His little button nose twitched and a stray curl fell onto his forehead and his eyes actuallysparkledas he waited for me to answer, and the whole package of… ofhimmade me feel like I’d just been bowled over by an ocean wave.
I took a step back, a little bit overwhelmed, and clutched the strap of my backpack even tighter.
Maybe I couldn’t do this after all. There was no way I wasn’t in the right place, because the ginger was the poster child for the kind of little boy I’d sort of thought I might want to role-play being, but I’d probably been fooling myself that I could make that work.
He was friendly, but I was quiet.
Hegushed, but I… I worried.
And I was just standing here when I should have answered him already.
“Name?” he prompted, his grin never faltering. “Oh! Mine’s Sam,” he added, because I must have looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Hi!”
He even gave me a cute little wave.
“I’m… Rene?” I finally answered, feeling dumb as soon as I said it. And not just because I’d made it sound like I wasn’t even sure of my own name, but because no matter how friendly Sam was, he hadn’t really been asking to get to know me. He just needed my name—myfullname—so he could look up my reservation.
Before I could tell him the rest of my name, though, his smile got even brighter.
“Yay!” he said, sort of… bouncing. “Rene. I love it. We should definitely be friends.”
I blinked.
We should?
That didn’t make any sense, but maybe he was trying to make me feel better for acting like he’d been actually introducing himself instead of just doing his job, because strangers didn’t just… just randomly become friends, did they? At least, no one had ever offered to bemyfriend like that.
But maybe people did, at a place like this.
Except… wait. I sucked my lower lip into my mouth, worrying it between my teeth as something nagged at me.
Oh. Right.
“Um, did you say this place is called the Purple Plum?” I asked, my chest tightening with anxiety as I realized I might have to figure out how to get more gas for the car tonight after all. “Because… because I was actually looking for The Plazerra,” I added, shrugging off my backpack and fumbling around in the front pocket. “I have a reservation? My phone’s dead, but I printed it out. It’s, um, it’s in here somewhere.”
Sam giggled, then reached out and gave my hand a squeeze, stopping my search.
“Don’t worry about finding it, Rene. It’ll be in our reservation system.” He let go of me and woke up an ancient-looking computer, tapping away at the keys while he kept talking. “And youareat The Plazerra.” He looked up for a second and winked, still grinning. “But everyone around here just calls it the Purple Plum, for reasons.”
“Oh,” I said, my shoulders relaxing. Then I gave him a tentative smile back. “For… paint reasons?”
“Yes!” he said, as if he couldn’t have contained his exclamation points even if he’d wanted to. “Isn’t it crazy? Like, why would theydothat? It’s been purple since forever, and I should know, because I grew up just down the street.”
“Oh,” I said, not sure what to do with the oversharing. “The color is… bright?” I offered, hoping that sounded complimentary. “And it’s… memorable?”
“It is,” Sam agreed, his smile slipping into a look of concentration as he kept poking away at his keyboard. “Are you sure you’re supposed to check in tonight?”
“Yes, definitely tonight,” I said. Before I could offer to find my reservation number again, he asked for my last name, reminding me that he hadn’treallybeen trying to be friends when he’d asked me my name earlier, he was just a friendly person trying to do his job.
Which was fine, of course.
“It’s Boucher,” I told him.
“Boo-shay?” he mangled it, a cute little wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows.
I spelled it for him like I always had to, then I jumped like a scaredy-cat when the door behind me banged open.
Sam’s head popped up, the full wattage of his smile back in place. “Hi, welcome to the Purple Plum!” he called out. I scooted to the side in case he wanted to help the other guest, but his grin flickered over to me for a second before returning to the newcomer, and he added, “I’ll get you checked in after I do Rene, okay?”
