Page 22 of Perfect Blend

Bricker: Tell me about it. It’s terrifying. I have no idea if it could work, and I’m not sure I want it to with some other complicated stuff going on.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: Do you need to know if it will right now?

Bricker: I guess not.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: I know you’re not a fan of uncertainty, but maybe it’ll work itself out.

Bricker: Someone woke up on the bright side today.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: I guess you could say I like my guy too.

Bricker: Your guy, huh? That’s huge, Jack.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: Terrifying to consider crawling out of my emotional hermitude.

Bricker: Same, man. Same.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: We’re not broken. We’ll get there.

Bricker: Totally. And if everything falls apart, we’ll always have Discord.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: Amen.

Bricker: I’d better go. I’m heading to meet him.

JavaJackOfAllTrades: Two days in a row?! Look at you! Have fun and fill me in later.

Bricker: Will do!

I shoved my phone back into my pocket and returned to work. My gut twinged with a taste of jealousy over Bricker clicking with someone, but I’d established the boundaries and had to live with them. I’d nearly suggested we try a video chat, but that would be ridiculous. Thoughts of Mikey helped the sour feeling fade.

The front door chimed, and my head snapped in that direction like it had each time since I’d opened. My heart leaped into my throat as Mikey walked in. As soon as he saw me, he treated me to an arrestingly handsome smile.

I walked to the counter to greet him. “Hey, you,” I said with far too much intimacy.

“Hey,” Mikey replied in a tone that was borderline breathy.

“Ready to go?”

He nodded.

I went through a few things with Izzy before leaving them in charge and saw Mikey chatting with a few people.

“You’re halfway to being a local,” I said once we were on the sidewalk.

“Making connections with people for my stories is part of the job.”

Alarm bells rang in my mind like a tsunami warning at the coast. Was I just part of the job? The part of me that still felt like Travis had used me waved red flags the size of football fields. I squashed the fear and reminded myself that Mikey wasn’t Travis.Go me.Bricker and my therapist would be proud.

“But there’s something different here. Something special.” He smiled at the colorful Pride display in the bookstore windows.

“It really is an amazing place.”

“How’d you end up here?”

I was surprised we hadn’t talked about that with how much we’d talked about the town. “I met my ex at the coffee shop I used to work at in McMinnville. He used to have meetings in there all the time, and we eventually started talking more, and he asked me out. After we’d been dating a while, he told me about an opportunity to lease the space to open a coffee shop. He knew that was my dream, and his family could lend me money and make it happen.”

It had seemed like the perfect setup until I was drowning in repayment to his parents and the standard of living Travis was accustomed to. It should’ve been a red flag that he’d had so many meetings but never seemed to get work from them.

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