“Maybe I should ask Gavin?” Molly wondered. Yes. That’s what she should do.
Molly: Is this a date?
Gavin: …
All eyes moved to Kaiya and her cell.
It didn’t ding, but Kaiya still stuffed her phone in her purse. “He’s on his own with this one.”
Molly’s phone chimed.
All eyes were on her screen. Including hers.
Gavin: Do you want it to be?
Molly: That’s why I asked you out. So it would be a date.
Gavin: Then sure. Date it is.
He sent the last message with a brick emoji.
“What the heck?” Molly asked, looking to Kaiya for some clarification.
Kaiya scrunched her forehead together. “I don’t know that one. Maybe it’s a mistake?”
Gavin might not know that the thumbs-up could also be taken a totally different direction, but she was pretty certain—and she didn’t quite know how she was so certain—that he meant whatever the brick thing was.
Tearing her down or building her up?
Dang. Or breaking a window? Planting some succulents around a fire pit?
Or maybe his thumb just slipped, and he put the wrong one in there?
Molly didn’t know because, ha, funny thing—now that she had some clarity, she was even more confused.
Chapter Eighteen
“Your kids will ignore you and have nothing to say all day long, until you get on the phone or in the bathroom. Then it’s 1000 stories and questions until you’re done. Then it’s back to hearing crickets.” —Beth, Florida, United States
Gavin
Gavin didn’t bring a novel.
He arrived at the coffee shop where they’d agreed to meet about thirty minutes before their scheduled time, just in case Molly got there early. He didn’t want her to be uncomfortable and bolt.
He had a gut feeling that she was yay-far away from running.
In fact, he’d spent the whole night worried that might happen. Wondering what she was doing? If she was awake?
The one thing he’d realized while he was away from her was that he didn’t want her to run before they got a solid shot atthem.
Now, he just had to figure out how to make that happen.
Stepping through the door, the jingle bells clanked against the glass behind him. The espresso machine hissed, Coldplay crooned, and Gavin let the vibe seep in. A good vibe. The coffee shop was in a historic building on a slow corner near downtown. Used to be a bank—this was clear because there was still a bronze plaque in the concrete out front to tell the history of the building. The room behind the barista stand had also once clearly been a vault.
A long, mahogany bar-type counter stretched along one side of the room with a pastry case at the end. Muffins, scones, croissants, and cookies all had their place in the case. Though, at the end of the day, there wasn’t much left of that goodness.
Tables filled the rest of the space with a handful of booths near the back of the room, away from the windows.
