Sloan and Brandon had said goodbye to their guests. Just Kristen and I stayed behind fulfilling our maid-of-honor and best-man duties helping them load the finished wedding favors and invitations into Brandon’s truck. Kristen, Sloan, and I stood on the patio watching the busboys blow out candles and clear the table while Brandon signed the charge draft.

“Good party,” Kristen said to Sloan. “We got it all done.”

Brandon handed the check to the server and came up behind his fiancée, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Sloan smiled, leaning into the kiss he put on her cheek.

Kristen got out her phone, and I watched her pull up the Uber app. “Want to go get something to eat before we go home?” I asked her,

hoping she’d go for it.

We’d been working on our projects for the last three hours, so it had been a while since we ate dinner, but my invite was just an excuse to stay out with her because I wasn’t staying the night tonight.

Or any other, probably ever again.

The backyard intruder had been apprehended. Some kid from the neighborhood, fucking around in people’s yards. I hadn’t told her. I needed to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say it yet. The second she knew they caught the guy, I wouldn’t have any reason to sleep over tonight. I had work the next two days and when I came back, it would all be over. Tyler would be home.

This was my last night with her.

I tried not to let the disappointment darken my mood and ruin the little time I had left.

“Sure. But I can’t find an Uber,” she said, looking at her screen. “The nearest one is twenty-three minutes away. The bars must be getting out.”

“You can take my car,” Sloan said, hugging Brandon’s arms to her chest. “We took two cars over since I had to get here early. I’ll just ride home with Brandon.”

Kristen shook her head. “I’m not driving that thing.” “I can handle it,” I said. “I can drive anything.” “Can you?” Kristen eyed me.

“Ha ha. Give me the keys. I have work tomorrow. I haven’t had anything to drink besides the champagne toast.”

Sloan handed them over and we said our good-nights. Something was off with Sloan. She gave Kristen a hug that was a little too long to be casual, but Kristen’s face was unreadable.

“So where do you want to eat?” I asked as we walked out into the parking lot to the click of Kristen’s red heels.

“Tacos. I know a late-night place.”

This made me smile to myself. She always knew exactly where she wanted to eat. She wasn’t one of those women who gave you the “I don’t care” speech and then rejected every suggestion you made. When I pointed this out to her last week, she said she’s already thinking about what she wants for dinner while she’s eating breakfast. I loved that about her.

I loved a lot of things about her.

When I opened her door for her, it creaked miserably. Sloan drove an old Corolla. It looked like a car you’d find in a junkyard. It was a serious piece of shit.

The door on the driver’s side stuck, and I had to muscle it open. I got it started, but just barely, and I pulled out of the lot to the squeal of belts. Kristen pointed for me to turn left.

I looked at her. She was so beautiful tonight. The subtle hints of gold in her hair, the depth of her eyes, the fit of her dress. I had to drag my gaze back to the road. “Everything okay with you and Sloan? You guys spent a long time in the bathroom earlier.”

“Fine.” She looked out the window.

She wasn’t going to tell me. I dropped it.

“Hey. I forgot to tell you something,” I said reluctantly.

She turned back to me, and I thought I saw the flicker of something sad or tired in her eyes. “Tell me what?”

“I’ll be out of your hair tonight. Today, when you were out, your neighbor across the street brought his son over. Apparently he and his little friend were stealing beers from his dad’s fridge and drinking them in your backyard. They tried to get into your house to steal liquor. The good news is you’ve got a kid whose dad is making him mow your lawn for the next month.”

I looked over at her, and the expression on her face looked like disappointment.

Disappointment.

Could she feel the same way about this that I did? Was it possible she didn’t want me to leave either?

“Oh. Well, I’m glad the mystery is solved and you’re off the hook,” she said.

“Can I be honest?” I paused, debating what to say. “I liked hanging out with you.” It was the closest thing that I could bring myself to say to her without feeling like I was crossing a line.

“I liked hanging out with you too,” she said quietly. The silence between us was heavy.

Why did I feel like we were breaking up? I guess in a way, we were. The two of us as we knew it was about to be over.

On Monday when I got to her house, I’d have to meet this guy. Shake his hand. See them together. I didn’t think I could do it. I really didn’t. I was going to give her my notice. I’d help out until she found someone, but I couldn’t stick around after this.

The taco place ended up being a food truck. It sat in a vacant parking lot in the seediest part of Los Angeles with poor lighting and grass poking out from the cracks in the asphalt.

It made me wish I had my gun.

Tents on the sidewalk lined the outside of the lot’s fence, and the streetlight over the entrance flickered.

“Are you sure you want to eat here?” I asked, turning off the engine and scanning our surroundings, not liking at all what I was seeing. Buildings

with broken windows, graffiti on the walls. I responded to calls to areas like these frequently. None of them good. Stabbings, overdoses—rapes.

“Why? You don’t have to parallel park. What’s the problem?”

I scoffed. “Really? Parallel parking is the only thing that would keep you from eating here? Look at this place.”

“These are the best tacos in the city,” she said, getting unbuckled. “And don’t pretend you know how to parallel park. We both know how well you drive.” She grinned at me.

An old homeless guy who had been sitting on the inside of the fence shambled toward the car. “Nope. Let’s go.” I said, turning the key in the ignition. It made a weak cranking noise that I didn’t have time to process because Kristen opened the door and got out.

“Shit,” I mumbled, quickly following. The door didn’t close all the way when I slammed it, but I didn’t have time to fix it. The homeless guy was almost to the car, and Kristen was…walking toward him?

“Hey, Marv,” she said as I bolted in front of her to put myself between them. I threw an arm across her chest and a hand out to stop the toothless man’s advance.

“Hey,” Marv said, ignoring me and talking around me to Kristen like I wasn’t there.

She rummaged in her purse and handed him two dollar bills over my arm.

“Enjoy your food. Your door’s open, son,” the guy said before shuffling back to the fence.

Kristen turned to me. “He’s the guy who watches the lot. Come on.” She motioned to the taco truck.

My heart still thrummed in my ears. “Are you serious? The guy who ‘watches the lot’?” I followed her, looking over my shoulder back at the man.

“Yeah, it’s a thing. Kinda the Skid Row version of valet. He picks up trash, keeps the shady guys out. He does a good job. Look, no needles anywhere. And that guy’ll shank somebody for so much as looking at our car. Not that it’s anything to look at.” She gave me a crooked smile.

I shook my head. “You have no survival instincts, do you? You deliver dog sweaters to a felon, hunker down when you’ve got a prowler in the yard. Now you’re paying off homeless guys who ‘watch the lot.’”

“Hey, my instincts are spot-on. The prowler turned out to be a nonissue.

And anyway, I already know how I’m going to die.”

We stopped in front of the truck window. The generator made a whirring noise, and the scrape of spatulas on a sizzling grill clinked from inside.

“How?” I asked.

“Spider bite. Or being sarcastic at the wrong time.”

I chuckled as two more cars pulled into the lot in quick succession. A nice SUV and an older model Honda. The rest of my guard dropped.

“Do you like everything?” she asked. “Onions? Hot stuff?” The smell of cooking meat drifted out of the window, and a gray-haired man in a dirty white apron waited for our order as moths fluttered around the light over the whiteboard menu.

“I eat everything,” I said.

She ordered for us, and I paid, putting a twenty through the window before she had a chance to object.

“This isn’t a date,” she reminded me, trying to hand over her own cash.

She never let me pay.

“Yeah, but you paid for our protection,” I argued.

She didn’t look pleased, but she accepted my excuse. I watched her standing there, and a twinge of regret that this wasn’t a date washed over me.

I couldn’t believe I had to give her up.

When our food came out, she gave three tacos to Marv and we sat on the hood of the car to eat.

“That was pretty sexy back there when you went Marine Corps on that guy,” she said as she pulled off her heels and chucked them through the open sunroof.

“I wouldn’t have let him touch you.” I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, ever. She took a sip of her Sprite. “I know. That’s what was sexy about it.”

For all her claims that she found me sexy, it did me no good whatsoever. She didn’t want me. None of this would continue once her boyfriend was here. I wouldn’t be able to take her out for tacos or show up with pizza. I wouldn’t even be able to sit in her living room with her.

I wondered if this thought had any effect on her, or was she just happy that her boyfriend was going to be home?

Probably that last one.

I sat looking out over the lot, a sucking sense of loss pulling on my heart. She was like a unicorn. A mythical creature. An honest, no-drama woman who didn’t bullshit and drank beer and cussed and didn’t care about what people thought of her. She was a unicorn, tucked in the body of an

attractive woman with a great ass.

And I couldn’t have her. So I should just stop thinking about it.

We finished eating and got back in the car. I didn’t want to take her home. Or rather I did, but not to drop her off.

I considered asking her to go do something else, just to make it last, but it couldn’t be anything that felt like a date. She wouldn’t agree to that. But I didn’t know Los Angeles. I had no idea what was open. And there was only so far I could take this without it verging on inappropriate for a woman with a boyfriend and healthy boundaries. So I reluctantly prepared to take her home.

This was it. The last time I’d have her alone. The final moments. I’d had all I was going to get.

I turned the key in the ignition and the engine didn’t turn over. My eyes flitted to hers and I tried it again. The cranking turned into a click.

“Shit,” I said, rejoicing internally at the idea of being stranded with her in a dodgy parking lot in the middle of the night.

“Do we need a jump?” she asked, peering at me with her pretty brown eyes.

“Probably,” I grumbled, doing my best not to seem pleased at this development. I got out and flagged down the guys in the Honda still eating in their car. One unsuccessful jump start later and I was calling a tow truck.

“I’m going to give Brandon so much shit for this. Sloan should not be driving this thing,” I said, getting back into the driver’s seat to wait. That part was true, but for the sake of extending our night, I couldn’t be happier that Sloan drove a piece of crap. I had to slam the door three times to get it to shut, and I was more than happy to do it.

“She’s sentimental. This was her first car. Sloan can never bear to part with anything.” She lowered her seat all the way back until she was lying down, and she turned on her side to face me, her arm tucked under her head. “She still has the ticket stubs from the first movie we went to, like, twelve years ago.”

The way she was lying showed off the curve in her hips. I could almost

picture her like that next to me in bed. Her lipstick was gone, but the stain was still on her lips, making them look pink and supple. I wanted to put a thumb to her mouth, see if it felt as soft as it looked.

She looked out of place in this shitty car with torn, faded fabric on the seat under her, duct tape on the glove box. Like an elegant leading lady right out of a black-and-white movie, dropped into a scene that didn’t make any sense.

I tore my gaze away, afraid she’d notice me staring.

“Lie down with me,” she said. “We have what? A forty-five-minute wait? Might as well be comfortable.”

I lowered my seat and stared up through the sunroof at the Los Angeles version of stars—the planes lining up to land at LAX.

We sat in silence for a minute, and I thought of that scene in Pulp Fiction, when—

“You know what this feels like?” she asked. “That scene in Pulp Fiction, when—”

“Comfortable silences. When Mia Wallace says, ‘That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.’”

She made a finger gun at me. “Disco.”

We smiled and held each other’s gaze for a moment. A long, lingering moment. And then, just for a second—a split second—her eyes dropped to my lips.

That’s all it took.

In that moment, I knew. She’d thought about kissing me just then.

This isn’t one-sided.

It was the first hint I’d seen that she was interested. That she thought of me as more than just a friend.

Encouraged, my heart launched into rapid fire as I started debating my options.

The boyfriend.

My threshold for being respectful to this lucky, absent bastard was evaporating. I was going to make a move on her. If I didn’t, I’d never forgive myself for not trying. If there was even the slightest chance she might be into me, I had to try.

But how? Should I just try to kiss her? Would she tell me to go to hell?

Probably.

What if I slid my hand over hers? Would she yank it away? She would. I knew she would.

I needed something else. Something less. More subtle. Something that could go either way to test the waters. Something that could lead to something else.

“Hey, I give a decent foot massage if your feet hurt.” I nodded to the center console where her heels still sat after being dropped through the sunroof.

To my surprise, she pivoted until her back was against the door, and she swung her legs over into my lap. She put an arm behind her head and leaned back. “Go for it. Those heels were killing me today.”

I grinned inwardly that my strategy worked and put my back to the door while I took her tiny foot in my hand. “I’m a foot massage master. ‘I don’t be tickling or nothing,’” I said, giving her a Pulp Fiction line.

She snorted. “I’m exfoliated and pedicured. Someone should touch them.”

I thought about what Vincent Vega says in the movie, that foot massages mean something. That men act like they don’t, but they do and that’s why they’re so cool.

This meant something, and I knew she knew it. She was as familiar with that movie as I was. She had to be making the connection.

And she’d allowed it.

I reveled in the chance to touch her and at the unspoken meaning behind her letting me do it.

“So, Foot Massage Master, what other tricks do you have in your bag?” she asked, giving me a sideways smile.

I pressed a thumb into her arch and circled it around with a smirk. “I’m not giving you my trade secrets.” What if I need them?

She scoffed. “Your gender doesn’t have any secrets that every woman hasn’t already seen by the time they’re twenty.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Ever heard of the naked man?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh God, the naked man. That one’s the worst.” I laughed. “Why? Because it works?”

She scrunched up her face. “I have to admit it has worked on me in the past. I mean, the guy’s naked. Half the work is done for you already. It’s

kind of hard to say no. But when it doesn’t work, it’s so cringey.”

I tipped my head from side to side. “It’s risky. I’ll give you that. You have to know your audience. But big risks can reap big rewards.”

“Waiting for your girlfriend to leave the room and then stripping naked to surprise her when she gets back is so unoriginal though. You men have no new material. I swear you could go back twenty thousand years and peek into a cave and find cavemen drawing penises on everything and doing the naked man and the helicopter.”

I pulled her foot closer and laughed. “Hey, don’t knock the helicopter.

It’s the first move we learn. It can be a good icebreaker.”

“The helicopter should be banned over the age of eight. I’m just going to spare you the illusion right now. No woman is sitting around with her girlfriends going, ‘Gurl, it was the sexiest helicopter I’ve ever seen. Totally broke the ice.’”

I chuckled and ran my hand up her smooth calf, rubbing the muscle. I pictured that delicate ankle on my shoulder where I could kiss it, run my palm down the outside of her thigh, pull down those light-blue lace panties…

She smiled. “Have you ever seen the buttback whale?” “No.”

“Now that’s a rare sighting.”

I took her other foot and started working on it. “What is it?”

“It’s when you’re in a pool or a lake or something and you— You know what?” She waved me off. “It’s just better if you see one in person. I’m not going to ruin it.”

I laughed. “What? You dangle buttback whale in front of me and then just take it away?”

She shook her head. “It’s too magical. If I tell you, it’s just going to take the wonder from it when you finally see one.”

I started to tickle her. “Tell me.”

She shrieked and tried yanking her foot away, and I held her tighter. “What is the buttback whale, Kristen?”

“Okay! Okay! I’ll talk!” She twisted and giggled and I stopped tickling her, but I kept her foot.

Her dress had inched up her thighs in the struggle, and I gave the bare skin an appreciative glance. She saw me do it.

She smirked at me and tugged the fabric down. “All right, the buttback whale is when you pull your swim trunks down under the water and then you come out like a whale breaching the surface, flashing whoever is in the pool with your butt.”

I grinned. “How have I never heard of this?”

She shook her head. “No idea. You men are always looking for ways to moon each other. I’m sure it was a man’s idea.”

“I’m going to do it to Brandon the next time I’m in a pool with him.”

She put her arm back behind her head. “Oh, well make sure you give me a heads-up. It’s been years since I’ve seen a buttback whale.” She gave me a wry grin.

I hoped it meant she wanted to see my bare ass.

When I pressed both thumbs into the ball of her foot, she bit her lip. “Damn, you’re good at that.”

You should see what I could do with the rest of you.

I kept circling my thumbs. “So what about you? Any tricks of the trade?”

She snorted. “I’m a woman. I can go into a bar penniless wearing sweats and a questionable rash and come out with leftovers and a buzz.”

I was laughing at this when her cell phone rang. She reached for her purse and fished out her phone. “It’s Tyler.” She didn’t answer it. She turned off the ringer.

“You’re not going to answer it?” She didn’t answer the last time he called either.

She didn’t make eye contact with me as she put her phone back. “Nah.” When she finally looked at me, we gazed at each other for a moment. “Why?” I asked.

One little three-letter word. Such a loaded question. I didn’t want to talk about Tyler. I wanted to talk about why she was ignoring him when she was with me.

The first time had been noteworthy. But this was a statement. Even if she was busy, she still should have answered, just to make sure it wasn’t an emergency. He was in a war zone.

She pulled her feet from my lap. “I just didn’t think you’d want to sit here and listen to me on the phone.” She shrugged.

I wasn’t buying it. I called bullshit. “And what about the other day?

That’s two calls you missed. It’s hard to call on deployment.”

“We were watching a movie,” she said defensively.

A weak excuse. A movie we’d both seen half a dozen times. We weren’t even paying attention to it when he’d called. We’d been talking.

“Why aren’t you answering his calls when you’re with me?” She was too honest to deflect a direct question.

I might be reaching. I might hate the answer. I might be totally out of line, but I had to ask it. I had to know if time with me was as important to her as it was for me.

For me, even the seconds mattered.

She stared at me, her lips slightly parted. I could see her struggle with the answer.

Tell me.

Then she looked over my shoulder. The tow truck had pulled into the lot.