Page 22 of Best Friends for Never

This place is an old haunt of ours, which might be part of why I want so badly to make this café perfect for Gianna and Greta now that they’ve taken it over from Gianna’s parents. That and because it’s a staple in this town, passed down from one Rossi to the next. It’s vital to our community, just like I believe the theater is.

“You’re early.”

“Pardon?” he asks. His eyes, the perfect mix of blue and green, catch the morning sun just right, making them brighter and clearer than they already are.

“For the ceremony. You’re early.”

“You . . . know about that?”

I huff out a laugh. “This is Emerald Grove. Everyone knows about it.”

“This town likes to talk too much.”

“You can say that again.”

“This town likes to talk too much,” he repeats.

I glare at him, and he smiles back, and I hate that I like it so much. It’s different from the smiles I’ve seen him give in interviews. While I might have been upset with Noel, I never wanted to see him fail, and I’ve supported everything he’s done in his career so far, even suffering through that terrible werewolf show he did.

His eyes wander around the café before settling on me, and I wonder what he sees. Does he still see the same awkward girl from highschool? The one who worshipped him and followed him everywhere? Or does he see the independent woman I’ve become? The one who has been hardened by life? Who has most definitely fully recovered from the heartbreak she’s suffered at his hands?

“So if it’s not your place, then what are you doing here?”

I wave my hand around. “Working.”

He doesn’t look as surprised as I expected him to. Instead, he grins. “You’re renovating it?” I nod. “Why does that fit you so perfectly?”

It’s probably because I spent much of my youth designing and building the sets for every play at the Goodman Theater. It was the place I escaped to whenever life got too overwhelming or I remembered that the person who was supposed to love me unconditionally bailed. I loved losing myself in the set design so much that when it came time to buy a house, I got a fixer-upper and tackled the project myself, using it as a form of therapy to cope with the hole Noel left in my life.

Well, it wasn’t all me. Axel helped too. It’s what led us to realize we made a great team and gave us the confidence to form our business together.

“It looks really great in here,” he says. “Can’t believe it’s the same place where we once ate six meatball subs in one sitting.”

“We?Youate five and a half of those six.”

“I was a growing boy! Besides, that’s still teamwork.”

Teamwork.

It implies that we used to be a team, and we were.

It’s a hard reality to swallow now that we feel like strangers.

I turn away from him, uncomfortable with that realization, and march back to my all-night project—the accent wall for the back of the café that’s not coming out how I wanted. I can’t decide if it’s me who sucks at designing or if I don’t like it because I got zero sleep last night and desperately need some.

“Did you make this?” he asks, stepping up beside me as I stare at the wall full of mismatched wood, only one corner of which is painted gray.

“Yes.”

“I like it.”

I frown. “It’s not turning out how I wanted.”

“Well,” he says, folding his arms over his chest, “let’s tackle it one thing at a time. What’s jumping out at you first?”

A few simple words, and just like that, I’m taken back in time to when we used to stand on the stage of the old theater and stare up at my set pieces. He’d say the same thing he just did, and we’d work through whatever was bothering me. This typically ended with me realizing I was being silly and that the scenery I’d just spent so long on looked great.

This feels like a mirror image of that.

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