Kill me now.
When it’s time to smile for the cameras so the whole town knows what a great time we had at the Best in Snow Winter Games Competition, the photographer urges me to stand right next to Rowan. “The two lovebirds,” he says, and I want to shouthe’s a lovebird who pooped on my head. But I behave, inching closer to the man who broke my heart. Our shoulders touch. A traitorous zing shoots through me.
But I ignore that too.
Fable’s at the front of the crowd, her arm hooked with her husband’s. I can hear her say to him, “Look—another Evergreen Falls love story. This town just has that effect.”
Wilder kisses her cheek and says, “It sure does, sugar plum. It sure does.”
And I fake it one more time for the picture.
But really, I brought this on myself.
I might not be going to the gala as the fake or real date, but I’m damn well using the chance to leave my business cards in the blind-date packages. Work was there for me when JD left. Work will be here for me now again.
After the contest, I go straight to A Likely Story, where I snag a table in the corner of the adjacent café. There I wrap the books, my friends joining me—Mabel, Sabrina, and Leighton.
I slice a section of butcher paper like the scissors are a weapon, then I rip off a long stretch of tape.
That’s enough for Leighton to say, “Are you okay?”
I look up, befuddled. “I’m great. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She nods at my hand. “Because that tape is twenty feet long.”
I look down. Hmm. It is.
“And that’s not like you,” Sabrina adds. “You’re precise and careful.”
“You mean I’m obsessive and fixated,” I say, eyeing the mess of tape.
“I think she means we’re concerned about you,” Mabel adds. “What’s going on?”
I sigh, then set down the scissors and the roll of tape. A knot of emotions rises in my throat. Then climbs higher. And I swear—it explodes.
“He broke up with me,” I say, and that’s all it takes. The tears rain down, streaking my cheeks as we sit here in this quiet corner of the café, just my friends and me.
“Oh, honey. What happened?” Mabel asks, reaching for a tissue from her pocket and handing it to me, right as Leighton and Sabrina do the same.
“I love you all and your tissues so much,” I say, sniffling and taking them.
I dab my face, then spill out the terrible story of the snowstorm, and the plan for sushi in San Francisco, and then the s’mores date yesterday and the things he said that ripped me to pieces.
“And he said he felt all these things for me he hasn’tfelt in ages, but he’s afraid of taking a chance, and I get it. I do. He doesn’t want to get his daughter attached and then get hurt because she’s been hurt and so has he. So I said I understood, and I even volunteered to still go to the gala with him.”
Mabel gives me a look like I just suggested we eat paint for a snack. “Why in the ever-loving hell would you do that?”
“To be helpful?” I say. No, Iaskit, because why the hell did I?
“You don’t need to do that,” Leighton says, so certain and self-assured.
“But I’m a helpful person.”
“And you don’t have to help a guy who hurt youafteryou told him how you feel,” she says.
I freeze, then gulp. I guess I didn’t exactly spell it out. “Um…about that.”
Sabrina sighs heavily. “You didn’t tell him how you feel?”
