Page 45 of Shortcake
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Enzo’s eyes narrowed, examining me while she spoke. “Your lips are doing this strange stretch upward toward your eyes.”
Haylee joined in, leaning across the counter to poke at the corner of my mouth. “And there’s this odd little crevice right here when you do it.”
I rolled my eyes at my ridiculous friends and smacked their hands away. “What? I’m not allowed to smile now?”
“Smile!” Enzo snapped her fingers. “That’s what it is. She’s smiling.”
At the other end of the bar, some guys I recognized from the local construction crew sat down and gestured to a Bud Light bottle. I nodded back at them and grabbed a few bottles from the fridge below the bar. “You’re being dramatic.” The hiss of the bottle cap popping off mimicked the hiss of my voice. “I smile all the time.”
Enzo snorted and rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”
“I do!”
“Notthatkind of smile,” Haylee said, pointing at my face.
“Oh yeah?” I lifted the four bottles in my hands, balancing them all in a bunch. “And what kind of smile is that?”
“TheI’m thinking of someone’s peniskind of smile.”
It was a good thing I had a good hold on those bottles because Haylee’s assessment made me stumble and the sweaty, cold bottles nearly all went crashing to the floor. I composed myself and deposited each bottle in front of the men, taking one of their credit cards to start a tab.
When I got back to Enzo and Haylee, I whispered, “Can you keep your voices down, please? I’m trying to run a business here.”
“You’re trying to run abar,” Enzo clarified. “If there’s ever a place where penis talk should be acceptable, it’s in a bar.”
“Not for the bartender and definitely not for the owner! My mother comes in here for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay, okay,” Enzo relented. “But are you seriously going to stand there and tell me you haven’t pictured that hot sheriff naked?”
Haylee’s eyes widened. “What hot sheriff?”
My cheeks flushed with heat. I hadn’t filled Haylee in on the craziness last night with Harper and Conrad. Neither of them knew about the sexy one-night stand I’d had after Dante and I broke up. Haylee wasn’t even a friend of ours back then and Enzo was practically homicidal when I told her about Dante three years ago. It just didn’t feel right to tell her about my Brawny man. It was special and a piece of me wanted to keep him all to myself.
He was my own little dirty secret.
And I definitely hadn’t let either of them know about the morning yet—the fact that the hot sheriff was also my hot landlord. And now, also, my hot roommate.
“Ohhhh.” Enzo’s eyes went wide, fixed onto me. “Now look at what her face is doing!”
Haylee grinned, whispering, “You’re blushing.”
Dammit. When I blushed, my cheeks got fiercely red. I could only imagine what they looked like right now. I pressed my palm to my cheeks and with a sigh, I launched into everything, spilling all the details of how Conrad and I met three years ago. After catching them up on our one-night-stand and the dinner after that never happened, and the airport date, I started into the last 16 hours in between grabbing people drinks and bowls of chowder and shortcake. I told them about the late night conversation between me and Conrad. The fire this morning. Discovering he was my landlord, and finally, moving into his basement.
When I’d finished, they both blinked back at me, silently dumbfounded.
“I was texting you all day!” Enzo finally said. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this!?”
“It’s kind of a lot to unveil via text, don’t you think?” I left out the part that once Harper had woken up, I made it my mission to win her over. I wasn’t going to live in sullen, teenage silence for several weeks. Especially not when that could extend to sullen teenage cold shoulders for the remaining year of my lease.
Turns out, she was pretty easy to break. She clearly was just lonely. I knew it wasn’t the move alone that caused her rebellion, but she didn’t seem ready to talk about anything other than her anger at being torn away from New York City and her friend group. So, I didn’t push.
“Okay, Ihaveto see this guy,” Haylee said. “I can’t believe I went home early last night and missed this adventure!”
Right on cue, Conrad and Harper walked into the bar just at that moment. “Well, now’s your chance,” I whispered. “Be cool, you two.”
Spoiler: They were not cool.
They both whipped around in their seats to gape at him as he entered. Harper waved enthusiastically and Conrad gave a small nod of his head, stopping his daughter gently as she began to rush over to the bar to see me.
