Page 22 of Love Unexpected
“I...deflected. I mean, obviously we can’t actually talk. There’s no way I could disguise my voice enough for him not to recognize me.”
Greta shook her head. “Are you not worried that he’s going to make the connection anyway? You’re a web designer, Ana is a web designer. You both like Red Renegade...”
I grimaced. “Actually, he doesn’t know I like Red Renegade.That’s Ana’s thing. A small concession I’ve had to make, because man, my wardrobe is limited when I knock myRenegadeshirts out of the rotation.”
“One of these days, you’re going to slip up, Rosie. And I’m going to say I told you so.”
I waved a hand dismissively, even though I’d nearly worked myself into a panic attack more than once over that very issue. “I will not. He thinks Ana lives in Kansas. There’s nothing that would make him connect her to me.”
“Except that you’realsofrom Kansas.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a big state. And believe it or not, hundreds of female web designers live there. I’m not worried about it.”
(I was totally worried about it.)
I pulled up the afternoon’s to-do list and read through the items, looking for the one that would be the easiest to tackle. Progress in and of itself was motivating. Better to check off two or three small things and let that push me to the harder tasks rather than start with the hardest thing and have it take all day. I was a girl who liked checked-off check boxes. I’d even been known to write something onto my listafterI’d already finished it just so I could check it off and feel like I’d accomplished something.
“Hey, will you be there for pizza tomorrow night?” Greta asked, her eyes trained on her screen.
“I’m planning on it. We’re trying Garfield’s, right? The new place over at the end of King Street?”
“That’s the plan. I’ve heard it’s really good.”
“Did Diedre ask you to bring anything? I offered, but she said I could just show up.”
“You know Diedre. She loves to play hostess and mother us all. She’ll never let you bring anything.”
“Hey, didn’t we already fix the Check Out button on the shopping cart page?” I asked. That item had been on our to-do list yesterday, too. “Is it not working again?”
“It’s not, but it isn’t something we can fix. It’s something on the money side. I called the e-commerce people this morning, but apparently, it’s a problem that’s affecting multiple sites, and I haven’t heard anything back yet. Actually, I was just going to head down to the studio to see if Alex can use his magical Southern charm powers of persuasion to get a faster answer for us. You want to go instead?”
I stared at her like she’d just asked me to kiss a hedgehog. “Why would I ever want to do a thing like that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Alex doesn’t bite. Besides, he’s downstairs right now. In the studio. Where Isaac is.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly my point.”
“Come on. What is your actual plan here, Rosie? Are you just going to hide on Instagram forever and never tell Isaac who you really are?”
“It’s been a week,” I said emphatically. “That’s hardly forever. And Alex may not bite, but he is still very scary and professional.” I wasn’t actually scared of Alex. But being in the same room with Isaac was hard enough with a wall of glass between us. I felt connected to him through the conversations we’d been having over the past week, enough that it felt perfectly natural to glance his way, to catch his eye and smile, as if he’d know, just by looking at me, that I was thinking of a joke he’d shared with me earlier or remembering the story he’d told me about him and Dani getting trapped in the attic when they were kids.
But Isaac had zero reason to feel connected to me. All I would accomplish by staring was freaking him out and making him think Alex had hired a nutso to work on his web design team.
Greta paused. “Okay. Alex is a little scary. But this is an important question. If he knows we haven’t made any sales today because e-commerce is down, he will want it fixed. And he will know all the right people to call to make sure fixingoursite is at the top of the priority list.”
“Ugh. Fine. You’re sure Alex is downstairs?” I looked toward his desk. He’d been there a few minutes before when Isaac and I had still been chatting.
“Positive. Drake Martinson is too important for him not to hover and make sure everything goes smoothly with his guest appearance.”
I stood and pushed in my chair, mostly terrified but a tiny bit thrilled now that the option of avoiding the encounter had been taken away. I didn’t often have reason to be in the studio, and the magic of how everything pulled together still fascinated me.
I took the stairs down to the second floor and stepped into the annex outside the studio. The light above the door was still green, so I pushed my way inside, at least unconcerned that I would be interrupting an actual shoot. They were close to shooting though, Drake Martinson already seated on a stool next to Isaac while one of the techs adjusted his mic. Safe in the dimness that surrounded the brightly lit stage, I let my eyes linger on Isaac a beat longer than I ever did upstairs and, by default, on the movie star sitting beside him. Drake Martinson was arguably one of America’s hottest up-and-coming actors; I wouldn’t deny that he had all the marks of a classically attractive movie star. But in my eyes, he still paled in comparison to Isaac. Isaac was good-looking in his own right, but more than that, he had this light about him. He saw people. Made them feel comfortable and accepted and happy. And that happiness seemed to constantly radiate from him. One of the segments of his show that had stuck around the longest was his daily kindness challenge. Every day, he challenged his viewers to spread kindness in a new way. Paying specific compliments. Buying someone’s coffee. Returning someone’s shopping cart. It was never big stuff—he wanted the challenges to be accessible to everyone and not just people who had extra cash to burn—and it was a strategy that had paid off. The challenges had developed their own cult following, with people filming their experiences and sharing them online on a daily basis.
With others, I might wonder if it was all manufactured for appearances, but I didn’t doubt Isaac’s sincerity for a minute. In person, it was easy to see in his eyes how much he liked bringing joy to other people, and how vulnerable he was willing to be to make that happen.
I thought again of how readily he’d told me how he felt in our earlier messages.I like you,he’d said. Just like that. He’d owned his feelings without hesitation.
He’d inspired that same boldness in me, which was no small thing. Usually, just the thought of being that forthright had the potential to break me out in hives.
