or treating, crossing the street from side to side and going from house to house. Her lane was mildly decorated with strings of orange lights and two pumpkins lit from within. Without Hannah and Naomi, it seemed bare and un-festive, especially in comparison to some of the neighboring houses, who had gone overboard with their front yard displays.
She sent pictures of the girls in their costumes to her mother and sister and received pictures of her nephews back. She smiled as she thought of the candies that the girls had collected when she had taken them trick or treating earlier. When Lucile had arrived to pick them up for the airport, she had allowed them to take some, if they stored it in their trolleys. They had left, still in their costumes, excitedly dragging their sugar-filled luggage behind them.
Now and then, parents and kids passed her house, walked up the lane, and she welcomed them, especially those who were in her class, asking about their costumes and chatting with their parents as she extended a large bowl of candy.
She was group-chatting with Libby and Roni in-between, sharing kids’ pictures and joking about Libby and Luke’s couple costume as pilot and flight attendant. She had always wanted to do a couple’s costumes, but Eric had never cooperated and instead always had something to say or someone to compare her to, because she hadn’t gone for a sexy nurse, cop, angel, demon, or sexy whatever costume.
She was just typing something about it to her friends when she sensed someone approaching up the lane. She was about to reach out for the bowl without even looking up when a familiar gravel catapulted her heart into her throat.
“Hey, Libby’s friend. That’s a smart costume.”
She lifted her head, feeling her pulse rising with it, and her eyes met with those of Jordan’s.
He stood there, towering like a column, with those wide shoulders and chest, and that soft smile that he always had for her, and that warm gaze of his. She missed him so much that, if she wasn’t afraid her knees wouldn’t cooperate, she would lift herself off that stoop, run, and wrap herself in him.
Her throat went dry. “Yes, it’s so smart that no one guesses what it is.” She chuckled nervously. “I think my daughters were a bit embarrassed for me. I should have gone for Wonder Woman.”
“But then it wouldn’t be a costume.”
She sucked in and bit her upper lip. Damn, he knew his way with words. Yet, she knew he was so much more than that.
When he had replied to her text, ending it with, “I’ll be there,” she hadn’t asked, “When?” She wanted him to do it if and when he would be ready. She just hadn’t expected it to be this soon.
“What did they dress up as?” he asked.
“Naomi was a unicorn, and Hannah, a jellyfish.”
He nodded in appreciation. “People underestimate the jellyfish.”
She looked at him with such surprise that he tilted his head in a didn’t you know? and added, “She had it in her argument for global cooperation on marine microplastic pollution cleansing.”
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t in the regionals.” What she did know, without a shred of doubt, was that her heart was forever his, whether she agreed to it or not.
“Can I take a guess?” he asked, pointing his chin toward her.
“Sure.”
“You’re Neon and Helium, which don’t combine with other elements, or even with each other.”
“How did you know?” She couldn’t help but smile at his added explanation.
“You mean, except for the fact that you’re wearing neon-colored shirt, pants, and sneakers, and that you have helium balloons tied to your wrists and hairband?”
He, on the other hand, wasn’t in his right-out-of-D.C. clothes that had made her knees mellow at the conference, but in a pair of jeans and a black button-down shirt that had the same effect on her. His smirk mellowed her knees so much that she would have definitely fallen on her ass, if she wasn’t already sitting.
She laughed. “Yes, except that.”
“Because I memorized the periodic table.”
With a puddle where her heart used to be, she huffed an audible breath. “Why?”
“You really have to ask?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll tell you, anyway. I memorized it because, Hope Hays … How can I put it in a way you’d understand?” He squatted in front of her, bringing his face at level with hers and holding her gaze. “You’re the noblest element I ever came across, the rarest component, the most beautiful explosion I’ve ever seen, and I want to compound with you.”
