Except, well…the kid really needed to do something healthier than sitting in the physical remnants of Rick’s failed happily ever after, glaring at a blue shirt of shame like it was a copperhead.
“I’ll call someone if you call Quinn,” Rick conceded. “But it’s not my fault if I get told no.”
“Way to think positive.” Diego snorted, but Rick could see the younger man thumbing his phone nervously.
Rejection preferred solitude, but having a hedgehog never hurt. They rarely told a secret. Gathering up Darla to keep him company, Rick dressed her in her ugliest Christmas sweater and matching mittens, then put her inside a heated hedgie sock. Rick went to the porch, tucking Darla inside his Carhartt and zipping it up, breath misting in the air in front of his face. It was dangerous to let a domesticated hedgehog get too cold. They could start to hibernate and grow very sick, even die. But Darla loved being outside with him, so a couple of minutes in her warmer would be okay.
Unlike some of the people in his town, Rick had never minded the long, dark Alaskan winters. With the dark came the stars. He’d spent a lot of nights for a lot of years sitting beneath this sky, and it was an old friend.
Some nights, it felt like his best friend.
The kid wasn’t wrong. It had been a really long time since he’d taken a woman out. Even longer since he’d called a woman for that purpose.
“What do you think, Darla? Do people even call anymore? Or is it only texting?”
Darla snorted her cute little snout, wiggling in the warmth inside his jacket.
Fiddling with the phone in his hand, Rick knew he wasn’t any better than Diego.
“Screw it,” Rick finally said, typing a message into his phone to Lana and pressing the Send button. She’d given him her number that summer, not that he’d ever called it. There. He’d texted. Except reception always kind of sucked, and the stupid little bar never finished sending the message. It had tricked him before. Did she get it? Did she not get it? What if it got stuck in the ether and kept sending his message over and over again like he was a weirdo?
Rick had never regretted a “hey” more.
A little text bubble popped up, briefly restoring his faith in technology and the blood flow to his twisting stomach.
“Call me?” he read aloud.
Rick supposed the invitation was better than a few other responses he could have gotten. Yet somehow the idea of calling Lana was far worse than accidentally repeat texting her.
With a sigh, Rick sat on the cold wooden slats of his porch swing, unzipping his jacket a bit so Darla could look out.
The door slammed shut behind him. Diego stomped down the steps, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Where are you going?” he called. Diego ignored him by opening his car door. “Did Quinn say yes?”
Diego answered that with a finger.
“Think that means yes?” Rick asked the hedgehog in his jacket. “You lost your mitten, Darla.”
Darla wiggled her little snout, letting Rick tug the protective mitten over her tiny foot before snugging the heated sock around her.
“I think she said yes.” Rick rolled Darla over into the crook of his arm. He’d never had children, but he’d wanted them. A surly twenty-year-old, a grumpy cat, and a hedgehog named after a Buffy the Vampire Slayer vampire weren’t exactly the family he’d planned on, but Rick had learned a long time ago to be grateful for what he had. It could all change in a moment.
He and Diego had that in common.
Since his hedgehog was more important than even this evening’s starscape, Rick went back inside and tucked Darla into her heated cage, warming sock and all.
A little squeak met his actions.
“I know, I know, but they come off when you come out of the sock. It’s the rules, Darla.” She squeaked again. “Baby, it’s the rules.”
The squeaking hadn’t gone unnoticed. After securing her cage, Rick turned to find a pair of tawny eyes blinking at him from the top of his desk, an orange tail twitching.
“Don’t eat my hedgehog, Roger. We’ve talked about this.” Roger glared at him balefully.
No one ever listened to him.
When Rick finally had the nerve to call Lana, four hedgie mittens and a bowl of cereal had been attended to, and one cat had been removed from the office, the door safely closed. He returned to the porch, figuring if anyone needed some privacy from a judgmental tabby while making an ass of themselves, it was him.
She answered on the second ring.
“I was starting to wonder if it was me.” Lana’s voice sounded amused on the other end of the line.
“My hedgehog had a mitten issue. And my cat had a hedgehog issue.”
“Your evening sounds far more interesting than mine,” Lana said. “The only issue I’ve had is whether or not to have an olive in my martini.”
How could she do that? Jump right into a conversation like it was nothing when he’d cleared his throat twice in the last two moments, hands sweating in his gloves. Was it hot? It felt hot.
“I’m not a big drinker,” Rick told her, going for a third throat clear because apparently, he wasn’t capable of better. “Never had a martini.”
“So…what are you wearing?”
Rick’s jaw loosened, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.
“I’m teasing you,” Lana said, sounding a bit embarrassed. “Ignore me. I’ve had one too many olives.”
“I’m pretty sure I couldn’t ignore you if I tried.”
Silence, and then a soft laugh. “Rick Harding, did you flirt with me?”
“Flirted back,” Rick said. “You started it.”
“Really? I remember a certain ‘hey baby’ text not that long ago.”
“I didn’t say ‘baby.’” Rick choked on his horror. Yes, it really was hot out there. The twenty-degree weather was much too warm for his clothing choices.
“The ‘baby’ was implied,” Lana assured him.
“Lana, what are you doing right now? Other than the martini olives?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to catch an elusive, violently destructive Santa Moose without the benefit of experience or anything remotely resembling expertise. Why do you ask?”
Rick took a breath, took a chance, and then did the one thing he wasn’t ready for…not by a long shot.
“Would you like some company?”
Apparently, Lana would.
* * *
It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t a booty call. Frankly, neither one of them seemed to have any idea of what exactly this was.
But whatever it was, there was a long discussion about ice cream sandwiches and what constituted a dad bod. Lana wasn’t sure how the topic had come up, but it probably was the reason Rick had spent the last ten minutes showing her pictures of his fur babies on his phone.
“You have a hedgehog. Is that a Christmas sweater?”
“Darla is a bit of a fashionista in the winter.”
Lana had never been so delighted. Well, she’d once met a baby python snake that preferred top hats and a cummerbund, but Darla had edged out the snake, paws down. Teeny tiny reindeer-themed mitten-covered paws.
She had been close to retiring for the evening, but when a man like Rick “hey baby-ed” her, it was impossible to resist. They’d sat at a little table in the corner of the bar, the trendy plush seating too deep and far too reclined to have a decent conversation in. The seating in her suite was more comfortable, but she didn’t want to give off the wrong impression. Besides, the last man who’d been in her room had been there to convince Zoey to fall in love with him.
“Can I buy you another drink?” Rick asked, the words catching a little in his throat, as if he wasn’t used to saying them.
She hesitated, playing with the skewer that had once held an olive in her martini. “I’ll have a water with you. I’d hate to be the only one tipsy at the end of the evening.”
Lana had made a point a long time ago to never let someone else pay for her. She didn’t like the way it made her feel, as if she was beholden to them for at least a moment of her company. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go that many drinks in when he’d been sipping water since he’d joined her.
Still. If she was going to break her rule, Lana was definitely tempted to break it for Rick.
The waiter returned with their waters, and her companion shifted on his purple velvet seat, looking as out of place and as uncomfortable as she was.
“I’m not very good at this,” Rick admitted, running a hand over the back of his neck. Lana reached for his other hand, instinctively squeezing it.
“All you have to do is sit there and look good. I promise you’re doing fabulously. We’re two friends having a drink after what I assume was a long day for you too.”
Rick’s face flushed a rather adorable shade of red, and he pulled on the neck of his shirt as if trying to loosen a nonexistent tie. Suddenly, he leaned in.
“Thanks for meeting up with me. Diego thinks I need to get out more.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s not wrong. But I’m not sure I could handle more time with Ash and Graham. Easton maybe…he doesn’t require me to actively participate in conversations. But I’d have to do more mountain climbing, and he likes the scary ones.”
“Like Mount Veil?”
“Veil, Denali. All the big monsters. I’m happier closer to sea level.”
Lana smiled. “Me too. At least I’m not a climber. I’m perfectly happy at all elevations. And I’m glad you texted me. I don’t have a lot of friends in town. I do my best to be okay with that, but sometimes I wish…” Drifting off, Lana offered, “It is what it is.”
“With friends like mine, I can promise you, they’re overrated. And intrusive. And constantly bugging me to sign up for every dating app under the sun.”
Lana took a sip of her water. “In a town this small, you could pretty much stand along Main Street and shout if anyone wants to see a movie. You’ll reach the better part of the town’s occupants.”