Page 52 of Make Mine Sweet
“He was a little prickly at the beginning, but we’re getting along now.” I refuse to think about the way I held his hand last night, or the way he watched me like I was more beautiful than the sunset. Nope. Not on my mind. “Thank you again for renting us the apartment.”
Amy waves off my thanks. “It’s our pleasure to have you there.”
The second she walks away, my friends lean closer to me like I’m a bug they’ve pinned in a display case, ready to catalogue everything about me.
“I feel like we need to hear more about your neighbor,” Hope says. Newly engaged, she’s probably eager to get the spotlight off her own love life. That, and Wren already made wild hints about me and Ian in front of both her and Lila.
“The guy with the dog?” Lila wants to know. I mentioned August’s new canine friend earlier when she asked me about the move. Just sort of left out Dutch’s owner.
“Thehotguy with the dog.” Wren isn’t doing anything to make this easier on me.
“I just stopped thinking of him as a growly hermit two days ago.” And in that time, my crush has exploded like a supernova, but nobody needs to hear that.
Sure, theywantto hear it. But I’m not sharing. This whole situation is too precarious to start telling my closest friends. They’ll get their hopes up and then who knows what might happen to dash them. I don’t want them to be disappointed later on.
Because it’s definitelytheirhopes I’m thinking about right now.
“Her exact words were ‘plundering Viking.’” Wren is way too smug about this.
“We’ve known each other for two weeks. Could we please not jump straight into the deep end here?”
And bywe, I absolutely meanme.
“Okay, but he did come into the bakery the other day, and sparks were flying all over the place.”
This has Hope and Lila sporting identical grins. Maybe I should have skipped girls’ night. I can hear about Lila’s new boyfriend another time.
“Loads of people come into the bakery.” I know it’s going to be impossible to play this off as nothing, but I refuse to give up the ship this quickly. Historically, I’m not a blabber. The only issue with that is, usually I have very little interesting to blab.
Ian is plenty interesting.
“Yeah, but nobody else who looks at you like you’re the only thing he wants in the whole store.”
I breathe slowly, willing my face not to bloom into an incriminating shade of red. I haven’t had a chance to tell Wren about the conversation I had with Ian last night, and I don’t know if I will. If she knew we’re actually making strides toward real friendship, she’d add two plus two, come up with eight, and jump right to declaring that he’s in love with me.
That’s…a strangely sobering thought. This flirtation between us is fun and exciting, but I don’t even know that Ian wants a serious relationship. And more importantly—I don’t know if I do.
“Even if he does—and I’m not saying he does…” I take a grounding breath. “I haven’t been on a date since before August came along. I don’t know how to do any of this anymore. I don’t know what he expects or what I’m willing to give.”
I can’t do anything that would jeopardize August’s happiness or stability. According to all the articles I’ve ever read on dating as a single parent, I’m already doing this wrong. I’m not supposed to let August get to know Ian at the same time I am. Our relationships are supposed to be completely separate, and only later merge when Ian and I are on solid ground.
Yikes. A girls’ night was aterribleidea. I can’t dream up scenarios where we’re “on solid ground” some day. There’s nous. There’s only neighbors—more friendly than we were before, yes, but still just neighbors. It’s absurd to assign anything romantic to that.
I’ve never had a neighbor “arr”at me and literally shiver my timbers before, but maybe some neighbors do.
“If he’s the right man for you, he’ll be understanding about all of that.” Lila smiles sweetly at me from across the booth. She’s had a crappy time of it this year, with a cheating ex who subsequently fired her from her job, but she’s still optimistic about love. Meanwhile, I’m optimistic about everythingexceptlove. “He’ll want you just as you are right now. And if he can’t be patient while you sort things out, then he’s not the guy. But someone else will be.”
Even if I’m still uncertain, I love that she has that kind of confidence for me.
I guess girls’ night wasn’t a total bust. We spent the rest of the evening giving Lila a hard time about her new man—mostly because when her mom came into the bakery, she raved about him being some kind of a Greek god, and it’s hard to let something like that go.
“I can’t wait to meet this guy at Hope’s engagement party,” Wren says in front of Delish when we’re saying goodnight. “Your momreallytalked him up.”
“She might be even more smitten than I am.”
“She’s got love on the brain,” Hope says.
“Whose fault is that?” Lila returns.
