I eyed Emerson warily. “Okay, I guess. I’ll go get ready then.”
He clapped his hands together, a big smile on his face. “Good! I’ll be here.”
The car ridewasn’t going horribly. It could’ve been worse. Emerson was a smooth driver, not going too fast, not going too slow, just going the speed limit and weaving in and out of traffic like a nice person. Which, I guess, made sense since he was a cop.
We were maybe fifteen minutes out from our first stop when a call started to come through Emerson’s car. He glanced at the screen and sighed before pressing the answer button. “Hello, Olivia. Choose all your words wisely. I’m in the car, and I have a passenger.”
A woman’s voice came through, nice and light-sounding. “A passenger? Oh my god, Em, do you have a date? Can I talk to her? Is she nice?”
“He is sometimes nice. Only sometimes, though. And he is my friend, not a date.”
“Well, that’s no fun, is it? Where are you going?”
Emerson switched his turn signal on, looking from right to left. “We’re going to try out a couple of workshops for fun. Pottery and stained glass.”
Olivia hummed through the speaker. “That sounds fun! I’m glad you’re looking for something other than running to do, Em. You’re quite a boring person, you know.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “He said the same thing about me by dragging me along with him.”
“Oh, is this the not-date-friend?”
“It is indeed. My name is Moon.”
She gasped. “Moon! What a lovely name. My parents were so boring with mine. The eighties weren’t very creative name-wise, I guess.”
“I think Olivia is a beautiful name.”
“And he’s nice? Oh, Emerson Drew, you’ve got to keep this one.”
Emerson laughed, pulling into a parking lot. “As long as he stays friends with me and doesn’t run away from your chaos, sure.”
“Ugh, you talk as if I’m the worst person alive! I’m just highly invested in making sure you don’t waste away. Speaking of, I can come see you and the new house next week. When are you off?”
“Oh, uh,” he paused, looking around for a second. “The house isn’t really ready yet.”
“You think that’ll deter me? I can help finish unpacking with you. What do you have left?”
“It’s more like what don’t I have left.”
“Have you not unpacked anything? Oh, my god. This is what I was afraid of! I should’ve just moved with you!”
He put his head in his hands, groaning. “Ol, I’m fine. You don’t need to do that. I’ll get it done, I promise.”
“I never should’ve let you move there all by yourself. New town, new home, new coworkers—I knew it’d be too much. I’ll be over there ASAP. Me and Kelly both will be.”
“Please don’t. I’ll text you my schedule, and we can figure something out. For now, I have a stained glass class to get to.”
“You worry me so much. Moon, keep an eye on him, okay? Take him out to dinner or something.”
I looked over at Emerson, whose cheeks were red with a gorgeous blush spreading across them. “I will. I promise.”
“Love you, bye.” Emerson hung up the call just after Olivia had responded with the same. He looked positively mortified. It was kind of cute. “I wish I could say she isn’t always like that.”
Shaking my head, I tried to hold in the laughter bubbling in my chest. “She’s definitely something else. But she seems to have a really big heart.”
He took the keys out of the ignition, placing a hand on his door handle. “That’s one of the things I fell in love with first. She has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen. She could still show it differently. I mean, really, she pesters too much.”
“She just worries about you. I know it’s different, but I worry about my siblings the same way it seems she worries about you. That kind of love is really important.”
