Page 23 of Not As Advertised

He’d only done this to be nice. Or as some kind of thank-you for me being flexible about going to the café with him yesterday. It would be stupid to read anything more into it than that.

My next thought betrayed my resolve to keep him at a distance. If I asked him, would he go with me? Maybe before he’d sent this email, I would have been fine to go on my own, but now, I didn’t want to go with anyone but him.

We seemed to be on a roll. The meeting at BrownBag had gone spectacularly well. There was no doubt in my mind that the nonprofit was a perfect prototype for our new project. If Appeal could get a couple of big-name corporations on board, awareness and donations could skyrocket.

I’d watched Abbie giggle with the other volunteers as they sorted the nonperishable food items and struggled to keep a smile off my face. I was supposed to be laser focused on hearing all the ways its founder was determined to make it grow. Abbie had constantly switched between helping and photographing, swinging her camera bag behind her back when she sorted food.

The founder, Sonia Martinez, was one of those people who was simply a force of nature. Doing so much without government funding was a Herculean task.

With the strategy of placing the pickup pantry stations in centralized neighborhood locations that families were already frequenting, the program saved parents and kids alike from feeling a sense of hesitation in receiving the help. It also kept the kids from gaining any unwanted attention at school.

I thought back to all those mornings when I’d had to cobble together some sort of lunch for my sisters to take to school so no one would notice we were really struggling. Most of the time, I’d forgo breakfast and lunch myself to send enough food for them to not go hungry all day.

I’d ended up relying on the kindness of the business owner or manager from whatever restaurant or business where I managed to score a part-time job to have some leftover food at the end of the night or in the breakroom. I thought about how me and my mom could have caught our breath if BrownBag had been around back then.

Those memories made BrownBag tug extra hard on my heartstrings.

Just as quickly as it had arrived, the high in my mood plummeted to where I’d had to feign a need to go to the restroom just to get my emotions under control again. Seeing the reality of how much help was still needed everywhere brought back all those vulnerable moments of not having enough money for food and notbeingenough to change it for my family. Looking in the restroom’s mirror, I didn’t see the thirty-six-year-old Aiden making 190K a year. I saw fifteen-year-old Aiden. Thin, tired, and trying to get another year out of secondhand clothes I was rapidly growing out of.

Shaking myself back to the present, I checked my watch and realized the morning had flown by. It was time to head to our next meeting.

Back out in the sorting area, I signaled to Abbie that it was time to get back to the hotel. I shook the founder’s hand goodbye.

“You’ve got a great assistant there, Aiden,” she said.

“Thank you, Sonia. She is one of a kind.”

She smiled at me with the indulgence of a woman twenty years my senior.

“Make sure she knows it too. What I wouldn’t give for an employee who triple-checks appointments, remembers every single person’s name, and does it with grace. Don’t let yourself get so caught up in the ‘work’ that you forget the big picture.”

Her expression hinted that this was more than professional advice. Was my fascination with Abbie that apparent? I sure as shit hoped not.

“Noted, Sonia. Thank you.”

Thankfully, Abbie had been working her way through saying goodbye to each volunteer and had missed this little exchange.

She rushed over with a big smile on her face just as I finished texting our driver that we were ready to go.

She sparkled with the pleasure she had gotten out of helping.

“Oh my god! They are so amazing! I’m not even sure I can feel my hands after stuffing four hundred bags with peanut-free granola bars. How do they do this every day?”

She looked back over her shoulder and waved to Sonia once more. Sonia gave Abbie the same indulgent smile she’d given me, as though we were two children who had made her proud in the school play.

“Sonia is sooo cool.” She said this with such hero worship in her voice that I struggled to keep a laugh contained. I admired her ability to let her guard down and share her enthusiasm. People often underestimated how brave a person had to be to share their joy with another.

I tucked her sweetness away into what was becoming an Abbie-shaped box near where my heart would be if it were fully functional. I struggled to admit to myself how much I enjoyed being the person who got to witness her happiness.

Once we were settled in the car, I pulled out my phone to check my inbox for the flood of emails that had come in while we’d been at BrownBag. Abbie cleared her throat, and I turned to see her sitting across from me with a half grimace on her face.

I waited to see what she wanted to say.

“I just wanted to say thank you very much for the tickets to Anime Expo. It was totally unexpected and unnecessary, but I am too excited to pretend I’m not thrilled by the chance to go.”

“Not to mention,” I said with a roll of my eyes, “they are final sale.”

She laughed. “Yes, that too.”

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