Page 7 of Wedding or Not

But he returned after a few minutes. He didn’t leave my side the rest of the night. He asked for my number, and he texted before I got back to my dorm room to ask if he could see me the next evening.

I woke up the next day to a whole new world. Messages from my friends asking about the guy and another message from the guy himself, saying he wasn’t falling asleep because he couldn’t stop thinking about me.

Overnight, I’d turned into a girl a hot guy might fall for at first sight. And a blissful future was spilling out for me from that morning on.

It doesn’t take a palm reader to guess what happened next. After three weeks of heavy wooing—which included my first time having sex—he stopped sending me messages. He stopped lingering under my dorm window and calling up romantic greetings. He stopped giving me flowers he picked (against policy) from the campus gardens.

He stopped.

He fell out of love as quickly as he’d fallen into it.

But I still remember the impression I had waking up that first morning. Like the world had reshaped itself as I slept, and everything I’d hoped and dreamed for might finally be coming true.

I feel it again when I wake up the next day after my interactions with Wes went viral.

First thing I do is check my phone.

There are hundreds of thousands of new followers on the Blossom Park social media accounts.

The only public account I have is my Goodreads, but a ridiculous number of people managed to find that and send me friend requests.

I hope Wes’s LinkedIn is getting the same treatment because I can imagine his frustration.

My annoyance fades when I check email and see hundreds more event inquiry forms. The interest in Blossom Park hasn’t faded overnight. It’s intensified.

Yesterday afternoon I was trying not to cry in a DC office building, and this morning we might be saved.

All we need is one really good year that allows us to pay down the debt, and we can go back to hovering between decent income and making do the way we used to.

Maybe Hipster Girl’s playful intrusion into our privacy is what will make the difference.

I’m so excited I jump out of bed, rush through a shower, and climb down from my bedroom in the cottage loft to find Audrey already deep into her reading.

“Can you believe what’s happening?” I ask her, going for the coffeepot.

Audrey has always been an early riser, and she makes the best coffee, so I never have to make it myself when she’s at home.

“Yeah, it’s crazy. Natalie said there’s so much interest we should raise our prices back.”

We’ve had to lower our prices in the past few years to keep our schedule booked at only the bare minimum.

“I was thinking that too. Has she actually scheduled anything yet? What if they’re all busybodies who aren’t serious customers?”

“She said she’s already booked every weekend for the next two months with smaller events, and we’ve already got some weddings for the summer.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“People make decisions for the silliest reasons,” Audrey says, lowering her eyes to her book. “But we might as well take advantage of it.”

“That’s for sure. Where’s Natalie?”

Audrey is already absorbed again in her reading, so her tone is distracted as she replies, “I think she went to Rooster’s.”

Rooster’s is a new coffee shop in the middle of the four blocks of Main Street that makes up our tiny downtown.

It’s a cute place with good coffee drinks, pastries, sandwiches, and a comfortable atmosphere, but it’s always made my gut drop when I see it or walk inside.

Because our coffee shop should have been open years before Rooster’s.