This wasn’t a date. No. Not a date at all.
“Aren’t you the dating guru?” Sadie asked. “Shouldn’t we be asking you that question?”
“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 18
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 at them.
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.
