“Hello?” I creep toward the kitchen. It’s empty, though Ashleigh’s phone is on the counter, her playlist still blaring out “Love Is a Battlefield” via Bluetooth speaker.

I traipse back into the living room, but there’s no sign of them. Behind me, the front door clanks open.

I turn and stop short. So does Miles.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi?” He says it like a question, a look akin to horror on his face.

Probably because I’m drifting around the apartment in a gown for a wedding that never happened while Pat Benatar serenades me from the kitchen.

“I’m not wearing this,” I say quickly.

“Okay,” he says.

“I mean, I am wearing this, but not by myself,” I explain.

He looks around the empty apartment.

“Your sister and Ashleigh were here!” I also look around the empty apartment, searching for proof I’m not having a Miss Havisham moment and instead finding wedding supplies everywhere. “They wanted to see the dress, so I put it on, and now they’re . . . somewhere.”

He finally cracks a smile, takes off his sweatshirt, and tosses it over a chair. “I saw them getting into a cab downstairs. Apparently they needed milkshake supplies.”

Which explained what Ashleigh was shouting at me when I was wrestling with the dress. “Ah.” I cross my arms in front of myself.

“I’ll pay you to wear that to Peter and Petra’s wedding,” he says.

“I’ll pay you more,” I say.

His grin splits wide. “It’s a nice dress. You look nice.”

I blush furiously. “I look like an overstuffed cannolo.”

His head cocks. “What’s a cannolo?”

“The singular version of cannoli,” I say.

“So you look delicious,” he says.

“It used to fit better. Or my vision’s just getting better. Or maybe it’s just, the longer this cuts off my oxygen, the prettier the hallucinations get.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, then, with a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, “even better than an Italian pastry.”

As his gaze tracks over me, I get an unadulterated hit of his spicy-sweet scent and lurch toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna go change.”

Inside, I lock the door and face the mirror. Red splotches have spread from the neckline up my throat.

They basically spell out I STILL WANT MILES NOWAK.

I push aside thoughts of what happened between us in his truck and reach back between my shoulders for the zipper. It glides down a few inches, then snags. I turn my back to the mirror and look over my shoulder as I wrestle the zipper over the bump in the fabric. I manage to tug it back up the tracks an inch, but when I draw it down again, it snags even worse.

It won’t budge, and the bodice feels tighter than it did a minute ago. The more I mess with the zipper, the more panicked I become.

My skin feels tender under the seams, my rib cage hurts, I can’t get a good breath, and The Dress. Is. Stuck.

OceanofPDF.com

22

I barrel out of the bathroom and smash into Miles, who’s been waiting in the hallway like a nervous first-time father pacing the hospital floors.

“You’re still in it,” he says.

“It’s stuck,” I say. “I think I broke the zipper, and the dress is too tight, and I can’t breathe, and it’s stuck.”

“It’s okay.”

“Oh, is it?” I say. “Then I feel better.”

He’s turning me by the elbow. “I’ll get it. Just try to breathe.” He gathers my hair off my neck so carefully his fingers never brush skin. “Can you hold this out of the way?”

I pin my hair against the back of my head, shoulders and arms throbbing as my heart pumps too much blood to my extremities.

Miles pinches the two sides of the fabric and wiggles the zipper until it gives. At midback, it catches. “Shit. Hold on.”

More pinching, wiggling, straining. I close my eyes and focus on my breath.

The zipper goes up and glides down to the same snag.

“Try to stay still,” he says.

“You keep pulling me off balance,” I say.

“Do you have any ChapStick?” he asks.

“Can your mouth moisturization wait a minute?” I cry.

“Nah, not really—it’s for the zipper, Daphne.”

“In the medicine cabinet,” I tell him. We shuffle together into the cramped bathroom, him holding up the back of my dress as we go. I hand the tube to him and he does whatever it is he thinks he’s going to do with it, then goes back to wrestling the zipper.

He loses purchase and smacks an elbow into the wall behind me with a grunt of pain. “It’s too cramped in here.”

We shuffle-step back into the hall. He tries again, his frustrated huff turning into a laugh.

“What?” I ask over my shoulder.

“Now I can’t see anything.” He drags me by the skirt through his bedroom door, bumping the lights on.

“Can you lean over the dresser?” he asks.

“Seriously?” I say.

“I need more leverage,” he says, “and every time I pull, you come with me.”

Dear god, what did I do to deserve this?

Oh, right. I lied about being in a relationship with this man, then jumped his bones at a lavender farm to upset my ex-fiancé. That could’ve done it.

I brace my hands against the top of his dresser. He sets one palm to my hip, holding me steady while he pulls again, gets the zipper to move for several blissful millimeters before it catches again, his grip on me tightening.

“Distract me,” I say under my breath.

“I promise we’ll get this off of you,” he says.

Wrong kind of distraction.

“I’m feeling unbearably stupid right now, Miles, so you’re going to have to do better than that. Tell me something awful.”

He laughs. “Okay. What about this: when Petra and I got your save-the-date in the mail, she told me she didn’t want to get married, and I was like, Cool, no worries. Because I thought she meant in general, not specifically that she didn’t want to marry me.”

I drop my face toward the dresser. My pained groan gives way to something more forceful, the emotion shaking through my shoulders.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry. Not helpful.” Miles takes hold of both my hips. “Hey.”

I straighten up, shaking my head as the laughter racks me, tears leaking from my eyes.

“Daphne,” he murmurs behind me, still tender and sweet, pulling me in, my back to his chest, and coiling his arms around my waist.

“Miles,” I finally manage, spinning in his grip. “What was the ChapStick for?” Another fit of laughter throttles my voice.

He registers it. His mouth opens and closes. “I thought it might smooth the track.”

“You lubed my zipper,” I say.

“Actually,” he says, “I very specifically asked about ChapStick so that neither of us would have to say that sentence.”

My forehead hits his collarbone as the giggles double me over. His hand slides up my back, goose bumps trailing along behind his touch, to rest at the base of my neck. His laugh hums through me too.

“You were just ready for that,” I say. “How many roommates have you had to do this for?”

“Dozens.” His arms loosen and he turns me again. “But you’re the first who had ChapStick.” He pinches the zipper and gives a soft tug.

After all that huffing and struggling and bracing, the zipper glides down to the small of my back, Miles’s knuckles dragging along my skin all the way.