Page 47 of The Luck of Finding You
“Listen to your heart,” Olivia whispers, like she’s some kind of love guru, as Noah comes through the door with his dog.
“Hey, ladies.” He says it so casually. As if the past week hadn’t happened. As if I hadn’t told him that I might like another guy right after I kissed him like I needed him as much as I needed air. As if Olivia and I weren’t just talking about him.
“Hey,” I say back, because apparently, I can’t come up with the words. I’m also slightly mortified that he caught me staring, even though he probably doesn’t know how long I was watching him.
“I like your sweater,” Noah says as his dog lies down on one of the many rugs we have in the shop.
I glance down. I’m wearing a brown-and-orange sweater that just feels like fall. “Thanks.” It’s actually my favorite sweater. I am trying to see if telepathy is a thing by screaming at Olivia in my mind to say something, but she seems perfectly content to watch us while she enjoys her lollipop.
Noah stares at me for a moment. So long that I have to turn away because I’m not sure what’s happening inside his head. I want to know; I want everything to be fine between us. But we pushed the gas from zero to sixty, then I brought it back to zero and I don’t know how to change it.
“Let me take Mo up and I’ll be back down to work,” he tells us, then he’s down the back hall and out the door.
I’m pretending to update our inventory spreadsheet in the office and Olivia is helping a customer when he comes back down, wearing another one of those waffle-knit sweaters that just seems to hug his body. Gran’s right, he does look a little like Chris Evans, especially when he wears sweaters.
“How’s the morning been?” he asks, grabbing one of the folding chairs to sit in the already cramped space.
“Really slow.” I don’t tell him that I’ve been bored out of my mind most of the day.
“Are most Wednesdays like this?” he asks, picking up a stack of bookmarks and straightening them. Which I did two hours ago.
“Depends on the time of year. We get busier leading up to the holidays, and in the summer most days are pretty much the same. But for a few weeks in the spring and fall we have some pretty dead days.”
“And the shop makes enough to cover all the costs?”
I shrug, because honestly, until he showed up and started asking questions, I never actually thought about it. Marsha was always in charge of the numbers and the money. She said she had a guy who did our taxes every year and looked over our accounts. She never gave me any reason to think that we were struggling. I don’t make a ton of money, but I’m able to save a lot of it since I live with Gran.
“I’ll look at the numbers later,” Noah says. “But from the things I’ve seen so far, my guess is that Grandma Marsha used some of her own money out of pocket to pay for things like taxes and bills since she owned the place.”
I slump slightly. “Do you really think she would have done that?”
Noah nods. “She would have. She loved this place and probably would have done anything to keep it up and running.”
“I can’t believe she never said anything.”
“She kept a lot to herself.”
“Yeah, like how you were her grandson,” I say sarcastically. I slap a hand over my mouth. “That sounded way worse than I meant it.”
“Did I ever come up in conversations?” Noah asks.
“Yeah, you did. She loved you and Annie so much. But you know how she wasn’t one for pictures, and if she did try to show me one, I often had to be somewhere else right that second.” I feel my face grow warm at these words. It’s not something I ever planned on telling anyone.
“Why?”
“I mean, I met a guy named Noah, who was in town visiting his grandma.” I look at him for the first time since he came into the small office. “I wasn’t ever ready to take the chance that you might have been just out of reach the whole time.”
“I’m sorry I left that day, so quickly.” Noah runs a hand through his hair.
I lean back in my seat, the question on the tip of my tongue, but I’m still not sure if I want the answer.
“You want to know why.” Noah is watching me. “I guess now is as good a time as any. Grandma Marsha called me.”
“That’s who was on your phone?” I’m grateful it wasn’t a girlfriend, but it doesn’t make any sense.
“It was my last day in town, I’d been hanging around the shop for two days and I was driving her crazy. She told me to get out for a while, so I did. When I saw her name on my phone, I kind of panicked. I’m pretty sure she meant to get out for a half hour or so, not for four hours.”
Four glorious hours of his hand in mine, walking down the street. Pushing me against the brick walls in front of so many stores simply to kiss me.
