Page 12 of The Problem with Dating

He shook himself free of whatever chain had hooked onto him. When he looked my way, he forced a smile. “Yeah. I just saw a ghost. Or, well, the sister of a ghost, at least.”

I didn’t know if he meant an actual ghost or not. Based on the rumors, he’d done enough drugs to be able to see ghosts possibly. He’d been close enough to death from overdoses that it wasn’t a bizarre idea. He muttered a goodbye and then, in haste, headed in the opposite direction than he had focused on a few seconds ago.

I looked over at the shop he’d been studying, and my chest tightened when I saw the owner walking into the shop with another person.

I’d noticed the woman a lot over the past few months of construction. There was no denying she was beautiful. Her skin was a mesmerizing dark bronze that seemed to glow whenever the sun met her. When we crossed paths at the grocery store the other day, our eyes locked for a second. Her doe eyes were walnut-colored with slight hues of honey strands throughout her irises. Annoyingly entrancing.

She had a few freckles across her cheeks and dimples that only deepened whenever she smiled. She was short, about five-foot-four, but her personality made her feel taller. If she lacked anything, it wasn’t confidence, that was for certain.

She talked like Tatiana and Teresa, too, with her hands. Everything was explosive. Everything was a performance.

That afternoon, her naturally curly hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a flowy red jumpsuit and a bright yellow bandanna tied around her head, pulling her whole look together.

She seemed to be the town’s golden girl. Apparently, everyone liked her, which meant one thing—she was a pushover. Even Gandhi had people who hated him. No person was liked by everyone unless they allowed others to walk all over them.

That fact alone made me distrust the woman. Anyone who was a pushover was also a liar. Maybe not to others, but at least to themselves. They lied to make others comfortable, which was the stupidest thing in the world to me.

Why dull yourself in order to make others shine? It seemed ass-backward to me. I’d never met another person worth losing oneself to. Correction—I’d met one person I lost myself to, and I could vouch it wasn’t worth it at all.

That woman across the street was a liar. I hated nothing more in the world than liars.

She laughed a lot, too. Nobody had that many real laughs, which only fed into her being fake. She currently laughed so loudly with the other person beside her that I swore her laughter rippled off my chest. That annoyed me. Why would anyone laugh that hard about anything? Nothing was that funny.

Just seeing her radiant personality put me in a sour mood. That wasn’t shocking, though. It didn’t take much to make me moody. I lived comfortably with my unpleasant attitude. Especially on that day. Everything was awful that particular afternoon. Seeing that woman only made it worse.

CHAPTER4

Yara

Ihated confrontation. My body broke out into hives whenever I was forced to have uncomfortable conversations with individuals. That made running a business a little harder than I would’ve liked it to be, especially when I fell behind on bills because I was, in fact, a wimp.

Some days, I wished I could get paid for daydreaming. I was fantastic at living in make-believe scenarios. I was almost certain I’d be a millionaire by now if daydreams wrote checks. My mind had a way of feeling like a delusional comfort hug when reality was kicking my behind. Which seemed to be a constant thing when I was dealing with Mrs. Levels and Shirley, her sweet golden doodle dog.

“You do understand, right, Yara? With the way prices are going up everywhere and the way my bills are set up, I cannot afford to keep Shirley in doggie day care while keeping my lights on.” Mrs. Levels was a woman in her sixties, who’d been using the services at my dog spa and day care for years. She’d brought her animals to the shop long before I took over ownership from Mr. Parker after he passed. As she told me her third sob story of the month about why she was two months behind on payments, I couldn’t help but notice her sparkling diamond earrings.

“Those are beautiful earrings, Ms. Levels,” I mentioned. “Are they new?”

“New? Oh gosh no. I would never spend such money on superficial items, especially when my income is so tight.” She touched the palms of her hands to her ears. “These are a family heirloom. Passed down from my great-great-aunt, Anita.”

I smiled and nodded. “Is that so?”

“Oh yes,” she purred, waving a dismissive hand in my direction. “I could go on and on about my great-great-aunt Anita, but I don’t want to bore you to death with my family history. All I came to ask is if you could keep Shirley while I go to another job interview this afternoon. I have a feeling this is the one!”

“That’s very exciting news. I know you’ve been looking for a while. What’s the position are you applying for?”

She stood and held her hand to her chest. “Well, gee, Yara. You sure are nosy today, aren’t you? Mr. Parker, rest his sweet soul, never questioned me in such a manner. I simply dropped off my dogs and went on my way. Did you know he never charged me a dime, either? Sweet Mr. Parker always did so much for this town. My hope is that you honor his memory as you take over his shop,” she scolded with her nose turned up.

“I hope the same thing, Mrs. Levels. Go ahead and bring Shirley in. The girls will take her into the playroom for the day.”

Mrs. Levels’s scolding tone shifted when she realized she was getting her way yet again. She melted into a smile and patted my hand. “You’re such a saint, Yara. Truly, I hope God blesses you.”

“That’s very kind of you to say, Mrs. Levels.”

“What can I say? I’m a very kind person,” she agreed as she turned to go grab Shirley. When she came back inside, a happy-go-lucky Shirley followed her, wagging her tail. Shirley made any irritation I’d felt toward Mrs. Levels disappear quickly as she hurried over to me for cuddles. I wished people were more like dogs, minus the whole eating their own vomit and poop every now and again. Dogs were genuine. People sometimes…not so much.

As one of my favorite employees, Keri, took Shirley back for day care, Willow walked into the shop.

“Hi, Mrs. Levels,” Willow greeted as she tossed her hair up into a messy bun before nodding toward Mrs. Levels. “You got something dangling from your earring.”

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