Page 18 of Flowers in Your Hair

“Three,” I say along with Marley, turning around and whipping my blindfold off, not even caring one bit what it’s doing to my hair.

My eyes adjust after a moment, and I gaze up at the man who I’ve been wondering about for the last few hours. I take in the furrow of his brow, the way his chocolate brown eyes are wide with… knowing? His brown hair is curly at the top, and he’s wearing a light blue dress shirt that is tight across his chest and arms, the sleeves rolled up to show off his impressive forearms.

I’m stunned silent for a moment. When the man says my name, recognition hits me like a freight train.

“Andrew?” I question at the same time as a panty dropping smile breaks out onto his gorgeous face.

“Holy shit,” he laughs, taking both my hands in his, then dropping them to pull me into a tight hug. “Josie, I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”

“You have?” I ask, completely dumbfounded. Why would Marley set me up with Andrew? There’s no way he’s single.

Right?

“What are you doing here?” I’m completely lost.

In the background, the camera clicks and snaps pictures every second of our whole interaction.

As he pulls away from our embrace, he looks down at me, wonder in his eyes. “Marley made me do it,” he says, looking over at her. “She’s been trying to convince me to do this for weeks, and now I know why. I’ve been talking about you non-stop ever since the wedding.”

My mind is spinning with all this information, but I can’t get one thing out of my mind. “Wait, don’t you have a girlfriend?” I ask. Andrew’s gaze sharpens, and his hands clasp mine again.

“No, I don’t. Did someone tell you I did?”

I shake my head, lost in his eyes. One of his hands lifts, taking mine with it as he pushes away one of the curls that went haywire from the blindfold. “No-uh,” I stammer, unsure of how to say this. “I guess I just assumed you did.”

“I don’t,” he murmurs, staring into my eyes. “I definitely don’t.” The hand that pushed the hair behind my ear now rests on my face, cupping my cheek as he stares at me in awe. “Holy shit, I have your crocodile clip.”

I’m so thrown off by the randomness of his words that they don’t even register for a long moment. “My… what?”

“Your alligator clip,” he reiterates, dropping his hand from my cheek, and gesturing wildly as if pulling his hair up in the back of his head.

“My claw clip?” I chuckle.

“Is that what they’re called?” Andrew rubs a hand over his face, eyes wandering before looking down at me again. “Who cares, I have your claw clip. Is this really happening? Am I dreaming right now?

Marley lets out a cackling laugh. “Andrew, stop being so fucking dramatic.”

“Hey, you’re the one that’s been lying to me for literal weeks! You just drop my dream girl in my lap and expect me to be all hunky dory in point five seconds? I think not.”

Did he just call me his dream girl? Hold the phone. What?

“I need to reboot or something,” Andrew continues. He takes my cheeks in his hands again, those fucking brown eyes looking at me like I just saved his puppy from a burning building.

“You are real.”

“Uh, yes?”

“Holy shit. Okay. You’re single? Like really single? No boyfriend hiding behind the bushes that’s going to jump out and yell ‘punk’d’ or something?”

I stutter out a laugh. “No. I’m really really single. Is there a girlfriend hiding in the woods ready to jump out and yell at me?” I ask in return.

Andrew’s shaking his head, totally incredulous. “Fuck no.”

I shake my head right back. “Then I guess we’re good.”

“I still can’t believe Marley planned this. She knew at the wedding that I wanted to find you, and here we fucking are.”

“Here we fucking are,” I repeat, smiling up at him.

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