Page 21 of Just Like Home

She rolled her eyes and continued toward her car. “Send me the bill, Scrooge.”

“Scrooge was a miser, not a grouch,” he called out.

She spun around and glared at him. He expected her to roll her eyes again and keep walking, but instead she marched back to him, and for a second he was mildly afraid. She yanked the bouquet out of his hand, rifled around in it, then produced a small white envelope. “You can keep the flowers, but I’m taking this back.”

He frowned as she shoved the flowers back toward him. “What is it?”

She steeled her jaw. “You’ll never know.”

And with that, she trudged back to her car, got in, started the engine, and drove away.

Cole watched the car disappear around the corner, looked at the disheveled bouquet in his hands, and he couldn’t help it—he smiled.

6

What an idiot!

Charlotte sped down the unfamiliar street as fast as she could without going over the speed limit. So far, her trip to Harbor Pointe was going swimmingly. Julianna’s husband had made it very clear what he thought of her and Julianna’s meathead brother seemed intent on putting her in her place.

How many times could she apologize?

She glanced at the small envelope she’d snatched out of the bouquet—at least he’d never read her heartfelt apology or the line she’d almost not written:Maybe one day we’ll actually become friends and this will be a funny memory that makes us laugh. Julianna would get a kick out of that, don’t you think?

How desperate was she to make friends that she extended such a vulnerable olive branch to someone who’d just snapped it in half?

Idiot!

From now on, she’d concentrate only on the people who were nice to her. Like Lucy and her friends from the diner, who’d somehow taken her in as if she’d been a part of their group all along. Charlotte had expected to feel like an outsider, but somehow, that morning, she’d found herself enjoying conversation and an egg white omelet at the diner.

This was Julianna’s everyday life, filled with friends and brunches and people who loved her. Charlotte thought she could get used to it, even if a part of her did feel like she was pretending. Even if she’d spent the last two days dodging calls from her irate mother.

These simple moments brought her so much peace.

“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Lucy’s friend Haley had asked with a glance at Charlotte’s plate. “Fruit and an egg white omelet? Do youknowhow good the cinnamon rolls here are?”

Charlotte’s eyes meandered to Haley’s plate, where one giant, frosted cinnamon roll waited to be eaten. She could smell it from across the table.

But that was not breakfast. Breakfast was about fuel. Eggs were fuel. Cinnamon rolls were not.

“So you and Julianna were pen pals?” Quinn Collins asked. Quinn’s Forget-Me-Not flower shop was just a few doors down from the diner. Jules sometimes wrote about her too. Apparently, Quinn had a hunky Olympian husband, and Julianna had shared all the details of that saga with Charlotte last year.

It was sort of surreal sitting here at the same table with people she’d imagined through Jules’s letters.

“Julianna and I met at a summer dance intensive when we were kids,” Charlotte said. “We were roommates. I remember being so annoyed they stuck me with this girl who was obviously not serious about ballet. She was there to make friends.”

The others laughed.

“Sounds like Jules,” Lucy said.

“I think Julianna enrolled in the intensive thinking it would be like a sleepaway camp. Not intense training for up-and-coming prima ballerinas.” Charlotte smiled at the memory. While thirteen-year-old Charlotte was passing up the dinner rolls, Julianna was sneaking Twix bars after lights-out.

“I didn’t know everything was going to be so intense,” Jules had said on their third day there.

“Then why did you come?” Charlotte had asked.

Jules swallowed her bite of chocolate and caramel with a shrug. “I came to have fun. To make friends. To do something different for a change. And, honestly, to get out of my house. My parents fight all the time.”

“So you don’t even want to be a professional dancer?” Charlotte asked, thinking that it was best if she didn’t—the less competition, the better. And while Julianna may not be serious about it—she was good. Really good.

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