Page 87 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

‘Shhh!’ Tara swats his arm. ‘Miss Rita will hear you.’

Luke looks chastened for a moment, but when Tara doesn’t move her hand from his arm right away, his expression melts into something smug.

I’m glad one of us has their love life under control, seeing as I just found out I’m spending the next two weeks sharing a bed with the woman I’m in very serious lust with but definitely shouldn’t touch.

Fantastic.

‘I brought you a new one to try.’ Rita hustles over with another single-serve tub of ice cream. ‘This is a little something I’ve been playing around with. It’s a bit unusual, but I think I’m close to cracking it.’

As the ice cream in question is a vivid yellow with veins of green sauce running through it I dread to think what this means.

‘Thanks, Miss Rita,’ Tara sings, beaming at the mad scientist. Rita leaves with a cheery wink, humming to herself as she goes. Obviously, she’s delighted to find someone who is willing to try her wild experiments, and our table in the front of the parlour is covered in small tubs of half-eaten ice cream.

‘What do you think?’ Tara pokes the new flavour in front of her with her plastic spoon. ‘Banana?’

‘That is extremely optimistic,’ I say.

‘She said unusual,’ Lee wrinkles her nose. ‘It could be some sort of cheese?’

‘Isn’t there a type of chard that’s yellow?’ Tara ponders. ‘That might explain the green bits.’

‘Okay, I definitely draw the line at chard,’ Luke grumbles. ‘Ice cream should come in one of three flavours: vanilla, strawberry or chocolate.’

‘Boooooooooo!’ Tara pokes him in the side. ‘Where is your sense of adventure? For that I think you have to be the one to try it.’

She scoops a spoonful of the yellow mixture and holds it up. She’s grinning at him, an obvious dare.

When Luke takes the spoon into his mouth and licks it clean, Tara’s breath catches, her eyes glued to his lips. I think she’s humming something under her breath.

‘Well?’ Lee asks, her amusement clear.

Luke grimaces. ‘I don’t know. Is there such a thing as fish ice cream?’

‘Oh god,’ I wince.

Luke takes a long sip of his vanilla milkshake, while looking a bit pale, and Tara tells him how brave and manly he is.

We’ve spent the afternoon giving Tara her tour of Roseport, and when Luke happened to bump into us, he tagged along too. Phoebe opted for a playdate with Maya instead, and Maya’s mum offered to drop her back later, so it’s been just the four of us ducking in and out of shops, enjoying the crisp autumn weather, while Tara and Lee ooh and ahh over every single building, lamppost and picket fence in Roseport.

It’s been good, actually, a welcome distraction from not only the catastrophic events of earlier, but also the absurd and overwhelming crush I have on my wife, the one that increasingly threatens my sanity.

Seeing that ring on her finger this morning almost had me on my knees, offering her a lot of things I have no business offering her.

But come on, when I opened that box and found a daisy made of diamonds nestled against the velvet I knew the universe was fucking with me. If I had ever actually proposed to Lee then it’s the ring I would have chosen. It looks so right on her finger it makes me want to howl. Honestly, everything about this woman has me feeling feral. I’m slightly concerned about what the next full moon will bring. It’s possible she’s awoken something in me.

‘Alert! Alert!’ Rita comes barrelling back towards us, her phone clutched in her hand. ‘The Operation Wedded Bliss group chat is hopping! Your lawyer guy’s wandering around downtown and Ern’s keeping him busy at the hardware store but he’s going to pass by here any minute, so you two need to start looking way more married.’

‘What does that even mean?’ I ask. ‘We’re sitting right next to each other.’ It’s bad enough that whenever we’re in public together Phoebe is constantly making sure Lee and I are holding hands, I don’t need Rita micromanaging me as well.

Rita rolls her eyes at me. ‘Good lord, Nico, it’s no wonder you can’t get a date.’

‘Hey!’ I protest. ‘Just because I haven’t been dating doesn’t mean I couldn’t if I wanted to.’

Tara and Luke are already pushing away from the table.

‘It’ll look more convincing if it’s just the two of you,’ Tara says innocently. ‘Me and Luke are going to go and check out… the bookstore again.’

‘Yup,’ Luke nods eagerly. ‘Don’t worry, you guys. I’ll make sure Tara gets home safely.’