Page 96 of A Novel Love Story

She laughed. “Inflation gets you every time. So, today’s the day.”

“Today’s the day,” I echoed. Thanks to Anders’s Buick, may it rest in pieces.

“Do you think you have room in the trunk for me?” she joked.

“Wanna go in my stead?”

Maya frowned. “Then stay, if you wanna stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Because Anders didn’t want me to. Because, if I thought about it for two seconds, Icouldn’t. Not responsibly, anyway. But what would I really leave, if I did? A job I half hated? Friends who, for the most part, lived five hundred miles away? Pru, who was moving on with her life, going to the next phase, leaving me behind? I’d checked my phone countless times to see if the text ever went through, and it never did. I couldn’t even consult her, so I picked at my muffin.

“Wow, what’s with the long face? Are youthatsad Gemma figured out how to stop the bee mutiny?” Ruby asked, sliding into the booth beside Maya, flipping up her sunglasses. She was dressed in paint-splotched shorts and a shirt that read, in big red letters,HONKERS. She gave me a once-over. “You’ll get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that.”

I asked, surprised, “The bees aren’t mutinying anymore?”

“Nope,” Ruby confirmed.

Maya added, “Apparently they just really didn’t like all the rain.” And it hadn’t been raining as much since I arrived. I guess I had inadvertently changed that, too, but … that wasn’t such a bad thing. Then she told Ruby, “She’s leaving today.”

Ruby whistled. “So it’s a bon voyage breakfast? That sucks. If I knew, I would’ve made you a going-away present.”

“Rubes, you suck at arts and crafts.”

“It would’ve been store-bought,” she amended, and Maya rolled her eyes. “I’ve got so much time now that Jake and I are figuring things out. He even asked for morning shift, and we’re taking theentire weekendoff.” She waved to her boyfriend across the café, one finger down at a time, smiling. Then she said under her breath, “I’m going to ride him raw.”

I almost spewed my coffee, and Maya pushed a few napkins toward me.

Ruby waved at someone who came in, and both Gemma and Junie slid into the booth with us.

Gemma put her purse on the hook on the corner of the table. “Sorry we’re a little late,” she supplied. She had on her Sweeties uniform, her wavy hair pinned back with bobby pins. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was positively glowing. “I got a late start this morning, and Lily found her new obsession.”

“A late start,” Maya said to Ruby, wiggling her eyebrows.

I grinned. “Did those books help Thomas study up?”

Gemma plucked the menu from behind the napkin holder and dutifully ignored us. “Lily thinks she wants to be a wildlife vet now.”

Junie asked, after flagging Jake over to order a round of coffees, “I thought she was into tardigrades?”

“That was last year. This year it’s something that you’ll really love, Jake,” she added as he came over with four mugs, and filled them with coffee. He stood, rapt, waiting for the answer. Gemma finally revealed: “Possums.”

Jake groaned, and walked away.

Gemma went on, “Did you know they have opposable thumbs?”

“Yes,” Ruby deadpanned. The look in her eyes was almost like she was reliving wartimes.

“Andthat they can swim up tofifteen feetunderwater without coming up for breath? Lily was telling me about a story where a baby possum came up through atoilet.”

“That’s frightening,” I said grimly.

“Oh, I’ve got a better one. One time …” And Ruby began to recount her and Jake’s first run-in with the grumpy possum of the titular café. I’d read this story a thousand times, so my mind began to wander.

Out the window, Anders left his shop to take his morning stroll, and met up with Lily and Thomas coming out of Sweeties, and I wished I didn’t know how solid his chest was, or how warm and gentle his hands, or how he tasted—but I did. And I only had myself to blame.

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