I’m at the door when she calls my name.
“Scott?”
I turn.
“Whatever you’re afraid to tell me,” she says softly. “I promise I’ll listen. When you’re ready.”
The words break something open in my chest.
She knows I’m hiding something.
And she’s giving me permission to be honest.
“Soon,” I promise. “I’ll tell you everything soon.”
“Okay.”
I leave before I can do something stupid like actually tell her everything or kiss her.
Or both.
Outside, I sit in my car and pull out my phone.
I need to write her, tell Jessica I’m ready. That I’m done being a coward.
That tomorrow, or maybe the next day, or maybe the day after that, I’m going to jump. And I’m going to trust that when I do, she’ll catch me. Even if she doesn’t know it’s me she’s catching yet, one honest word at a time.
Starting now.
ELEVEN
JESSICA
The problem with running a bookstore in a small town is that everyone knows your business.
The complicated feelings I may or may not have about my landlord. The fact that Grandma Hensley caught us having “very important coffee business” three days ago and has apparently told everyone from here to the South Carolina border.
“So,” Mrs. Sanders says, not even pretending to browse the mystery section. “You and Scott Avery.”
“There is no me and Scott Avery.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“What did you hear?”
“That you were having a romantic moment in your break room when Grandma Hensley interrupted.”
“We were drinking coffee. That’all.”
“Honey, I’ve been married forty-three years. I know the difference between drinking coffee and whatever you two were doing.”
After Mrs. Sanders checks out and leaves, I give up and go back to straightening the romance section, which has been in complete disarray since Austen’s display-destroying rampageon Tuesday. He knocked over an entire shelf of small-town romances.
He’s currently sprawled across the register, looking smug.
“You’re not helping,” I tell him.
He yawns.
