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Dax’s ears turned red again. “So you’re gonna keep seeing him…”
“Any reason I shouldn’t?” Why do I keep pushing the envelope? Blame it on the alcohol.
“No,” he muttered before taking another long swig of beer.
I tossed my napkin on the table. As tense as this meal had been, I didn’t want to leave. Because leaving this restaurant would mean going back to our “new normal.” I much preferred to stay in this beer-infused bubble where it was just Dax and me, talking about life.
We ended up ordering one more flight of beer each and stayed talking for at least another hour before I finally suggested we leave.
“This day turned out to be a pleasant surprise,” he said.
“We do drunk well.”
“That we do.” He laughed. “I would normally drive you back to your car, but I don’t think either of us is in a position to drive. I know you don’t take Ubers alone, so why don’t we share a car? I’ll have them drop you off first.”
“Sounds like the only option. Thank you.”
Dax lifted my coat off the hook attached to our booth. He held it open for me. I lifted my hair briefly as he placed my coat around my shoulders. I froze when I felt his hand on the back of my neck.
“What is this?” he asked. “You got a tattoo?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. The alcohol had lessened my focus, and I hadn’t been thinking straight when I lifted my hair.
He rubbed his thumb over my skin. As embarrassed as I was to have to explain it to him, I closed my eyes in pleasure at his warm touch.
“I was having a particularly rough few days in France…” I explained. “Some friends and I went to Paris at night, and I got this...”
“Is that supposed to be…me?” he asked.
I nodded as my worst fear was confirmed. He did remember the time I’d referred to him as a deer. The tattoo depicted the V-shaped head of a little deer with antlers. It was small, but apparently not small enough for him to not notice.
“Wow.” He slowly closed his fingers around my neck, putting me in a gentle chokehold before suddenly removing his hand, as if he’d caught himself teetering on the edge.
He cleared his throat. “I’m…flattered, I guess?”
“And I’m embarrassed,” I said, my body still on fire.
“Embarrassed. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Because it makes me seem a little crazy, maybe?”
“You are a little crazy.” He winked. “But I love that about you.”
You loved me once, too. I shrugged. “It’s the only permanent thing I have of us. I figured no one would ever know the meaning besides me. I never planned to let you see it, that’s for sure. I wasn’t even sure you’d remember I compared you to a deer.”
“Was this by any chance the same night as…alabaster?”
My heart nearly stopped. Ugh. The drunken alabaster text—another thing I’d hoped he’d forgotten. “No, it wasn’t,” I informed him. “And I thought you said you’d never mention that again.”
He grinned mischievously. “I still have it. I looked at it several times while you were away.”
“Great.”
Another night, while a bit inebriated in Paris, I’d sent Dax a now-infamous text. I’d followed it the next morning with an apology.
Dax pulled it up on his phone. He didn’t have to scroll very far.
He faced the phone toward me, and I cringed as I read it.
Wren: I never realized how strange the word alabaster is. I’ve heard it all my life but never knew what the hell it meant. It’s a color, apparently. A warm white. It’s exactly the color of the seashell in your office that I shattered. That reminds me of how you shattered my heart. You’re an alabastard, Moody.
The text immediately below it read:
Wren: OMG! Please disregard that! I had way too much to drink last night. I don’t even remember writing this to you. You’re not a bastard. I’m the bastard for sending this. Very embarrassing. Sorry!
He’d texted back a couple of hours after.
Dax: No worries. Consider it forgotten.
At the time, I’d overanalyzed the brevity of his response. Was he mad? Was he trying to cut me a break and not make an issue out of it? Did he not care about me anymore? I’d carried those words consider it forgotten on my shoulders for over a year, because those were the last words I had from him for a long while. Consider it forgotten. Consider us forgotten.
“You said ‘consider it forgotten,’ but clearly you haven’t,” I told him.
“There’s not one second I’ve forgotten, Wren. About anything.”
Our eyes locked, and I felt my cheeks burn. “You must’ve thought I was the biggest idiot when that text came in.”
“Actually, I was asleep with my ringer off when you sent the first one. So I saw the apology message first.”
“Well, thank God for that. I figured the delay was because you didn’t know how to respond to that craziness.”
