Page 29 of Love at First Flight

He frowned, wondering how to follow up. After thinking and rethinking, causing several false starts which he deleted and then retyped, he came up with a response.

Oof, sorry. Today wasn’t great for me either. But if doing a puzzle and eating pizza sounds like something you can handle, you should come over.

It was after the message had been sent did he regret using the word “handle.” Shit. He should have picked a word that sounded less of a challenge.

Actually, that sounds pretty nice. Okay. :)

Suddenly, he had all kinds of things to do as he ordered the pizza and rushed to do the dirty dishes in his sink. He’d at least taken a shower to get the park dust and sweat off before he’d decided to text her. He was putting the last of the dishes in a small countertop drying rack when Harper cawed twice from the porch railing, as though she’d assigned herself guard bird duty. This notified him of the arrival of Selah’s dark-green pickup. He tapped a wet finger on the window above the sink, warning Harper to behave herself because lately she’d been in an ornery mood.

Grabbing a towel, he wiped his hands as he opened the front screen door.

“Hi.” Selah gave him a warm smile as she approached, and his heart stopped inside his chest. “Hey, Harp. I brought you something.” Reaching into her pocket, she removed a small trinket and dropped it onto the wooden railing. “It’s just a broken metal zipper tab I found on the ground today. Is that okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Should be fine.” He was just happy the bird didn’t attempt to snap at Selah. Instead, Harper cocked her head, studying the zipper tab, tapping it with the tip of her beak, before picking it up and hop-flapping away. “Where’s my broken zipper tab?” he asked with a grin.

“Here. I went to the dentist earlier this week and they let me pick out a sticker from the kid box. You said you’d never gotten a sticker gift before, so I picked this out for you.”

She handed him a small, round sticker featuring a cartoon hedgehog holding a yellow flower. He made plans to put it on his phone case as soon as she departed. The real gift would have been if she would have allowed Dex to wrap his arms around her petite, curvy frame, especially since he knew she had a rough day. Instead, he could only invite her inside. “Come on. Maybe Harper will be too occupied with her present and leave us alone this evening.”

Selah took a seat on the couch, dropping a small, worn canvas bag on the ground as she studied the image on the puzzle box.

“The pizza isn’t here yet. You wanna talk about your bad day?” he asked, taking a seat beside her.

Her focus remained on the puzzle lid. “Not really.” There was a strange vibe coming from her, something cool and closed off. It was clear she wasn’t in a talkative mood, and he wasn’t going to force the issue.

“We can stream a movie or something if you want.”

“Sure. Okay.”

Movie. Pizza. Puzzle. Plus, hanging out with Selah. As far as Dex was concerned, this was a solid Friday night for him.

That was until he switched to a streaming platform and found himself faced with an impossible task—finding the perfect movie. It had to be one that didn’t have any sex scenes to prevent things from becoming awkward. Also, he probably shouldn’t choose anything too romantic, too dark, too heavy, too anything. He asked her if she wanted to watch anything in particular, and she replied with the dreaded, “No, you can pick whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

Heated beads of sweat popped along his neck as though this was some sort of test, and he was about to royally screw it up by choosing wrong. His insecurity at being out of touch when it came to good movie choices was putting him on edge.

Finally, he struck guaranteed gold, pushing the play icon. “Oh. Let’s watchGalaxy Quest.”

Her body stiffened, but her gaze remained downcast, focused on the puzzle.

“You don’t like it? I can pick something else,” he said, reaching for the controller again.

“It’s fine,” she replied, but she didn’t look fine. She appeared pale and uneasy. But she kept her head down and concentrated on gathering edge pieces from the box.

This was how it went for about ten minutes, with only the sound of the movie filling the space, until she hyper-focused on a single piece in her hand. She appeared frozen, except for her chest moving at a rate too fast for normal breathing. He was having trouble paying attention to anything else, certain something was wrong, but not knowing what. Dex opened his mouth to ask her, when she suddenly grabbed her bag, sprung to standing, knocking several puzzle pieces to the floor, and said, “I—Sorry, I need to go. I can’t—I need to go.”

Dex checked his phone. “The pizza should be here any minute. Why don’t we—” but he was cut off with the door slamming shut, leaving him confused. Worried about her unexcepted change in demeanor, he rushed from the house to see if he could catch her before she left. Maybe she had heard his Colorado radio interview and she was upset about—

Dex did a dead stop on his porch. Selah had made it to her truck, but she stood hunched over at the passenger side, bracing herself against it, her breathing heavy and approaching hyperventilation.

Seeing her like this made his blood run cold. It terrified him. He wasn’t used to handling whatever heavy emotion this was. Someone else would be better than him. Except there wasn’t anyone else, and this was Selah. He strode to her, taking her by the shoulders, and the large dark eyes that met his were filled with so much pain and sorrow. It didn’t come as a surprise when she burst into tears.

He pulled her into a tight embrace. Her face pressed into his chest as her whole body racked with sobs. It absolutely killed him, his own chest tightening with helplessness at not knowing what was wrong or how to fix things. All he could do was hold her and murmur, “It’s okay” over and over again.

After a while, her sobs lessened, though she remained in his arms, the fabric of his shirt clutched within her fists. “I’m sorry,” she said through tears, pulling back. She sounded small, as though every part of her was cracking apart like fragile glass.

He readjusted his arms to fully embrace her body again, settling his head on the top of hers. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“I should go home.”

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