“No,” Garrett said flatly… which was, frankly, the funniest thing he could have said.
Diana got a fit of the giggles. Yes, definitely punchy.
Eleanor hid her own laughter behind her hands.
Getting the bookshelf onto the truck was anordeal. Garrett and the warehouse worker managed the bulk of the heavy lifting, with Eleanor and Diana serving as directors to stop any bumps or bangs that might risk Eleanor’s prize acquisition. By the time they got everything loaded up and strapped down, Diana felt a little sweaty. She could only imagine how the men must be feeling. The poor warehouse kid looked like he was about to collapse into a puddle.
They piled back into the car, Garrett as unreadable as ever, Diana half asleep on her feet, Eleanor buzzing with excitement.
“Ooh,” Eleanor said, doing a little dance in her car seat. “I have it! I have it! Oh, I’m so excited! I can’t wait to see it unwrapped.”
Garrett, despite proving willing to do whatever it was his girlfriend desired of him, had put his foot down at the idea of unwrapping the bookshelf on site, as they would have to just wrap the whole thing back up anyway.
“I bet it looks great,” Diana said, feeling the lull of the truck start to push her toward sleep.
“It’s going to look so great,” Eleanor cooed. “Should we build it as soon as we get home?”
“No!” Garrett and Diana said in unison.
“I’m basically already asleep,” Diana admitted.
“Tomorrow,” Garrett insisted.
“But—” Eleanor said.
“Tomorrow!” Again, Garrett and Diana were perfectly in sync.
“Bah,” Eleanor said good naturedly.
“I’ll come over and help you tomorrow,” Diana offered to sweeten the deal.
“Oh, all right,” Eleanor said with a sigh. But something about her blinding grin told Diana that she wasn’t actually all that disappointed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Winnie looked at the papers strewn across her desk with a sigh. There was still more to do, but there was honestly always more to do. It was part of being in a small office. She wore a lot of hats.
Normally, she would have resigned herself to this “nothing is ever finished” state of affairs and gone home hours earlier. It was, after all, nearly seven o’clock in the evening on a Friday. Winnie might be the kind of person who focused on work, but even she had her limits.
Tonight though, she found the idea of going back to her empty house alone to be…
Sad.
Maybe this was the danger of opening up. She had let herself have a few good times with a few potential new friends, and now, all of a sudden, her own life seemed… empty.
What would she do if it didn’t last? Could she ever really be a part of the book club group? They were all so lovely, and they clearly were close. Would Winnie ever be part of the “in group” or would she forever be clinging to the edges like this? It wasn’t like she really knew how to have friends, after all. She didn’t have any kind of practice.
An absent part of Winnie’s mind recognized that this voice wasn’t truly hers. It was Whit and Britt and the other bullies of her youth who had made her feel small and unimportant.
Still, though. Those wounds still lingered.
Not that lingering forever in her office would help matters. With a sigh, Winnie tidied all the grant application paperwork, and the historical provenance documentation, and complete chaos of miscellaneous paperwork into neat little piles. It would all keep until Monday.
She tried to keep her self-doubt at bay as she headed back to her house. Cooking for one was, frankly, too depressing to manage that evening, so she threw a frozen meal into the microwave, then poured herself a glass of wine as she weighed whether or not this was actually sadder.
“You live a truly glorious life, Winnie Burnett,” she told herself.
And then, as if in answer, her phone rang on the counter. This surprised Winnie so much that for a second, she just stared at the device before leaping to answer it.
