Page 12 of Sweet Twins For My Brother's Best Friend

I haven’t been able to commit to anyone since Julie, and I don’t feel any closer to doing so, either.

And I don’t know if I ever will be.

Chapter Five

Hannah

The next few days are the same as most of my days are now.

I stay busy.

I work on my art, I play with Lucy, and I go to work. I haven’t taken Lucy back to that dog park since that man, Scott, talked to me. I’m too afraid I’ll see him again and he’ll remember me, and I won’t know what to say.

I sit at my desk eating a toasted bagel with a microwaved egg on top as I read an email. It’s from Tom Dougherty, a client I’ve been working with for a while.

He runs a nonprofit in town that provides toiletries for various organizations like food banks and foster homes, and I help him at an extremely discounted rate.

He’s a bit needy, and I’ve learned that I can likely only manage one nonprofit at a time because they require so much auditing.

Frankly, most people at nonprofits don’t know much about financial issues or how to plan or manage within their budget. They seem to run on dreams and good intentions. I think that for Christmas I might give him and his team a few dream catchers. I can’t decide if that would be funny or rude.

His latest email is a request to check to see if they qualify for a grant that they’re looking into. I responded that I’d get to it sometime today and get back to him within the week.

My fingers fly across the keyboard while I hold my bagel in my mouth and a little piece of egg slides off and between my ‘d’ and ‘f’ key. Groaning, I try to pick it out and another piece falls into my lap, so I stand to wipe it off and onto the floor.

Lucy gratefully runs to it and greedily licks it off, her tongue flat against the wood.

Looking around, I realize I don’t have a canister of compressed air, so I pick up my laptop and shake it.

Of course, Chris picks this moment to prance in, a smile across his face and his hair sweaty again.

My shoulders droop when I notice him and, for a moment, we just stare at each other, me with a bagel in my mouth as I shake my laptop, him still in the doorway, pulling the headphones out of his ears. “Do you need help?” he finally asks.

“No, I’m good,” I say, but with my mouth full it sounds more like, “Nnnmmmgd.”

He steps forward and pulls the bagel out of my mouth. “Does that help?” he asks with a laugh and sets it down on my desk.

I smile awkwardly without teeth. “Thank you.” I wipe crumbs off my pants. “What are you doing here? You don’t have an appointment, do you? Wait, do you?”

Anxiety shoots through me as I wonder if I missed something in my calendar and I open it up, still standing.

“No, no,” he assures me. “I didn’t know I needed one. I need one?”

He sits down in the plush chair across from my desk. It’s a wingback chair with red velvet upholstery that’s seen better days, but it’s all I can afford at the moment. The feet are elegant swirls of cherry-stained wood.

I shoot Chris an icy look.

Setting my laptop down, I sit back in my chair, shooing Lucy away from repeatedly licking the no longer egg-y spot on the floor.

“Well, I don’t know, Chris, do people need an appointment to see you in a professional capacity?”

Grinning, he says, “Well, look, you’re lucky, aren’t you? You would have been stuck in bagel limbo if it weren’t for me.”

“Chris, I gave you my email for a reason, all right? Please use it. Do not show up here unexpected. It isn’t fair to me or respectful to my schedule.”

I use my firmest voice, which is admittedly not very firm, but I hope the firm words make up for it.

Admittedly, I may be laying it on thick because I feel a bit awkward right now.

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