She smiles into her pillow.
“I love you,” I say.
Iris mutters, “Love you too,” and rolls over to face the wall.
I wait until she’s asleep, and then I go back to my booth at the festival.
Once I arrive, Finn is not manning my table.
In fact, there’s no one around at all.
Once again, my instincts were wrong, and that sucks.
I slump in my chair and wait for more customers.
I should never let a disappointing man determine my mood. Grabbing a lotus drink from the nearby coffee truck, I let the fruity goodness boost my attitude. Or at least allow me enough wherewithal to hide my feelings.
But all through the day, I wonder why I didn’t see the red flags. Man, that Finn really did seem like a good guy. He had me convinced he was a man of his word and had his head on straight. That he wasn’t like the dozens of other guys who have let me down, again and again and again.
I’m in such a sour mood that when Oliver strolls up later, I tell a blatant lie.
“Iris had a wedding dress emergency,” I tell him before he has time to ask where she is.
“Oh. OK. Is everything OK?”
I can’t look him in the eye, and begin shuffling items around on the table, putting my guard up, because men. “No, like I said, she had an emergency, so…”
I don’t need to be any nicer. I don’t know this man, but I know his brother isn’t what I thought he was.
Oliver eventually walks off, and I find myself ruminating on men in general and on Finn specifically.
Where did he go?
I need to get out of here before I get any more bad news.
And just like that, my stomach drops out of my butt because Peter Hutchinson, the owner of the building that I want for my bookstore, is approaching. And he looks serious.
“Let me stop you right there,” I say. “I didn’t get the building.”
“You didn’t?”
I blink at him. “Weren’t you coming to tell me I didn’t get it?”
The burly man in the polo shirt embroidered with his real estate logo looks confused. He takes out a folder from his leather satchel and presents me with a small stack of papers.
“Your lease agreement.”
“What?”
“The other guy bowed out,” Pete says.
“How? Why? Who?”
“I can’t give out that information,” Pete says stiffly.
Now I’ve known this man since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and if there’s anyone who leaks like a sieve, it’s Pete.
“Come on, Pete.”
