Page 42 of An Unexpected Kind of Love

“Ha.”

“I’m serious.”

“Now I’m terribly embarrassed.”

Aside from a couple of disastrous post-Eli dates, after enough pressure from family and friends to get on with things, I reluctantly tried to get on with things. Spirited efforts—disastrous results.

My heart back then wasn’t in it, still shaped for Eli. There’s no guide on how to move on from something like that. My first real relationship. We got together young, still in school. Eli, I thought then, was the man who was my future, or so I believed, along with my past.

If only Barnes Books sold books about how to exorcise exes from our past. That’d be brilliant late-night reading. God. Why don’t I stock titles like that?

“Just enjoy this,” Lily tells me. “That’s all you need to do. Don’t think about it.”

“That goes against my nature. Enjoyment, pleasure. Work needs doing. You should know that by now.”

“I know. But try. For me. For you, more than anything.”

“’Kay. Fine. I’ll think about it.”

“Excellent. You should listen to me more often. I’m very wise.”

“Very modest too. There’s one problem, though.”

“What’s that?” Lily’s concern radiates over the line.

“I haven’t heard from Blake today. At all. What if he…regrets it? Being with me?”

She tuts. “How could anyone regret being with you?”

“Oh, easily. Because I’m ten flavors of awkward, that’s how. But I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Well, he must be busy. And, like you said, if you were up all night, he probably needs to catch up on sleep.”

It sounds reasonable. It is reasonable. Except—

“He said he wasn’t going to sleep because he had work to do straight away.”

Lily’s quiet for a moment. She’s probably going to say something terribly logical, rather than saying I’ve already fucked this up. “Then he’s working and probably crashing out right after. Simple. Just try not to worry. If he was out with you all night, clearly he’s into you.”

What a thought. Perma-blush is back, all July-hot and close. On the floor, my cat lies on her back sunny-side up, stretched out in the crack of sunbeam spilling onto the rug between stacks of books. She has to be right. Blake’s collapsed with exhaustion somewhere, trying to restore himself.

“You’ll hear from him soon enough. Just enjoy a night off. Shop’s still closed, right?”

“Yeah. I should be working on something, though.” Relaxing isn’t second nature to me, not by a long shot. Like, it’s missed the mark by several shots, actually. Especially not when I think of Blake. My face reddens.

“Try.”

I relent. “’Kay.”

“’Kay.”

When we hang up, I go back to reading the last ofMaurice, and start on my next novel.

In the privacy of my flat, nobody knows if I’m reading a rom-com. For research. Customer recommendations and all that. Not because I’ll like it. No one will ever know.

Hours pass, and I hardly move from my sofa sprawl, absorbed.

Eventually, a text comes with a photo of a small green bean in the palm of someone’s hand—must be Blake’s?—along with a briefcatch up later. At least, it’s got to be a bean, though I’ll be damned if I know what it is, well out of my bean comfort zone, which admittedly lingers around the baked beans mark.

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