Page 46 of Tempting Max

She rolls her eyes but adds, “on God.”

“Okay. Well, I’ve been spending time with my boss.” Even I cringe when I say it because it sounds so, well,cringe.

“Which one?”

I inhale. That’s the hard part. I have no idea how she’ll react to the age difference or the circumstance, but I have a feeling I’m going to have to get over that awkwardness if I want to make a life with Max. “Max.”

“Sorry sweetie, I can’t keep them straight. Is he the young one?”

I shake my head. “He’s the oldest.”

Sally’s eyebrows crest her forehead and nearly disappear into her hairline. “Right. And how old was he again?”

“Forty-five.”

Her eyes flare wide open, but she schools the rest of her face before she responds. “That’s quite an age-gap, honey.”

“I know. And I thought it would be weird, but it’s not. It feels like…it feels like I’ve known him my whole life.”

Sally doesn’t answer, just watches me, and after a few moments she smiles.

“What? I know it’s so soon after Ethan and probably a bigger risk than I should take right now but…”

“You’re happy, honey.” She reaches forward and cups my face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you look this light, this free in years.”

Tears threaten to spill down my face as her words slip past all the arguments I had lined up. “Really?”

“Really. It makes me so happy to see you doing better.” She gathers me to her for a quick hug and I melt into her body, not knowing I needed the reassurance as much as I did.

“Tell me about him,” she says when we separate. “If you want to.”

I sink into the back of the couch—grateful I don’t work until the evening shift. “He’s a giant, Sally. Six-five at least, shoulders out to here,” I hold my hands apart. “Eyes the color of stormy seas, and this intensity that I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of yet.”

“He sounds perfectly dreamy.”

The memory of his hands skimming over my skin, the crinkles next to his eyes when he smiles at me, turn me to mush on the inside. “He is. But he’s also brilliant. He brews all the beer, creates all the recipes. It’s like watching an artist working with his medium. He’s also kind, protective, and responsible. And I think, if I wait long enough, I’ll find a sense of humor inside.”

Sally just smiles while I talk, taking it all in. “I’ll have to come by and put my eyes on the man that stole your heart.”

“My heart?” I shake my head, “I wouldn’t go that far, we just—”

“I love you, Gus, but neither of us are good at hiding how we really feel. If your pupils could turn to hearts, they would. You are in love.”

I close my mouth and swallow. Am I in love? I know I want tobewith Max, I know I see him as my future, but isn’t it too early to call it love? Isn’t there a timer on those things, a guide?

“Sometimes it happens just like that,” she snaps her fingers, “and you never see it coming. Love just sneaks in, and you have to be ready for it when it does because sometimes it’s gone in an instant.”

I study Sally for a moment and ask a question I’ve never had the guts to get out. “Have you ever been in love?”

Her smile is sad, but happy at the same time. Bittersweet. “I was. My freshman year of college, I met the most handsome man in the world, and he swept me right off my feet like a fairytale prince.”

I reach out and take her hands as her lips tremble.

“John was killed in a car accident that summer, he was on his way to ask my father for my hand in marriage but never made it.”

My heart breaks and I feel my entire body sink into the sofa. “Oh Sally, oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

She blinks back tears. “We didn’t even get a full year,” she says, letting go of my hands to wipe the tears. When she grabs them again, she looks at me with a firm expression. “But I am so happy that I got the months that I had. John showed me what it was like to be loved, to be cherished, to feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. He showed me what I deserved, and I haven’t settled for less than that since the day I lost him.”

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