Page 78 of Wedding Season
Even though they hadn’t been on a formal date since her declaration, he’d made it clear in a myriad of tiny ways that he cared for her. Whether finding little excuses to touch her as they worked together stringing lights and putting up decorations for the festival or bringing her coffee or a boxed salad when he thought she was working too much.
His thoughtfulness never wavered. And she couldn’t complain that she was truly losing herself to him. Although when it came to Alex, it didn’t feel like a loss or falling or anything scary. It felt like finally being confident in her place in the world and having a person who made her fit without having to be anything but herself.
She wanted to tell him how she felt but something stopped her. Fear mostly.
What if this was just who he was? A good person. The type of man who cared about the people around him. She’d seen him drop off coffee to Heather and bring in little treats for people who worked in the office. He was intrinsically thoughtful. Maybe Mariella was fooling herself into thinking that she was someone special to him. But, oh, how he made her feel special.
Or maybe that’s what normal well-adjusted people did. Before Magnolia, Mariella had met so few of them in her life. She’d seen and heard about plenty of romantic overtures as she worked with brides at Belle Vie leading up to their big day, but she hadn’t trusted it.
She knew how easy it was to get caught up in the fantasy. That’s how a good portion of her adult life had been spent after all, pretending that things were perfect while ignoring the hairline cracks in the foundation of her life. Now she wanted something real and solid. Although she still didn’t trust herself not to mess it up with Alex, she knew they would have no chance if she didn’t try as much as he did.
With that in mind, she forced herself to leave the store in Jasmin’s capable hands for the remainder of the day. After delegating a few of the more time-sensitive tasks for the festival, she made a stop by the grocery store, and then the pet aisle at the hardware store. She texted Alex to ask if he would join her for dinner that night then headed home to get ready.
Millie watched her with unblinking fish eyes as Mariella bustled around the kitchen chopping vegetables and sautéing them, then she started on the sauce by heating olive oil—the extra virgin kind.
But she couldn’t quite stem the tide of nerves rolling through her, like the waves crashing against the shoreline after a storm.
She told herself that cooking for a man she was dating did not mean anything. It didn’t have to mean anything. She was just doing something nice for him. The way he did nice things for her all the time. But the more minutes that ticked by, the more the knots tightened in her stomach until she was almost nauseous from them. She was so distracted that she burned the first pot of sauce she made, the acrid smell of charred cream filling her kitchen with a disgusting scent.
She glanced at the clock, realizing she was running out of time, and hurried to start over.
“Millie, why can’t you have opposable thumbs?” she demanded of the fish, who stared back at her without an answer.
“It’s no kind of grand gesture if I feed him cereal for dinner,” she said to the goldfish. Millie darted into her little castle as if understanding her human mom’s predicament.
Mariella didn’t care what anyone said, that fish understood her when she talked. Millie understood her more than most creatures who possessed opposable thumbs.
She had just started slicing through a second round of onions when the doorbell rang. The knife slipped from her hand, and she felt the sharp blade cut through the tip of her finger.
Oh, no. No bleeding damsel in distress action.
She grabbed the dish towel from the counter and pressed it to her finger as she stepped toward the door. “Rain check,” she called out. “Something’s come up. I need to take a rain check. So sorry. I’ll Venmo you money so dinner’s still on me.”
She felt as much as heard his deep chuckle. “Open the door, Mariella.”
“Can’t.”
“I am not leaving.”
He wasn’t leaving because he could sense that she was, once again, in train-wreck mode. Alex was a person who fixed things that were broken.
She didn’t want to be broken. She didn’t want to need fixing. She didn’t want to need him.
She balled up the towel in her fist and tucked that hand behind her back as she cracked the door a few inches. “See, I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s emergency festival-planning business. Everything else is peachy keen.”
He nodded in agreement, but they both knew she was lying. “I just left Heather. She told me everything was good with the planning. She told me I could turn off my phone tonight if I need to.”
“Did you tell her you were coming here? Because—”
“She knows. She’s okay with it.”
The girl had told Mariella she was okay with it, but Mariella hadn’t been sure whether to believe her.
“Well, this doesn’t have anything to do with Heather. It’s Wildflower Inn business.”
He nodded again. “Let me in. And show me your hand.”
There was no way he could know or potentially even guess that something was wrong. She refused to believe that she was so easy to read. “I’m sorry I wasted your time. I really would appreciate taking a rain check.”
