Page 34 of Unstoppable Love

A freaking house.

It was a small house, he was right. And there wasn’t anything overtly special or unique about it, but it was a house.

And according to my dad, it was mine.

Welcome home to New Haven, indeed.

Chapter 10

Ava

“This is wild!” Lydia threw her arms around me and swung back and forth. “You have your own house. Your parents are the bestest!”

“I know.” I squeezed her back and patted her back. “Now stop throwing me around before I puke on you.”

She squeezed me tight, stepped away, and with her arms thrown far out to her sides, she spun in a circle in my family room. “Have you done any furniture shopping yet?”

It was the very next morning, and obviously, the first thing I did upon waking was text Lydia the address of my house to meet me at.

She’d shot off a bunch of questions and then stopped when I told her to shut up and do it.

Now we were here, standing in my living room. There wasn’t much in the house at all since the only thing I took from my apartment with Kip was the table, but my dad had found an old writer’s desk on a used furniture website, so he’d bought it and put it in my extra room.

Since I couldn’t sleep here until I had places to sit and sleep, I was staying at my parents’ place for now.

“I was online shopping until the middle of the night. Want to see what I found?”

“Only if you let me take you out for breakfast. Since you called so early, I haven’t eaten yet.”

“Jumping Beans?” It was a coffee shop, but they also made incredible egg sandwiches and wraps.

“You’re on.” We skipped out of the house, and Lydia waited while I locked up. “That porch swing is to die for. I need one of those, like now.”

“I’m picturing it filled with pillows. A little side table between the chairs, maybe some fairy lights strung around up here…” I pointed up to the eaves of the porch. “Can you imagine wine nights out here?”

“Second stop after the coffee shop is the hardware store, bet they have them. We can grab a ladder and whatever. Get this place feeling like home. And then, since Mom told me to take one more day off before I go back to work, we can sit on the porch, shop, and day drink the day away.”

I shook my head and laughed at Lydia.

Yeah, New Haven was turning out to be a great decision for me. For my liver? With Lydia being so close? We’d soon see.

We went to Jumping Beans. We stopped by the hardware store, where Lydia was mostly right. They had everything we needed except for the fairy lights, but that was okay since we could day drink in the sunshine.

Which we also did. Isaiah came by, drove me back to Mom and Dad’s for dinner, and by the end of the day, I’d ordered couches and a few chairs and tables. Mom and Dad were letting me take my bed, so I crossed that off the list but ordered a new headboard.

Over the next couple of weeks, while I waited for the living room furniture to arrive, I slowly created a space that was mine. My vision. I bought artwork and lamps. I bought an office chair for my desk and a small couch off Amazon that could be pulled out to be a bed for when I had company. I filled my kitchen with dishes and glassware and bought a super cute, farmhouse-style wine rack and buffet stand for the eating area.

Every day I walked into town, bought my groceries, and hung out at Jumping Beans or the library where I worked.

And every day, New Haven started feeling like home all over again, except this time, it was my home. My choice.

I was settling in. And the best part was that I wasn’t even just settling in to working remotely. Cathy, the owner of Jumping Beans saw me working one day and asked if I could help her with her social media. “It’s all new to me, and I don’t think I’m doing the Instagram thing right or anything, but that’s how business grows, right?”

We sat and talked, and I committed to a few hours a week, helping her come up with a posting schedule where I’d provide the graphics.

Which got me thinking about future plans. Who else could I help? Who else would see the value in it? New Haven was a small town, but instead of dying like so many others, ours was growing. Albeit slowly, we’d doubled in size since I was born, and the town didn’t have a traffic light. Now there were two.

Regardless, I was in the library, taking a break from my real job to come up with a list of other places in town that I could talk to about working with when it happened.

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