He nodded at me again. “It was good running into you. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” He walked toward the registers since we’d reached the front of the aisle. Since I wasn’t finished, I went on around to the next aisle. As I moved down it, I looked back to find him standing at the register but staring at me.
I quickened my steps to get out of sight.
Holy hot flash. I wasn’t in menopause yet, but I was having a hot flash right now.
Geez. Daniel Arthur was everything Rick wasn’t. Maybe I was crazy, but having an almost random guy help me without needing to be asked felt like a treat. Rick had always been like a child I had to care for. Constantly needing attention. Whining that he couldn’t eat if I didn’t cook. Whining when he didn’t like what Ididcook.
Man, why had I put up with it?
I thought of Daniel again. I bet he was never like that with his wife. He seemed like the kind of man who genuinely loved other people more than himself.
Or maybe I was just romanticizing the first man I’d felt anything for in years. That was probably it.
I grabbed some snacks off the shelf and willed myself not to think of Daniel again. Right now my job was to pull myself and my life together again, not lust after guys I didn’t even know. My twenties and thirties were long gone. Forty-year-old me would not make the same mistakes as before.
Still, I smiled when I thought of Daniel.
4
Emma
An employee pushed the cart out to my car and loaded the bags. If only I could’ve taken him home with me to do the same, but Mystic Hollow was way too small to have grocery delivery. We were lucky to have two grocery stores.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, my car beeped at me. I looked down and the needle for the gas gauge was perilously close to the edge of the red line. Dang it. Of course I needed gas, but for some reason, it was the last thing I wanted to do in life. Getting out of the car. Pumping. Making awkward conversation with the person who inevitably pulled up on the other side of the pump. Smelling like gas for hours afterward. I wanted nothing to do with it. At least not right now.
Adulting was irritating sometimes. Scratch that. All the time.
I pulled into the gas station in town near my old high school, which was also on the way home. It hadn’t changed a bit since I was last here. There were even teenagers still hanging out on the wall to one side of the building with big sodas and skateboards. But now, instead of there being open lots on both sides, there was a little shopping center to the right that I instantly liked. It consisted of a collection of little stores with dark faux-thatched roofs, with robin’s egg blue painted walls, which only looked even brighter when combined with the white shutters and white doors. It had the same cozy feel as most of the places here. The only difference was that these stores had been built in the last ten years. I was glad whoever designed them had kept the small town feel to them. None of them were even over a single story in height. Nothing to obscure the skyline.
One of the stores was a coffee shop with a big sign that said Cafe Mama. Just the sight of the place had my mouth watering. If I needed anything in this world, it was coffee. I jittered up and down on my toes so much as I pumped the gas that I probably looked like some kind of weirdo, then I quickly moved the car and parked in front of the coffee shop.
As soon as I walked in the door, the scent of roasted coffee and sweet treats hit me, along with the fact that I saw someone I knew. Not too surprising for a town this small, but what was surprising was that she was one of the only people I was unbelievably happy to be running into, even if it meant delaying my coffee addiction.
I froze, not wanting to interrupt as she helped a woman with a walker get her coffee and situate it in a special carrying case that hooked onto the front bar of her walker before helping her sit in one of the plush, overstuffed armchairs. I stood there like I’d been cemented to the spot and let my gaze run over her. Beth was as easily recognizable now as she had been then. She was just under five feet tall, which meant pretty much everyone in town towered over her. Her blonde hair had been left long, and it was just as thick and luxurious as it had been in high school, something I had always envied and did all over again the moment I saw her. She had the same curvy body, and the same style. She wore light wash jeans and a white flowy top with embroidered flowers on it. The only thing that was really different about her were the lines on her face and the bold shade of pink lipstick.
Staring at her was like stepping back into time. Did she have the same sweet personality she used to, or had time warped that as well?
“Beth?”
She had just straightened from helping the older woman sit when her gaze fell on me and her eyes widened. I could tell she was looking at me the same way I’d looked at her as she stared from my feet slowly up to my face. It was hard not to squirm. Not to wonder if she was thinking how much thinner I had been back then, or how I hadn’t needed a special bra to keep my boobs looking decently perky. And could she tell my hair was dyed instead of natural now.
When her face lit up, some of the tension eased inside of me. “Emma! I didn’t know you were visiting.”
I was ashamed of how long it had been since I came home to visit. My brother had driven out to see me a few times, but it had been too many years since I came home. Still, it was no excuse for not keeping in touch with the people who had mattered to me the most.
I forced a smile. How do you tell people that you have nowhere else to go? That you’ve moved back into your parents place because your husband was a cheating asshole and might now be a toad? “Yeah, I decided spur of the moment to come for an extended stay.”
She walked away from the door and pulled me in for a hug. “Well, come have a cup of coffee.”
Even in high school, I’d loved my coffee. So, we walked through the cafe together, even though she already had a cup. I ordered their biggest size and tried not to to tap my fingers while I watched her pour the sweet liquid of life. Then I paid the cashier, gave her a tip, and we headed outside.
“Do you still own the detective agency?” I asked, hoping I was remembering correctly.
She nodded. “Just two shops down. Have time for a sit down?”
I only had a few cold things in my groceries and it was a fairly cool day. They could wait. The worst I’d get was some melted ice cream, and even that was iffy. “Sure. Let’s catch up.”
We passed a shop full of what looked like a tea store, lots of jars of leaves on the shelves and some fancy-schmancy tea pots in the window, then came to stop in front of a building with the words, “Private Psych,” on the front door. There were big picture windows that looked out on the parking lot, the sidewalk lined by trees, and the main city road. She unlocked the door and we stepped into the strangest building I’d ever been in. The front had a sitting area with comfortable, worn-looking couches that were a cream color, a coffee table that was all dark wood and glass, matching end tables, and lamps with stained glass enclosures that were made up of different animals. After the neat sitting area, there were shelves covering the walls. Most were filled with books, especially toward the top and bottom, but there was also a mouse cage on one of the middle shelves, and a lamp sitting over a cage with a lizard or gecko or something that reminded me of those car insurance commercials. The back wall had more books, but also cat climbing trees that went from floor to ceiling with cat-sized walkways between them, where several cats snoozed. There was a big desk covered in papers, and near it an open bird platform with something that looked like a crow sleeping.
