Page 9 of The Now in Forever
I laugh. “Really?”
He shrugs. “If they order from me, they do.”
Heat rises to my cheeks. Is it my imagination, or is he flirting with me?
“I’m actually looking for my friends. Have you seen a tall woman with long blonde hair, in cutoffs and tank top?”
Kyle hands me my glass. Our fingers brush and our eyes lock. “Robin? They went out to the patio. It’s out that way.”
He points to a hall on the other side of the bar.
After thanking him, I take my glass, and feeling quite good about myself, I head past the pool table, down the dark hallway, to the open door lighting my way.
I step into the waning sunshine to a gravel yard filled with wooden picnic tables, bright-yellow umbrellas, and a fire pit in the corner surrounded by Adirondack chairs. Happy chatter and laughter fill the air with an almost imperceptible sound of the ocean underneath it, like someone forgot to turn off the white noise app on their phone.
Robin half stands from a table in the corner. “Over here!”
The table is full of food. There’s a plate of fries, a hummus platter, nachos, a pitcher of beer, and both Nathan and Ed have burgers in front of them. Robin and Nathan are sitting next to each other, which leaves me the space on the bench next to Ed. My heart pounds in my ears.
I can do this. I can sit next to the man who’s held a piece of my heart for years and doesn’t even know it.
Setting my wine down first, I slide my legs into the picnic bench as gracefully as one can. The person who invented picnic tables and the person who invented short flirty sundresses should’ve had a little chat.
Ed turns his body slightly so he’s half facing me.
“Hattie’s also a writer,” Robin says, holding her wine in one hand and a chip in the other.
I hate when she does this, pushing a connection. Plus, calling me a writer when I haven’t finished a novel feels disingenuous. “More like an unemployed English teacher.”
Robin makes a raspberry, waving me away. “You’ll find a new job, no problem.”
Ed smiles, warm and wholehearted, as he shifts his body on the bench so he’s facing me even more. “What do you write?”
I’m mid drink—trying to hide behind my glass—and swallow a little too quickly. The wine goes down the wrong pipe. I sputter for breath, my cheeks flaming hot, eyes watering. Ed pats my back, sending electric pulses all the way to my toes.
“You alright?”
Am I alright? I just need to pretend that I don’t remember our day together, either. Only, I’ve never been good at pretending things aren’t the way they are. With my parents pretending to be in love for “the sake of the family” for so long, you’d think I’d be a pro. It had the opposite effect. I’m a terrible liar.
Should I just bring it up? What’s the worst that could happen? He could not remember our day togetherat all, instead of just not realizing it was me, and what’s left of the romantic in me would be splattered like one of the many casualties on my windshield. I’ll live the rest of my days alone. Maybe I’ll get a cat or a fish. I will leave all the boxes on my dream life list unchecked.
Nope. I’ll just pretend.
“I’m good,” I manage to whisper.His hand falls from my back, and my skin feels cold in its absence.
There’s mischief in the upturned corners of Robin’s lips. “Ed was asking what you write?”
I glare at her. She’s trying to fix us up, in her extremely unsubtle ways. “Murder stuff.”
Ed’s eyebrow arches. “Like true crime?”
“No, mysteries, sometimes thrillers. There’s always a murder.”
“Anything I may have read?” Ed asks as he dips a fry in ketchup and pops it into his mouth.
There’s a beat of silence that threatens to swallow me whole as the last question runs circles in my head. I’m nearly thirty and not published yet. Being a writer and owning my own bookstore were my two dreams growing up, and I haven’t done either.
Robin rushes to fill the gap in conversation. “We read your book, you know?—”
