"Well, that's true," she agreed, squeezing some water into her mouth before tucking the bottle away in her bag as she reached for some fresh clothes. "Is it an anniversary thing?" she asked.
"What?" I asked, stomach dropping.
"You didn't know?" she asked, wincing at me. "It's been a year since you two met," she told me.
"Oh my God. Oh, God. I can't be that woman!" I said, feeling my heart threatening to burst through my chest.
"What woman?"
"The one who forgot about her anniversary when her man remembers. I don't want to be her."
"Take a breath," Belle demanded, slipping on a new tee, then reaching under to pull off her sports bra. "If it was actually for your anniversary, he wouldn't invite me either," she reasoned.
"True," I agreed, feeling marginally better. "So, he's not going to murder and dismember me. And he's not going to surprise me with anniversary goodness. What the hell could it be?" I asked as she fixed her hair.
"Why don't we go find out?" she suggested. "I'm ready now."
"Okay," I agreed, falling into step with her. "You're sure it's this way?" Belle asked, brows pinching as we walked.
"He sent me the address," I told her, showing her the text. "Why?"
"Because there isn't much down here that I think he would bring you to. I mean there are a couple boutique clothing stores. A jewelry store. And a place where the wealthy ladies do brunch. Nothing you'd be into. Oh, and some old place they've been remodeling for a few months. I imagine it will be another boutique or like a smoothie place or something. I could go for a smoothie," she added. "Wait. This is it?" she asked as I told her my directions told me we'd arrived. "It's not even open," she added.
She wasn't wrong.
We were standing out front of the potential smoothie place. Only there was something over the sign. And the windows had some kind of thick white frosting on them, making it impossible to see much of anything inside.
"This can't be right," I decided, reaching to text McCoy that I was pretty sure he'd sent me the wrong address.
Only before I could, the door opened.
And there he was.
Holding three flutes of champagne.
"Oh. Oh," Belle said, eyes wide, clearly understanding the situation. Meanwhile, I was still in the dark. Even as I took the flute, watching the bubbles dance around inside for a second before looking at McCoy.
"What is going on?" I asked, shaking my head.
"Just one second," he said, moving back a few feet, and calling out for Joss who had appeared by the side of the building, inexplicably holding a long rope in his hands.
Even as my gaze followed the rope up the front of the building to where it attached to the material covering the sign, it was pulled off.
And I finally understood what Belle already had.
Because there it was.
In the font I'd picked out.
In the colors I'd chosen.
ShyBelle.
ShyBelle.
He'd built me my nail salon?
No.
No, that wasn't possible. How could he have done that? Especially without me knowing?
But then, some nights started to come back to me. Nights when he would get a call from Teddy, and would say he would be right back, and take the call in the bathroom, or outside.
I'd thought nothing of it. McCoy got calls all the time from the guys in his circle that he chose to take privately. We'd agreed a while back that it was smartest for me only to be privy to the less than legal parts of his world when it was important for me to know. Like when there was some kind of threat or uncertainty going on. Otherwise, the men chose to leave the women out of the fine print. To protect us. In case the cops ever did come knocking.
So, I figured it was something like that.
I'd literally never given it a second thought.
But, really, Teddy was only ever involved when he needed to be as well. Why had that never occurred to me as weird?
It hadn't, though.
Now, I could see why there had been so many calls. Teddy owned a lot of businesses. He had a lot of connections. He was who McCoy would rely on to help him through the process of buying property, of renovating it, of getting everything up to code and ready to open.
"No," I gasped out, my gaze sliding to McCoy.
Who, if you can believe this, was standing there with the biggest smile ever on his handsome face.
Sure, he'd given me more than a handful of smiles over the past year, but they still weren't super common for him. And very rarely were they giant ones like the one he was giving me right then.
"Yes," he said, nodding. "And that look on your face, babe, it was worth every single fucking pain in the ass thing that I've dealt with since starting this project damn near six months ago."
"I... but... ho—why—when?"
"How, with Teddy's help. When, mostly when you were at work or sleeping. Why? Because I love you," he said, shrugging.
And for a man as good as mine, it really did come down to that.
He loved me.
So he would hugely inconvenience himself for half a year to do something special for me.
See, McCoy had gotten better about using his words to express his feelings. But he still, primarily, showed me how he felt through his actions.
Like this.
My mouth opened and closed several times, but there seemed to be some sort of short-circuiting going on in my brain right then because none of the thoughts could seem to untangle themselves from one another, let alone find their way from my brain to my lips.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I just... launched myself at him, spilling my champagne all over the both of us as I wrapped him up with arms and legs, raining kisses down the side of his face, his forehead, down his nose, then finally on his mouth.
"So, I take it you like it," McCoy declared, pulling back to smile at me.
"I love it. Almost as much as I love you," I told him.
"You haven't even seen it yet," he informed me.
"I don't care. It's perfect. Whatever it is, it's perfect."
"So, I guess we can just go then, huh? You don't need to see it," he said, lowering me to my feet.
"Shush," I said, slapping his chest. "Show me," I demanded.
With that, I handed my flute to Joss who was still lingering nearby, wearing his cut with the word Prospect on the chest and across the back, took both McCoy's and my sister's hands, and walked into my new nail salon.
"Oh, my God," I said, my voice getting thick as the tears flooded my vision.
He'd recreated my sketches.
I'd been designing ShyBelle for ages.
And I was always doing sketches for my dream salon.
"It's exactly how I drew it," I declared, squeezing both their hands.
"Well, sort of," McCoy said. "You, babe, are indecisive as fuck. Do you have any idea how many times you have changed the type of tables over the past six months? Because I do. Three times. I ordered the tables three times," he said, shaking his head.
"You changed it every time I tweaked the sketches?" I asked, the tears just pouring down my cheeks as I turned to look at him.
"I wanted you to have it exactly as you wanted it," he told me, reaching out to wipe my cheeks. "Now stop crying so you can actually see it all," he demanded, giving me a smirk.