Brian
“Mark,wait up! I—oh, oops! Sorry, Mari!” I side-stepped around Mariely Contreras and her baby carriage and continued my mad dash down the packed-dirt aisle of the O’Leary Farmer’s Market trying to keep a distinctive blond head and a pair of broad shoulders in my sights.
“Hey, Mark, I—whoops! Sorry! My bad!” I called as I wove past O’Leary’s hot firefighter dude, Gideon, and his husband, Liam, who laughed as they swung their little girl between them. “Mark!”
Mark paused and frowned, then took a giant, panicked step back when I bounced to a stop beside him and his startled blue eyes met mine.
Not a great sign, but I’d dealt with worse.Soldiering on…
“Hey! Um. So.Hi,” I said as casually as I could given that I was critically short on oxygen after my sprint. I gave him my winningest smile and looked up at him through my lashes. “Remember me? We met at Lyon’s Imperial Market yesterday. You dropped your kumquats, and I helped you pick them up? And you said, ‘Thank you,’ and I said, ‘I’m always happy to help you,kumquat may’?”
Our future children were going to roll their eyes so hard over the way their dads’ epic love story had started with kumquat puns. I dialed my smile up another notch just thinking about it.
“Oh, yeah,” Mark replied, conveying genius-level intelligence, compassion for all mankind, and Hemsworth-level sex appeal with just those two syllables from his perfect,perfectpouty lips. “Ryan, right?”
I forced my smile not to dim even a fraction.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t possessgenius-levelintelligence, but that was fine. What would I do with a damn genius anyway? Super inconvenient to have around the house, always being the smartest.
“Brian,” I corrected. “And I, um, heard you’re in town to be a groomsman in Caelan and Ash’s wedding? Cal’s a friend of mine.”
And, okay,“friend”might have been a teeny, tiny exaggeration. More like, O’Leary’s curmudgeonly resident baker was tight with Parker Hoffstraeder, who happened to be my ex-boyfriend’scurrentboyfriend, and through the absurd magical alchemy of O’Leary, New York in general and Parker Hoffstraeder in particular, this fact had made Parker believe he and I should be instant besties. Since Parker was an irresistible, sparkly golden unicorn, he’d gotten his way, goddammit, even though I’d spent months trying my hardest to hate him. And so now Cal was kind of a friend-of-a-friend—enough of a friend that he'd invited me to his wedding next weekend, but not enough of a friend to feign patience when I’d asked him just a couple ofbasicquestions about Mark this morning… like why Ash was joking around with the gorgeous blond I’d met at the grocery store, and how long Mark might be in town, and what Mark’s star sign was, and what his hopes and dreams might be, and what he looked for in a lover.
“Oh. Yeah.” Mark nodded seriously and his blond hair fell across his forehead. “I’ve known Ash for years.”
“That’s so super! Isn’t Ash great? We love Ash. Not as much as Cal though.” I paused. “I mean, we don’t love Ash as much as Calloves Ash! Obviously, we love Cal as much as Ash, in and of himself. And I personally love seeing them together! I mean... I mean, obviously, like, togetheras acouplenot, like,together-together having sex!Ha ha.Because I’ve never seen that!” I cleared my throat a bit desperately. “So, where did you say you were from again?”
“Oh. Um. California?” he said slowly, making the word into a question. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was leaning slightly away from me, like my awkwardness might be contagious.
Sadly for me, I seemed to be the only one infected.
“California! Nice! Lovely! Yeah! I was out there once. Did the whole drive up the Pacific Coast Highway, but I drove from south to north”—I sketched a map in the air with my hands— “but I totally should have done it north to south so I could be on the water side of the road, you know?”
“Oh.” Mark blinked. “Right.”
“So! You’re staying in O’Leary for the whole summer and helping out at the bakery? That’s really cool! I bet Ash will be glad to have you around. Are you planning any side trips? Like up to Syracuse, or Rochester, or even Niagara? There’s lots to see! Historical sights, and theaters, and amazing places to hike!”
“Oh.” Mark frowned. “Maybe?”
“Uh huh.Uh huh!” I nodded my head fervently. “Wow. Okay. Yeah. That’s… I hope you do! I could give you ideas if you want.” I licked my lips. “Um. Would you like to have coffee sometime? A-atFanaillemaybe? Or, um, at Goode’s Diner? Or… I live in Camden, actually. Next town over? And we have a coffee place called—”
“Oh.” Mark winced and took a half step back. “Yeah.Totallywould, but… um…my plans are really up in the air. See, Ash and I have this mutual friend who lives near here, so I’m kinda waiting onhimto get back to me so I can decide what I’m doing.” He shrugged. “But O’Leary’s super small, right? So, you and I will see each other around?”
I nodded like a bobblehead and forced my smile to stay exactly as it was, even as my heart broke just a tiny bit. “Super small!” I agreed. “I’m sure we will.”
Mark’s smile tipped up on one edge and he huffed out a tiny, relieved-sounding chuckle. “Great. Okay. Well, I really need to check this out.” He jerked a thumb behind him… at the booth where Dhann Nickerson displayed her yarn crafts and kits.
Somehow I felt that Mark, with all his six-foot-whatever of thick muscles and dinner-plate hands, probably did not have a pressing need to latch-hook a wall hanging of a Sheltie.
“Right. Happy hooking! See you around!” I called as he retreated.
Happy. Hooking. It was a low moment, even for me.
He lifted a hand in goodbye and gave me a smile—a smile I was quickly coming to realize I wouldnotbe seeing across the dinner table for the rest of my life—then I turned and walked away with my hands stuffed in my pockets.
Brian Carr’s Heart: 0. Universe: 2412920842.
I kicked dejectedly at a clump of grass in the center of the walkway.
