“Would you like to return those bills to my back pocket?” Noah whispered. “I’ll pay better attention this time.”
He was such a tease. “You wish.” See. Meaningless flirting. With an emphasis on meaningless.
They called out our number, and I pulled away from him to get our food, handing Noah his lunch and then following him out.
He led us to a quiet, shady spot where the raised flowerbeds left a big concrete edge for us to sit on. It was moments like this when I hated being short. The planter came up almost to my chest. Putting my food up next to where I planned to sit, I planted my hands behind me and then launched myself up, using all the triceps muscles I’d built up from that one Pop Sugar workout video on YouTube I did from time to time.
Success. I made it. Barely. There had been a second when I didn’t think I would. I turned in time to see Noah trying not to laugh, and I couldn’t help laughing with him. “Am I amusing you?”
“Endlessly.”
Ignoring him, I took out my wrap and took a big bite. We ate in silence for a few minutes before Noah reached out and stole a potato chip out of my bag.
“Are you needing attention?” I asked.
When he didn’t say anything snarky in response, I stole a glance at him. And froze. That expression about having your heart in your eyes? That’s what he looked like. But I didn’t understand it and I didn’t trust it, so I dropped eye contact and tried to continue eating. It didn’t work. My throat felt like it was closing off. He wasn’t allowed to look at me like that. He just couldn’t.
“Jenny.”
Even his voice sounded different. Earnest. Reverent. Okay, now I was really losing my mind.
“What?” I met his eyes again.
“We need to talk today.”
I sighed.
“Not right now.” He laughed nervously. “Not while we’re holding food and fending off pigeons.” We both glanced over at the two good-sized birds stalking back and forth in front of us, like soldiers-for-hire plotting how best to break us.
“What’s this about?” I no longer worried about it being a let’s-just-be-friends speech. There was something bigger going on here, and just because I had no idea what it was didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. If Noah was worried, there was a reason to worry.
“Do you want to meet up somewhere?” I asked.
“I’ll come to you. There’s that big park over by Denver’s house. We could walk down to it. Would that be okay?”
“Sure.” I picked up my chip bag and held it out to him. “Chip?” He was being so weird. Enough that I was about ready to start a food fight just to break up the tension.
Noah took one from me and examined it.
“Yes, I poisoned that particular chip. Just for you.”
He grinned and popped it in his mouth. And then we started talking about what the pigeons were scheming next and that one time when Dan brought hot dog flavored potato chips for us to try, and Sadie almost barfed in his car.
I went back to work with a lighter heart, despite the fact that I found another contract for a terrible gift item Hunter had tried to slide past me, and pickle jokes were running rampant. The team was dutifully wearing their t-shirts, which meant I had to go dig myVery Important Pickleshirt out of the cupboard above my desk and put it on over my cute, white and navy, polka-dot blouse. After today though, the tie-dye shirt was going back in the crowded cupboard with the rest of my appreciation gifts. I was running out of room for all of them. And patience. How was I supposed to motivate these guys to do better when our boss was shilling his nieces’ t-shirt business as a thank you? Meetings like that always made my praise of everyone’s work feel meaningless.
I took a deep breath. Resentment was one of those things that could snowball quickly when people found a common enemy, and Connecting Hearts was not our enemy. It just had a few quirks.
Chapter 21 – Noah
I’d written out a speech, torn it up, and then panicked and burned it for good measure. Which of course led to me turning on every fan in the apartment so Clark wouldn’t smell smoke and ask questions when he got home from work.
When Jenny came out to meet me on Denver’s porch and looked up at me with a mixture of fear and anticipation, I metaphorically burned the speech again. And stomped on it. And then sent the ashes out into the wind. There was no speech that could adequately prepare me for this moment.
She fell in step beside me as we headed out to the park, the breeze picking up strands of her red hair and tossing them up before she tucked them behind her ears. I didn’t get to see her in casual clothes very often, which was sort of weird, considering how long we’d known each other. I loved her in jeans. I loved her baseball tee and her pink Skechers. I lovedher.
Why the heck hadn’t I dated her for real? Yes, Carin (Karen) had messed with my head and made me think relationships were traps, but the real trap was realizing I might never get to experience any of it with Jenny.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, turning to look up at me.
