Still, heading home early felt weird. And knowing that, as always, my guitar is sitting in a corner of my studio, practically mocking me, doesn’t feel great either.
Looking at her Explorer out front, with its balding tires, blackened my mood further. I can’t let the two of them drive around in a vehicle with tires like that.
What’s her stupid boyfriend good for, if he can’t take care of the simplest things for her?
But even before I opened the front door, the smell of cookies baking greeted me. And then I heard Jonah's laughter. And Sadie's musical laugh alongside it.
I stood at the door for a second before I went in. I don't know what I was doing. Taking it in, maybe. The sound of my house being a home.
I walked in to the sight of them grinning and flour-dusted, and my battered heart felt lighter than it has in years.
She had flour on her cheek and didn't know it. I almost reached over and brushed it off. Stopped myself just in time.
That's not the kind of thing an employer does for an employee.
But now, somewhere in the back of my mind, the gears start turning.
To know my record well enough to have that kind of opinion on it, Sadie must have listened to it pretty carefully. And she might not have liked my sixth album any more than I did, but the first five…
I stare at her. “Holy shit. You really do know my music. Youareafan.”
“Maybe I used to be,” she says, studiously not looking at me.
“And that sixth album turned you off?”
“No. Meeting you did.”
I start laughing again. I can’t help it. She’s as blunt as I am. “You’re a brat, you know that?”
She scoops out the cookie dough onto a baking sheet. “Nope. Because you’re the only one who seems to think so.”
I huff disbelievingly. “Then you’ve got everyone else fooled. Come on. Bet if I talk to your daddy, he’ll tell meallabout the grey hairs you’ve given him.”
She tenses. “I really couldn’t say.”
Before I can inquire further, she brushes past me to grab a glass of water. But her fingers are slippery from the cookie dough, and it slides right out and shatters on the floor.
“Shit!” she exclaims. “I’m so sorry. Where’s your dustpan?”
“I got it. Stay back. You’re barefoot, I don’t want you stepping on broken glass.”
I clean up the shards of glass in no time and dump them in the trashcan. Without thinking, I take her hands in mine and check for cuts. “Glass didn’t get you, did it?”
She shakes her head. “All good.”
My thumb strokes along the smooth skin at her wrist. Traces the blue veins there. She doesn't pull away or stiffen, just lets me examine her closely.
My brain can’t quite reconcile it yet. The way she feels so soft and delicate, almost breakable, but her personality is anything but.
Which reminds me.
“You need to change the tires on your car,” I tell her. “It’s not safe.”
“I went to the tire place already. Guy there said they’ve gota few hundred more miles on them. It’ll last me through summer. By then I’ll have saved up enough for a new set.”
I bite back my automatic command ofyou need to do it now.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Sadie already, she gets feisty when I boss her around. It’s a feistiness which I enjoy more than I should, but that's beside the point.
