Page 49 of The Future Play

“What does it say?”

“Baseball boy…”

Damn him.

This is my safe space. This is…

What is this?

“Okay, thank you,” I say, then let Jace pull me away from the counter.

Stupid Jamie Henderson, crashing my sacred space to give me one of my favorite things. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love coffee. You have to really pay attention to know where I like to get it from though.

But the thing is, I don’t remember ever mentioning this place.

Maybe he assumed?

“So… baseball boy, huh?”

“Shut up. We agreed. No talking abouthim.”

“But you’re thinking about him.”

“I never said I couldn’t do that.” It wasn’t my plan, but he interrupted my plans to stew in my anger by doing something one could consider sweet.

That I want to consider sweet.

It’s not quite an apology. But it’s better than anything else he’s done in the last month.

We grab our lattes when they’re ready, and make our wayaround the store, checking what’s new and seeing if there are any new signed copies.

When I see a particularly cute display of blind date with a book options, I snap a picture, getting a piece of my coffee cup in the shot too. It’s not until I’ve uploaded it to my social media that I realize I’ve done that same thing in this shop many times. But when I go to my follower requests, Jamie is still in there. Which means… he found someone else and went through my account on their phone? Because even though I’ve been planning to bring the girls here for a girls’ day coffee and shopping adventure, I haven’t told them how often I come here. The only way he could’ve gotten the information was to find it himself.

And that changes something inside me. I look down at the coffee in my hand.

I asked him to show me.

One little thing like this doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t mean he’ll follow through. But it melts away a tiny piece of my anger, and that’s something.

Though a partof me wanted to go get my prepaid coffee all weekend long, I didn’t want to take advantage. What Jamie did was meaningful, but if some paid-for coffee is all there is, that feeling would fade. By Monday, though, I gave in and went again. When I did, not only was my coffee paid for, but so was one of their homemade brownies with a handwritten note from Jamie.

He drove all the way there to leave me a note.

I’ve been trying not to overthink what it means—that he’d leave me a note rather than just come see me when he’s already in Woods Junction. He doesn’t know where I live, but he could’ve easily gotten my address from one of the girls.

But the note was cute and sweet.

I know this brownie might not be quite as good as Rae’s, but any brownie is a good one, right? When you’re savoring every chocolatey bite, I want you to know that how you feel when you eat a brownie is how I feel when I’m with you. Comfortable, safe, like nothing else is wrong in the world.

-Jamie

Another bit of my anger melted away when I read that. When I went in again on Thursday, there was another surprise. This one was a specially requested blind date with a book. One with a baseball playing hero who screws up with the girl he cares about and has to grovel.

I smiled like an idiot when I saw that description.

Anger is harder to hold on to when someone shows their heart.

I knew Jamie had a kind one. It still doesn’t change what happened, but I’m slowly starting to believe he’s genuinely sorry. I’m willing to listen to him apologize this time if he wants to try again.

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