Page 49 of Truly, Madly, Deeply

Without permission, outside of her volition, her hand crept across the table, stopping just shy of Colin’s. Close enough that a single twitch of her pinky would cause their skin to brush. “It was. A compliment.”

A small, almost disbelieving smile crept across Colin’s face. “Oh. Well.” He ducked his chin, smile growing as he stared down at the table at where their hands almost touched. “You don’t have to thank me for being honest.”

“Christ, McCrory, can you just take the damn compliment?”

His fingers ghosted across the back of her hand, so soft, so brief she wasn’t sure whether it was an absentminded gesture or deliberate. Either way, her stomach fluttered. “It was nothing, Truly.”

It wasn’t nothing. It was something. Something she didn’t have the words for.

Not yet.

***

“Bullshit. You were not.”

“Hand to God, I swear.” Colin dug his fork into the slice of red velvet loaf cake between them. “Just ask Caitlin. She’s got pictures. Dig back through her Instagram and you might even find one.”

She steadfastly ignored the way her cheeks heated at the jibe. “No wonder you were so defensive of the tree. You were the tree.”

He wasn’t more than a few years older than her. She racked her brain, thinking back on the football games she’d gone to her freshman year. The idea that their paths might have inadvertently crossed, even at a distance across a football stadium, while Colin was dressed up like an evergreen tree, was too funny.

“Put some respect on the name, St. James.” He set his fork down. “I was The Tree, representative of El Palo Alto, a 1,083-year-old coast redwood and the namesake of the city.”

“My sincerest apologies.” She held up her hands in supplication. “Those must have been some big shoes—sorry, roots?—to fill.”

“Ha fucking ha.” He rolled his eyes. “I auditioned on a dare, okay? My cousin Cillian—he’s my best friend—he didn’t think I’d do it and I—” He cringed. “Ah, shit. There’s no way to confess this without sounding like a douche.”

“Is that new for you?” She grinned. “Go on. Stop stalling. Spit it out.”

Colin heaved a sigh. “Fine. Disclaimer, I was eighteen—”

“You were stupid. Got it.”

Colin scoffed. “Not every eighteen-year-old is stupid.”

“True, but everyone who uses I was eighteen as a disclaimer either did something stupid or hormonally driven. If there were a Venn diagram, it might even be a circle.”

“Maybe I was a little stupid.”

She hummed the Jeopardy! tune.

Colin looked up, stone-faced, unamused save for the persistent and undeniable twitching of his left brow. “Fine. I heard the mascot got to, you know”—he made a frazzled, senseless gesture before raking both hands through his unfairly luscious hair—“hang out with the cheerleaders.”

“You decided dressing up like a tree and learning to dance to an eight-count beat was preferable to, I don’t know, asking someone on a date like a normal person?” She reached for her drink. “Weird flex.”

Colin smirked. “You haven’t seen me do yoga.”

Wrong time to take a sip. A vivid image of Colin bent over in downward dog flashed through her brain, making her sputter, little drops of her iced latte splattering across the table and, naturally, the back of Colin’s hand.

Rather than reach for a napkin, Colin wiped her spittle off with his thumb. She was really glad she was sitting down.

“At least tell me your ploy paid off.”

His brows rose. “You’re asking me if I got laid? You what—you want to hear about my college exploits? Are you serious?”

“Exploits? Ew.” She tossed her napkin at him, which he dodged, and nudged him harder, nearly a kick. Her foot slipped and her ankle hooked around his under the table and her heart lurched. “I’m not asking for the details. I just want to know whether the whole mascot idea was worth it.”

“In the sense that I was offered the position and I saw what a Division I athletic scholarship looked like?” He laughed. “It started as a dare, but considering I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford law school otherwise, yeah, I’d say my humiliation paid off.”

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