Page 41 of Happy Harbor
“Kendra will not cause trouble here, Elma. I assure you.”
She assured her? Kendra wasn’t even sure how she would behave herself. She always had the best of intentions, though. Well, most of the time. Okay, some of the time.
“Okay, I think we’ve got everything we need,” Elma finally said after a good twenty minutes. Thankfully, Josie had dropped some of the paperwork off the day before, just so they could hurry the process along. Even so, Kendra was dreading being the kid who walked into a class full of students and had to be introduced. The new kid. Who wanted to talk to the new kid?
“So, she can join class today?”
“Yes. I’m printing out a list of your classes, along with times and room numbers. Our school, as you can see, isn’t very large, so you should be able to find them easily.” The paper finished printing, and Elma slid it across the counter toward Kendra. “Now, class started about ten minutes before you got here, so you’ll be joining it in progress.”
“Yay,” Kendra said under her breath.
“You’ll be fine,” her mother said, looking over at her.
A few moments later, they were back in the school’s entryway. Her mom smiled at her.
“What?”
“I feel like you’re five years old, and I’m dropping you off for your first day of kindergarten again.”
Kendra rolled her eyes. “My elementary school was bigger than this.”
“Remember, you wanted this.”
“I know, I know. It’s just school. All school sucks.”
“Kendra!”
“I’ll see you afterward,” she said, turning to a set of double doors that led to the classrooms.
“Should I pick you up?”
She turned around and laughed. “Mom, our house is like two blocks over. I think I can walk.”
As she made her way toward the double doors, she could see her mother’s reflection in the little panes of glass. She hoped she could start fresh at this school because she didn’t want to let her mother down again... or herself.
* * *
Josie stood around the corner from the restaurant and sucked in a sharp breath, blowing it out. Today was her second day running the place, and she still had no idea what she was doing. She’d never worked in food service at all, and she’d never been forced to play nice. It didn’t come naturally to her.
“Hiding from someone?”
She turned to see Walker standing against the building opposite hers. The way he was leaning made her shiver a bit, but she quickly shook off the feeling. Who cared if he was probably the most handsome man she’d ever seen? Who cared if he had one of those lazy smiles that made a woman want to curl up with him on a pile of pillows in the bed of a rusty pickup truck under a moonlit sky? That was oddly specific.
“I’m not hiding from anyone,” she said, trying not to make eye contact. She looked enough to notice he was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a baby-blue T-shirt that hugged his muscles in all the right ways.
“Josie, your back was pressed to the wall like you were hiding from... well, probably your mother?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Okay, fine. I was just taking a moment to do some deep breathing before I go into the restaurant and argue with her all day.”
“You know, there is another choice.”
She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “Oh yeah? What is that?”
He slowly walked closer to her, closing some of the space between them. She knew she shouldn’t want this perfect stranger to just suddenly kiss her, but wasn’t life about surprises? Just as she was about to embarrass herself and close her eyes, he spoke.
“You could just decide not to respond. You know, be civil. Don’t react,” he whispered. He leaned back and just stood in front of her, and for some reason, she felt a weird void.
“That’s not my personality.”
