Page 24 of Henhouse
“She wants me to be on her trivia team because I’m the only one in her inner circle who knows aboutliterature and crap.”
Schilling filleted him with a look. It was effective enough to remind Theo that Talia was not the relationship he wanted. She wasn’t his soulmate.
“It works for now,” Theo snapped, not interested in being heldaccountable to his own ambitions at the moment. It felt like too long sometimes, that he’d spent searching forher, and when he was weary of the search he liked to have a warm body—to have Talia—in his bed.
“Sure.” Schilling’s huff was undeniably loaded, but Theo didn’t take the bait. “Go to trivia. I’m cool. I’m sure we’ll have fun.”
“That’s the spirit.” Theo slapped him on the back. Schilling exhaled, and it looked like it might have been the first time he had all day.
Theo wandered to the fridge and pulled out a beer. He took a sip, then as casually as he possibly could said, “Tell her I say hi.” He didn’t know why he’d said it, but the grin on Schilling’s face was fiendish.
“Should I not make a move then?”
“Do whatever you want,” Theo responded, hoping to sound chuffed, but he could tell Schilling didn’t buy his nonchalance.Hebarely bought it.
“So you’d be totally fine with me exploring things?”
“Whatever gets you out of the rain, man,” Theo quipped.
Schilling loosed a laugh, and it was good to see him brighten again, even if it was at Theo’s deflection. He never could hide his feelings from Schilling even if he hid them from himself. “I promise to do some recon for you, but if she kisses me first?” He raised his hands, palms up as he shrugged his shoulders. Theo smirked at him, knowing full well there would be none of that. Schilling was razzing him to try to get him to admit some kind of feeling for Effie. Trying to get him to make the right choice. Or maybe there was a chance they’d hit it off because the knot in Theo’s stomach only grew as Schilling grabbed the candle and winked at him before slipping out the front door.
Theo was ninety-eight percent sure Schilling didn’t want Effie. Maybe. Maybe it was eighty-twenty. It didn’t matter. Except that whenhe slunk back to his couch and sank into the soft cushions, it felt like it absolutely did.
Effie left the lights dim in the store, leaving only a couple of lamps she’d stolen from the office lit on the fabric cutting table. She didn’t want anyone to mistake the store for being open and walk in on her date with Schilling. If she could even call it that. She hadn’t thought to ask, but it seemed date-like. More so than the dozen dates she’d ever been on.
Those had all been some variation of walk-and-talk meetups over coffee, ice cream, and, on one occasion, bowls of chowder to go. For some reason, she had thus far only attracted guys who preferred a get-to-know-you where they could literally turn and run at any given moment. None of them had resulted in second dates. Effie hadn’t wanted them to. Either their names weren’t sweet enough—because obviously her beloved’s name should taste like dessert every time she spoke it—or the conversation had been so stilted it was painful. There was the one guy who wouldn’t quit talking about himself, his car, or his ex-girlfriend. She did, in fact, cut and run, banking a left while he went straight through a crosswalk, and she never saw him again. Effie frequently wondered how long he kept talking before he realized she’d vanished with her cookie dough ice cream. She’d given up on dating after that.
That was two years ago.
Exactly why Hope had every right to give her grief about not getting out into the world. She was too young for spinsterhood.
But tonight felt different. There were walls, for starters. And anactivity that demanded a certain amount of dedication and time commitment, and therefore couldn’t be sped up like a walk and talk. She was glad for that because she liked Schilling’s company the other night. He had an ease about him like dappled sunlight through spring trees.
If she was being honest with herself, which she tried hard to be, she would say she was nervous. She hadn’t been kissed in far too long, and the possibility of it was enough to turn her stomach. Maybe she should take it off the table, but that thought made her sulk. Effie sighed as she sat on the stool behind the cutting bench.
Her mind was a tiresome place indeed.
It was almost six, which meant Schilling would be there any minute. Effie arranged and rearranged the bowl of beeswax flakes, essential oil bottles, and votives she had procured for their task. She checked the plugs on the two hot plates before her and promptly twiddled her thumbs as she waited. Effie tapped her fingers, bopping her head side to side, anything to edge out the nerves. Her subtle fidgeting turned into actual swaying as she hummed the tune to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.”
The humming and tapping gave way to full-on singing. Unlike Hope, Effie couldn’t carry a tune. But it didn’t stop her from belting out her favorites or singing while she baked. Now the song lodged in her brain and demanded to be sung over and over again. Well, the chorus anyway, since she was never very good at remembering lyrics if she wasn’t singing along to the actual song. This time she added some instrumental ba-doop-di-doops, closed her eyes, and wailed the chorus.
So loud that she apparently didn’t hear the door chime.
“Sorry, this a party for one?”
Effie blanched, eyes popping open to find Schilling standing before her, arms loaded with charcuterie fixings. She’d never wanted to turn into a bug and crawl away more. Effie wasn’t sure where to go from here.When you sound like a dying crow with Broadway dreams there’s really no use in denying it. “I can’t sing.”
“I think you’ve demonstrated that, in truth,you can,”Schilling goaded, a devilish quirk to his brow.
“Let me rephrase. I’m not a good singer.”
“Not everyone can be. That’d be boring. Far more so for me if I walked in here and you sounded like an angel. How dull, honestly.” Schilling offered her a genuine smile that set Effie totally at ease. He began unloading his goodies onto the worktable. “So you like Taylor Swift?”
“She’s okay,” Effie said. “I like some of her stuff, not all.”
“Yikes, don’t tell Theo,” Schilling warned like they’d cross paths again soon. Maybe that was a good sign. He was already thinking about taking her out again, with his friend, apparently, but it still seemed like a positive omen.
“He’s a fan?”
