Papa heads upstairs and Nonna sinks into her chair. “I may sleep right here. I’m too tired to stand up.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I ate my weight in meatballs. The second I close my eyes I’m going into a food coma,” Olivia says.
Nonna claps her hands together.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” She goes to the board and starts writing.
“That’s pretty cryptic,” I say.
Olivia studies the board and repeats Nonna’s words quietly to herself.
“This is the weirdest one yet,” she says.
Nonna shrugs, blows us a kiss, then heads to bed.
“Well, you know how Nonna is,” I say.
Olivia tilts her head from side to side. “I feel like she’s messing with us. There has to be a clue buried in there somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Whatever it is, it has something to do with some random guy from the nursing home.”
Olivia moves toward the stairs and mutters, “It may take me a minute, but I’m going to figure it out.”
As bad as Nonna isat keeping secrets, it’s impressive how tight-lipped she is about today’s date. Olivia has pestered her so much that Nonna sent her to the store for supplies just to get a break from her.
Charlie and Wes got here about an hour after we did. We’re only open until noon on New Year’s Eve, and as expected, the shop is a ghost town. The only thing people buy on New Year’s Eve is food, alcohol, and fireworks…not plants.
So here we sit, watching the clock.
“It’s too quiet in here,” Charlie says. “I’m going to see if Randy and Chase are playing cards in the back greenhouse.”
And now Wes and I are alone.
Charlie is right—itisway too quiet in here. Wes is parked in a chair close to the break room door while I’m sitting on the stool near the register. I pull out my phone just to give me something to do. Last night is still too fresh, and I don’t want to read too much into that dance. Now that it’s just the two of us, I have no idea what to say to him.
“Who do you think Nonna picked for you tonight?” he asks.
I shrug and look down at the floor. It’s too hard to maintain eye contact with him and not blurt out every thought swimming through my brain. “No idea.”
“I wish it was me,” he says quietly, and my head shoots up.
“You do?” I ask.
He gets up from the chair and moves slowly toward me. “I wish all the dates had been mine.” Then he laughs. “Okay, maybe not the drive-in porn. Or the Nativity thing. But you know what I mean.”
I’m going to melt right off this stool. I let out a nervous laugh. “I wish they were with you, too.”
His hands land on the counter behind me, one on each side, effectively boxing me in. I fight the urge to touch him.
“I also wish I could have been the first one to give you a good-night kiss,” he says, “but Kiss Cam boy beat me to it.”
I shake my head. “Um. Not really.”
“What do you mean? I was there. And I saw the pic Olivia posted.”
I smile. “I turned my head. You couldn’t tell from the angle of the picture.”
His eyes light up. “Not even when you were with Griffin?”
