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“Oh my God!”
Zoe gasped, hand over her heart as she turned around from the open refrigerator and found she was no longer alone. Of course, she knew she was in no danger. It was just Wade standing there in the kitchen, not some burglar or weirdo stranger. Not that she really expected that kind of thing in Bluebell, but her instincts from her New York apartment days were still plenty sharp it seemed.
“Wow, doc. You really mean business there, huh?” said Wade, smirking hard as he nodded towards the item she was still holding aloft in her hand, battle-ready.
Following his gaze, Zoe couldn’t help but laugh at herself when she realised she wasn’t holding anything useful, like a knife or even a rolling pin. Her chosen weapon was a rather sad looking zucchini. As if that would’ve really worked in a crisis.
Dropping the useless vegetable onto the counter, Zoe heaved a sigh.
“You know, you really shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” she told Wade, staring across the counter at him in the half-light of the kitchen at almost-midnight. “What if I had grabbed a real weapon? It could’ve ended badly.”
“Hey, I wasn’t sneakin’ up on anybody.” Wade shook his head. “I live here, remember? I just come lookin’ for a snack is all. Same as you, apparently,” he said then, noting the sandwich fixings Zoe had spread out on the counter.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “I thought food would help. I also thought maybe Lavon would be up still, but apparently not.”
“You were lookin’ for company too?” asked Wade, stealing a piece of cold chicken from the tupperware box Zoe just cracked open and popping it into his month.
“Kind of, maybe,” she told him, eyes on the sandwich she was building and nowhere else.
This was awkward, so very awkward actually, and Zoe didn’t know exactly what to do with the feelings she was experiencing. Things with Wade had been weird enough lately. He seemed to have been acting strangely for a while now and then tonight, he asked her out for a drink. She had rain checked him, mostly out of panic, truth be told, figuring by the time they ran into each other again on the other side of Christmas, after she had been to New York and back, it would all be forgotten. She never expected this.
“I just figured you were busy tonight.”
Zoe’s eyes closed a moment as she winced, knowing exactly where Wade was going now. She had hoped she was just projecting, worrying over nothing. After all, Wade was a straightforward kind of guy. If he wanted to say something, he just said it, like asking her out tonight. He wouldn’t poke and prod around the issue, except it seemed like maybe he was this time. That was all kinds of strange.
“Wade, I didn’t...” she began, looking up to meet his gaze and immediately wishing she hadn’t. “Um, about before...” she started over, only for him to shake his head.
“Forget about it, doc. Honestly, it’s no big deal,” he said in such a way, she could almost believe it.
The lighting wasn’t really good enough for her to read his expression and say he was lying. With Wade, she wasn’t sure she would be able to tell anyway, except as far as she knew, in all these weeks and months she had known him, she was pretty sure he never had told her an outright lie. Sure, he said stupid stuff sometimes, dirty remarks and everything, but he wasn’t a liar.
“Hey, Earth to Zoe!” he said then, waving his hand in front of her face and alerting her to the fact she must be staring like an idiot. “Where’d you go, doc?” Wade chuckled as she finally came back to reality.
“Not far enough away apparently,” she said with a smirk. “You’re still there.”
“Ooh, that hurts,” he told her, laughing even as he feigned a shot to the heart. “So, you gonna share some of that food or what? I mean, no offence, but I don’t know if I trust you to make me a sandwich. You sure as heck can’t cook a lick, how do I know what you’ll do to this stuff?”
“Sandwiches don’t require cooking skills, doofus,” she told him, rolling her eyes as he rounded the counter to her side.
“Depends on the sandwich,” he told her smartly, reaching by her for the bread to start on his own snack. “Gotta cook if you’re makin’ a grilled cheese, a meatball sub, a Monte Cristo...”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re a sandwich expert.” Zoe shook her head, concentrating on her own sandwich making and trying not to take notice of Wade stood so close to her.
It wasn’t like they were never close before and it wasn’t as if she never noticed the way he was built. Zoe would have to be blind and stupid not to realise Wade was hotter than hell on a Sunday, as they said in Alabama. After all, she hadn’t been in Bluebell long when she found herself in the middle of a drunken frolic in the front seat of Wade’s car.
“You okay there, doc?” he asked her then. “You look kinda flushed.”
“I’m fine,” she said too fast. “I was just... I was standing by the fridge so long and now the room feels... warmer.”
She knew that was a crappy explanation that nobody was going to buy, least of all Wade who was often much smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Not that she ever told him that. Somehow it was easier to keep him at arm’s length, it seemed safer somehow. Not that she ever felt unsafe with Wade. He was a good guy, underneath all the dirty remarks and barely-veiled attempts to get in her underwear.
Of course, tonight he hadn’t been smirking his way through some crappy line about getting her into bed. He just asked her to go for a drink. Zoe knew she was stupid if she believed he meant it like a date or anything. That wasn’t Wade’s style. Of course, she was also aware that it wasn’t just her who had noticed she seemed to get special attention from her neighbour, and all without reward, so to speak.
“You start indulgin’ in the Christmas spirit a little early, Zoe?” Wade asked her then, staring at her so hard she was pretty sure he should’ve burned a hole through her head. “Seriously, you doin’ okay? You’re real spaced out tonight.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” she repeated, feeling anything but in that moment, but unable to verbalise somehow. “It’s just... um, earlier, in town square,” she said then, eyes all on her sandwich as she piled the fillings high and then reached for a piece of bread to top it all off. “When you asked if you could buy me a drink...”
“We back on that?” Wade asked too quickly, clearing his throat and making a big deal of finishing off his own sandwich instead of paying too much attention to her. “I told you already, you don’t have to worry on that. You had other plans or... whatever,” he said, shaking his head.
“Wade, it’s not that... You caught me off-guard is all,” she admitted then, shrugging her shoulders. “I didn’t know how to take the question.”
Zoe hoped she was explaining herself well, though she doubted it somehow. She was also quite prepared for Wade to turn this whole thing into a joke at any second. She would lay money that he was about to tell tell her he asked her out for a bet or just to see the stunned look on her face. It was actually more of a shock when he said nothing, eyes dipping back to the counter and staying there.
“Wade?” she prompted when she was quiet too long.
“You know, what?” he said then, dumping the sandwich he just made right into the trash. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
He was headed for the door before Zoe could hardly blink, but she gave chase just as soon as she realised he was going to run out on her. Not that she had a clue what she wanted to say or do, even as she grabbed at Wade’s arm and pulled.
“Please don’t,” she urged him as he glanced back at him. “Look, Wade, I know we’ve had our differences and, let’s face it, neither one of us are always the easiest of people to get along with.”
Wade smirked a little at that. “Speak for yourself, doc,” he told her, though it was clear he knew exactly what she meant, probably knew he was as guilty of being just as difficult and annoying as she was sometimes.
“You know, I meant what I said before,” she told him then. “You and me, we’ll have that drink. It was a rain check, not a no.”
Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say. Zoe honestly wasn’t sure anymore, especially as she watched more than one emotion play across Wade’s face in the seconds that followed. His eyes went Heavenward for a moment and then slowly he smiled as his gaze met Zoe’s own one more time.
“I’m gonna hold you to that, Zoe Hart,” he told her in no uncertain terms.
She smiled too, opening her mouth to tell him he was welcome to, when suddenly she felt Wade’s arm slip around her waist and pull her closer. Their lips crashed together in what could’ve been the world’s most awkward, ill-timed kiss, except that somehow it wasn’t.
Zoe meant to pull away, she really did, but what started out sudden and almost clumsy soon turned tender and sweet. She melted into Wade’s arms, throwing her own up around his neck as the moment went on and on. It wasn’t like either of the other times when he kissed her before. This was no stupid drunken fumble, like in his car that first night. It wasn’t even the same as the time he grabbed her and kissed her over at the gatehouse, when she was ranting at him about Lavon’s parade float. If Zoe didn’t know better, she would say this was actually supposed to mean something. Perhaps it was meant to mean everything. Maybe it actually did.
“Wow,” she gasped involuntarily as they finally parted. “I mean... what was that about?” she asked, trying to seem pissed, but actually feeling nothing but soft and warm and good.
Wade looked a little stunned himself, even though he had been the one to initiate the whole thing. Zoe was about to prompt him again for any kind of explanation, when suddenly he seemed to shake himself out of a daze and painted on that good old church social smile she was fast learning to love somehow.
“That’s what they call kissing under the mistletoe, doc,” he told her, pointing upward to the ceiling. “What? Don’t tell me they don’t have that tradition up north? ‘Cause it happens to be a favourite o’ mine.”
Zoe was blinking too fast as she glanced up and realised there really was mistletoe hung there, just a little way from the back door. Still, as she looked back down to meet Wade’s gaze, in time to see him shifting just a little awkwardly before her, she knew better than to believe it was just the mistletoe that had prompted what happened between them. That was no simple kiss for the sake of an old tradition, no way, no how.
“Right, a mistletoe kiss,” she said anyway, figuring if that was the lie he was going with, it was probably easier to play along, for now, at least. “So, Merry Christmas, Wade.”
“Merry Christmas, Zoe,” he told her right back, opening up the door and actually leaving this time.
She watched him go, half-tempted to run after him again and drag him back under that mistletoe, though Zoe soon thought better of it. One thing was for sure, she thought, as she went to retrieve her midnight snack from the counter, there was no way in hell she waiting until next Christmas for another kiss like that!