“Okay, well, I will see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Corvus.”
I stared at the phone when he hung up. Today was ruined. I couldn’t see my mate or bring him more trinkets. No smiles or stolen glances.
Sighing, I walked outside, intent on tending my own orchard. Perhaps some of this mate blessing could be poured into my fruit trees. At the bottom of the stairs, laid so carefully, were all kinds of shiny treasures. Coins. Rocks. Keys. Broken glass in a rainbow of colors. Some colorful ribbon. A corner of a flag. A bottle top.
My sisters and brothers had left me offerings.
It had been so long.
My honesty the night before must’ve touched their hearts. I offered them my truth, and they gifted me their prizes and collections.
How blessed I was once again.
Never thought I would be again.
I worried about Joshua. I hoped his work issue was solved easily and without much headache.
In the meantime, I would wait for him to return and try to make him mine.
Chapter Ten
Joshua
I woke up excited for the day. I’d found enough building supplies to knock a good chunk of the small items off my list. But then I opened my email. Fuck. It was filled with error message after error message from my hosting site. My online store was down, and worse than that, it looked like it was possibly hacked.
After letting Corvus know, I spent the entire day either on hold, talking to someone in tech support, or trying not to cry. When all was said and done, no one had broken in and stolen money or information from me, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t lost sales. There was some corrupted code somewhere according to the last person I spoke to and it was fixed.
I was beat and the day was gone.
This was one of many reasons I hated doing online sales. If I could find a way just to do in-person events and make enough money, I’d switch to that exclusively. People really didn’t understand what I had to offer from pictures, anyway. There was something special about holding my pieces in their hands. And, as pretentious as that might sound, it was true.
Every item that went into my jewelry had a story, and it wasn’t always a story I knew. In fact, it rarely was, but people found their own stories in them. Making it special.
The sad reality was that until I figured out a way to manage without the steady income my online store brought in, it was something I had to deal with.
I shut my computer down and hit the shower. I hadn’t even combed my hair or had a bite to eat all day, having jumped straight into work mode. I felt reasonably better after being clean, but my stomach was growling.
It was Home Days. I’d forgotten, but as I thought of Corvus, which I’d been doing a lot of, I remembered him telling me about the poster. I went downstairs and talked to the B&B owner to see what the event was like.
She said it was already in full swing, and she was about to head there. She also said it was where all the good food was. Sounded good to me. I decided to go there instead of the diner and maybe I’d meet some people. I had a feeling this was one of those places I’d be the new guy for decades, but that was okay. I’d rather be the new guy here than one of a sea of faces in the city.
Getting outside after being in my room all day trying not to pull my hair felt amazing. It reminded me once again how much I was ready for this change. Office work might be less stressful than a messed-up webstore, but I was still hunched over a computer desk and that was bad enough.
More than once, I thought about calling Corvus and asking him if he wanted to come with me to Home Days. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like crossing a line. He was helping me. He wasn’t my boyfriend. Sure, I wanted him to be my person, but that didn’t give me the all clear to cold call him about a date. And he’d think it was a date, especially after the way I kissed him on the cheek. I probably needed to apologize, but that would mean acknowledging it. Ugh, why was this so hard?
I’d expected Home Days to be like a normal, random town festival filled with little booths of random junk for people to buy, food trucks from all over, some games for the kids, singing, and/or possibly some fireworks.
But tonight was filled with history, and it was fascinating. I went from a food vendor where I got the most delicious grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich—who would’ve thought that would be good—to a booth where I stood learning about thefounders of the town. Then I grabbed some hot cocoa from another table and hit up a table all about the first mayor.
History had never been a passion of mine, but I had a blast. Going from one display area to the next. And yes, I did grab a commemoratory key chain, but this event was about so much more than the typical capitalism of those I’d been to elsewhere. It was fabulous.
For the most part, it was listening to people share what they loved about the town and history coming alive, including period pieces and crafts. There were some arts-type displays and performances, though, like the community band, a troupe of dancers, and a photography contest. But food and history were the big draws.
I grabbed some onion rings, not wanting to leave any food vendor unvisited, a goal I set for myself, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a crow. At least I thought it was a crow. It turned out to be a Halloween decoration, but still, I went over to the booth.
Unlike the others I’d been to, which covered historical periods, for example the town’s founding, this one was all about crows. Whisper Grove loved their crows, at least at one time they did. Everything the people manning the booth talked about was in the past tense, like it was all from long ago. According to their histories, there was a Crow King here at one point, the reason for their wonderful harvest. I wasn’t sure I bought that, but crows? They brought luck. At least they always had for me.
“Do you have any questions?” the woman asked, and I gave her all of mine, which were many. She answered them all, not once looking at me like I was weird or oddly obsessed with the creatures, despite the fact that I was.
