Vern stood on my porch, looking cheerful.
“Miss Monroe, I took the liberty of getting you a mocha from Java Jones. It’s waiting in the car.”
“Forget Dalton Deangelo, I want to marry you, Vern. Seriously. What will it take?”
“I don’t mean to be gauche, ma’am, but you’re not my type.”
“I don’t have the right equipment? Honey, I could get one of those harness things, and we could turn out all the lights and—oh, fuck! I’m sexually harassing you. Fuck me with a big box of fucks, I’m so embarrassed, Vern.”
He held the door of the car open for me. “I’m not feeling harassed, but I will decline your offer.”
“That’s good, because I’m already engaged to someone else, as you may know.”
“Someone with smoldering green eyes?”
I began to giggle uncontrollably as I slipped into the back seat.
Vern gave me a knowing look and circled around to the driver’s seat.
I sipped my mocha quietly on the drive out to the tip of Dragonfly Lake, where we drove past the cabin Dalton was renovating, to a dock with a float plane.
“Mr. Deangelo is meeting us there,” Vern explained when he saw me looking around.
I approached the plane cautiously, the suitcase I’d borrowed from Shayla making loud noises on the wooden dock as it rolled.
“He’s meeting us in LA?” I asked.
“No, San Francisco.”
“Why not LA? Wouldn’t that be a better location for all the press?”
“His favorite wedding gown designer is in San Francisco. The first fittings are today, and there are other plans for Sunday.”
I stopped and looked up at the blue sky. “Vern, I can be dense sometimes, but are you saying the wedding isn’t this weekend?”
He laughed. “This weekend? That would be preposterous. We haven’t even discussed the dinner menu.”
“Why did I think anything with Dalton Deangelo could be simple and quick?” I held up my hand. “Don’t answer. That’s a rhetorical question.”
Vern swung open the door of the small plane and took my suitcase as I stepped up into the vessel. As he got my luggage stowed away and pointed out the safety features of the small, private plane, I tried to maintain a neutral expression.
We stood together in the center of the plane, which was even tinier than Dalton’s Airstream trailer inside. What was it about that man and his little tin cans?
Vern pointed out the fire extinguisher and other things I hoped to never use.
I wondered what Shayla was doing back at the house. She was probably still in bed, the lucky girl. I’d popped my head into her room that morning to let her know I was heading out of town with Dalton. She sat up, stared straight at me, and asked me to bring back fancy cheese.
Fancy cheese.
It had seemed like such an odd request that I’d asked if she was sleep-talking and asked her to solve a simple math problem. She got the answer wrong, but I agreed to her request all the same.
When Vern was finished talking about “unlikely events,” I pulled out my phone and asked if I could text while we were flying.
“Only if you want me to leave you up there,” he said, pointing to the sky beyond the curved ceiling of the plane.
“You’re bad, Vern.”
“Just a little pilot humor.”
“Why do you look so happy? I thought you quit being a commercial pilot because you didn’t like it.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the pilot’s chair with fondness. “I love flying, but you can have too much of a good thing when you’re doing multiple flights every day. This, however, is puddle hopping, and puddle hopping is fun! Now, pick a seat.”
I chose a chair and buckled my seat belt as he watched. I wriggled in the seat, which was a little tight for my body, but not bad.
He continued, “I was in the air too much, but a few trips a week is wonderful. Do you know what I mean? With too much of something you love?”
“I may have reached that point myself, talking to customers about books.”
“Are you tired of the books, or the customers?”
“Mostly the repetition.”
He laughed. “So, you mean the customers, but you don’t want to sound rude. It’s okay, I understand.”
“Oh, I love the customers, usually, but the novelty wears off when you’re giving these little prepared speeches: Yes, it’s too bad there’s no more Oprah’s book club. Yes, it’s a shame more people aren’t reading these days, but you’re here in a bookstore now, so why don’t we have a look? And so on, and so on.” I put my hands up to my neck and pretended to strangle myself.
“You’ll have to find something new to occupy your days in LA, when you move in with Mr. Deangelo.”