Dash shot Billy a death glare.
Levi shouted, "Whoa! Right on."
"Billy, I'm gonna fucking kill you," Dash seethed.
"I didn't do anything! I didn't even tell anybody that you guys were bumping uglies so hard you busted a bunch of her mom's liquor all over the floor!"
Declan piped up. "Excuse me, what now?"
Holden covered his face. Levi hooted. Dash felt as furious as a rodeo bull, and Billy was the one taunting him with a red flag.
"Don't talk about her," Dash seethed, making a run for Billy's midsection.
He barely registered Declan asking, "But can we talk about the bill for the spilled whiskey, though?"
Dash tackled Billy to the floor. He didn't particularly enjoy setting his friend straight with a wrestling match at the end of a shift, but it had been a whole 24 hours since the last time they sparred. So much had happened in that time, and Dash had a lot of frustration built up. Plus, Billy was overdue for an ass-whooping.
Dash had Billy pinned to the floor, but Billy cackled underneath him. "I didn't say anything bad about her, relax, lover boy. She looked like she was into it."
After popping him across the head with a medium amount of force—not enough to do any damage but enough to get his point across—Dash told him again to keep his mouth shut.
"I've had enough of your bullshit," Dash said.
"Dude. Everyone in this room has seen the way you and she are blue balls for each other. Just go get her already and put the rest of us out of our misery!"
He'd heard this running joke before. His friends had told him repeatedly that Harper drove him crazy because of some unrealized feelings for her. But he'd never taken it seriously. After everything that had happened, he knew they had been right all along. And maybe it was time to stop being so closed off about it and defensive. If someone could channel defensiveness into electricity, they could power the entire neighborhood. Dash and his friends and neighbors all thrived on it.
Maybe these walls and that temper of his was not only preventing him from being happy, but perhaps he was making everyone else miserable around him.
Feeling taken aback for the first time by something Billy had said, Dash got off of him and stood up. He reached down and helped his friend back on his feet.
"Billy, that might be the smartest thing I've ever heard you say."
Walking around Dockside at three a.m. is not advisable at the best of times, but Dash was so pent up he needed to walk.
With no thought to whether he might get jumped by someone with a bone to pick, he headed straight back to Harper's house.
The sudden appearance of a man in black on the sidewalk as he neared Harper's house almost derailed his one-track mind. Almost. Clergy had a way of doing that.
"Father O'Brien, what are you doing out here? It's fucking—I mean, it's three in the morning!"
Fr. O'Brien explained that he had just come from visiting a grieving family in the neighborhood whose loved one had passed in the middle of the night. Dash shivered at the memory of the moment his dad had died in isolation, an image that still haunted him. Fr. O'Brien had stayed with him and his mom and Holden through the entire ordeal, and Dash had been grateful for that.
"You shouldn't be out walking this late, Father."
The priest looked from Dash to the house adjacent to where they stood and back to Dash. "I could say the same thing about you, Lynwood."
Gritting his teeth at the sound of his given name, Dash replied, "True."
The priest waited for Dash to offer more information, which he did not.
"You know, the one thing I appreciate about this neighborhood is the way we all look out for each other," Fr. O'Brien mused, seemingly apropos of nothing.
"Yeah," agreed Dash.
"Especially the way people like our wonderful Harper salt my walkway in the middle of the night. She's going to make someone a wonderful wife someday."
Oh. My. God.
"Uh, Father, I…"
Father O'Brien continued, "And I would hate to see her reputation ruined before she makes such a commitment."
He meant well, but the older man had pretty outdated ideas. "I would never spread any rumors about Harper or do anything to make anyone think anything bad about her."
"Oh, I know you wouldn't, which is why I'm so impressed to see you out here, shoveling her snow, while she's fast asleep. It's a very gentlemanly thing to do," said the priest.
"I don't…I mean I'm not—"
"Her shovel is in the tool shed, and the key is under the ceramic frog on the back step. I'll be sure to deduct a few Hail Marys for…whatever sins you might have to confess the next time you come to confession."
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This fuckin' guy.
But Dash didn't say that. He would never say that out loud. "Sure thing, Padre."
He watched the priest cross the street and enter his house. Having that feeling that God was watching, Dash did what the priest had more or less told him to do.
The ceramic frog on Harper's back step smiled at him under the security light as he retrieved the fucking key and opened the fucking tool shed to get the fucking shovel. He cursed his fucking luck and also made mental notes to talk to Harper about the terrible idea of hiding a key under that stupid fucking frog.
Chapter Eight
Harper
The house on the corner of Church Street folded Harper in after a peculiar day and even weirder night.
She unwound from that fascinating and confusing interlude with Dash with a bowl of homemade soup while she watched her favorite baking contest on TV, curled up in a homemade afghan on her hand-me-down sofa.
A good as her reheated homemade soup was—made with produce from her garden—nothing about the show held her attention.
It wasn't that she necessarily wanted someone to eat soup with or watch television
