“Monday, probably. I won’t know until I get to work and pick up my route papers.”
“Perfect,” Mateo said. “But promise you’ll actually do it. No chickening out.”
“I promise,” I said, and I was surprised to find I meant it.
Maybe they were right. Maybe it was time to find out if this thing I’d been building up in my head was real, or if I was just being an idiot who’d been thinking way too much about a cute librarian with messy dark hair and kind eyes.
Mateo raised his mug. “To Jeremiah finally making a move.”
“To finding out if the cute librarian needs help Dewy-ing his decimals,” Sisi added with a smirk. “See what I did there?”
She waggled her brows, and Mateo chuckled.
I had no idea what it meant.
All I knew was I couldn’t stop thinking about Theo and how much I wanted to get this “asking him out” thing over with. Sure, he could say no; but that really was the worst that could happen.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter 4
Theo
Wildflowers rustle and bend as I run past, Cuddles bounding beside me, her pink ribbon fluttering like a tiny banner in the breeze.
Why was I running with Cuddles?
The thought drifts through my dream-hazed mind as my feet pound the soft earth.
A few strides away, Jeremiah jogs with easy grace, his shirt torn and hanging open.
Why was he here? Why was his shirt ripped?
And why on earth were we running from such a sweet dog? Cuddles was gentle as a lamb and loved Debbie. No one ran from her . . . ever.
Jeremiah’s shirt flies open as he runs, and my gaze fixes on the broad expanse of his chest where sweat glistens like morning dew. Abs ripple like a still pond disturbed by a tossed stone . . . and all rational thought vanishes.
Jeremiah turns back to flash me his devastating smile, the one that makes my knees weak. He reaches out his hand and—
The bed bounced like a trampoline, jarring me from the depths of sleep. Through half-closed eyes, I glimpsed a blur of pink and wild bedhead hair.
“Daddy! Daddy! I want pancakes . . . with chocolate chips!” Debbie’s voice cut through the morning haze like a foghorn. “Pleeeeeeeeeeease!”
I groaned and pulled a pillow over my head. “Five more minutes, sweetheart. Just five—”
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.
“Pancakes! Chocolate chip pancakes! With sprinkles! Please, please, please!”
I cracked one eye open to find Debbie’s face inches from mine, her gap-toothed grin impossibly bright for—I squinted at the clock—seven-thirty in the morning.
On a Sunday.
My day to sleep in.
“All right, all right,” I surrendered, sitting up and running a hand through my disheveled hair, as though fingers could make one bit of difference in the tangled mass. “You win. Pancakes it is.”
Debbie clapped and shrieked with delight, then launched herself off the bed, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood as she raced toward the kitchen. I followed at a much more civilized pace, my joints and foggy mind protesting the early hour. By the time I reached the kitchen, Debbie had already claimed her perch on the counter stool, swinging her legs and launching into her morning monologue.
