Page 19 of Lucy Loves Him Not
We started hashing it out, dividing up duties. I got most of my favorite jobs back and secretly felt immense relief when he took over the ones that had always felt out of my league.
When we reached the end of the contract having marked it up, it was time for me to sign. He already had.
“Lucy,” he said, putting his hand on the page, stopping me before I put pen to paper. “Can you do this? Can you be flexible with your grandmother’s legacy like this?”
This question gave me pause. I thought of my feisty, small, five-foot-two Grandma Rhodes, with her passion, commitment, and humor. I could hear the way she’d laugh at how seriously Adam and I have taken all of this. She’d snicker at us if she heard us arguing over this contract, but she’d also get it. She always got me. And she also always got what she wanted. Which, in this case, would be whatever is best for the festival.
“I think I can be flexibleforher legacy.” I signed my name. My loopyLandRnext to his smoothAandS.
A moment of silence passed between the two of us like we were sharing it. That timid tenderness again. A hint of a smile on his lips.
When the shop bell chimed and a second later, Olivia called my name.
She acted surprised to see me, but she knew this meeting was happening. She waved at Katie at the front, but walked straight over to my table.
“Who’s this?” she asked coyly, tossing her head toward Adam.
“This is Adam, he’s our new city manager. We’re working on the summer festival together.” I said this as if it was new information, playing along as if we hadn’t spied on him in a grocery store and stalked his Instagram days ago.
“Oh, are you now?” She raised an eyebrow. “Working with the enemy?”
Adam laughed nervously.What must he think of us Rhodes women?All bright hair and fighting words.
“How’d you win her over?” she asked him, her hand on the back of my chair.
“We signed a truce,” he said. “We are going at this fifty-fifty.”
“He also hired me officially,” I said with a tone of awe in my voice.
“I see you put it in writing.” She glanced down at the contract lying between us. “And, wow, you got very specific.”
“All the mark outs and scribbling is Lucy’s work,” Adam chuckled. “I came in with the proposal, she came in with the demands.”
“Negotiations,” I corrected, my chair scraping against the floor as I turned toward Olivia.
“With men any negotiations from women are viewed as demands.” Olivia rolled her eyes. The scent of freshly baked strawberry scones waft from the café kitchen.
“I’m lucky she’s negotiating with me, honestly,” Adam said, slipping the paperwork back into the folder. “I’m happy she’d even look at this proposal.”
“It’s hilarious to see the festival getting so bureaucratic. It’s always been so small-town with handshake deals and basically running out of Grandma’s kitchen,” Olivia said more to me than to Adam.
His cheeks blazed red. “I don’t want to lose all that small-town heart. I promise,” he said seriously.
“He only wants to lose it by fifty-fifty,” I joked. He didn’t laugh at the joke, instead the muscle in his jaw working overtime as he looked away from me.
Olivia took a sip of my lavender latte as my date from the other night strolled into the shop. Adam waved Victor over and he weaved through the bookshelves to our table.
Victor’s easy demeanor shifted as his eyes met Olivia’s. She was wearing her working Levis and a white tank top. I think she even had a smear of paint across her cheek. But the confident Victor from last night was jittery and quiet by Adam’s side as I introduced the two.
Olivia announced she was going to go order a drink and Victor seemed to muster up a little courage, joining her at the counter.
When it was just Adam and me again, the silence turned tense, all the mysterious tenderness from earlier gone by now. Like it was drained away with our coffees. Now we were left with empty cups and awkwardness.
We might’ve reached an agreement, but we were both still feeling a little prickly. Overwhelmed by all this new paperwork, or bureaucracy, as Olivia said.
I watched him as he stared thoughtfully down at his phone, serious with his dark hair falling over his eyes. As if reading my thoughts, he looked up at me and said, “You know, sometimes the bureaucracy can help something like this festival.”
“If a part of me didn’t agree, I wouldn’t have signed the contract,” I said honestly, my guard still down a couple of inches from earlier.
