Page 26 of Borrow My Heart

“It’s my job now, my mission,” Asher said. “Make people see Bean is lovable by summer’s end.”

I smiled. “Ourmission.”

He jerked his head toward Bean. “Sit by him and let me take a non-blurry picture.” I started to protest, when he said, “It will be something different.”

He was right. I did need to try something different.

Rule:Never date someone who brings out your worst.

“If I got Dad a Brady’s Auto Shop sign for his birthday, do you think he’d get the hint and open his own shop already?” I asked my sister. We were at the farmers’ market in Old Town, mostly looking and sometimes eating. We’d stopped at a booth that burned words or names or pictures—anything really—into a piece of wood with a laser. We were watching a sign getting made, the wordsWill you marry me?etched into a piece of oak. “He couldn’t have splurged on the rustic pine?” I asked.

Zoey looked around. “Shh. Whoever is having that made might hear you.” At twenty years old, Zoey was a girl version of our dad: olive skin, dark hair, and kind eyes. And unlike me, she was a people pleaser. She hated disappointing people, even strangers. Even our mom. The second bothered me more than the first.

“Oh no,” I teased. “A random person on the street might be mad at me.”

She hooked her arm through my elbow and moved us along. “Would your Brady’s Auto sign be made of pine?”

“Only the best for Dad,” I said.

“It wouldn’t work,” she said. “Dad will never leave Niles’s place.”

“I know.” Our dad was too set in his ways. Too follow-the-straight-and-narrow.

“Plus, that’s a sucky birthday gift.” Zoey smiled my way.

I hip-checked her. “I know. What are you getting him?”

The next booth we came to sold handcrafted pens displayed in colorful cases. The smell of kettle corn drifted through the air all buttery sweet.

“I don’t know,” Zoey said. “Dad’s hard to shop for. Maybe we shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.”

“This was your idea, to get him a gift at the farmers’ market! I had the plan to inventory his closet and see what he’s missing, remember? We could’ve been buying him a practical button-down right now. He loves practical.”

“You and your plans.”

“Plans are good. They work.”

“Wren!” a girl called to me from a booth we were passing that boasted jewelry. “Hey!”

“Hi, Stacia!” I yelled back.

“Saw you online!” she called over the crowd. “Way to be ahero!”

“What is she talking about?” Zoey asked.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “This is why I never post pics of myself on the shelter’s Instagram page.”

“You posted one?”

I sidestepped a stroller. “This guy…a new volunteer made me. I did it for Bean.”

“Bean is still there?”

“Yes! Do you and your roommates need a dog? He’s really thebest.”

“I wish I could, but there’s a no-pet policy. Plus, that dog literally sat on my foot and wouldn’t move when I met him. But not in a friendly way. In anI want you to be inconveniencedway.”

I tried not to laugh. She was right, Bean seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He was annoyingly smart like that.

---