CHAPTER FIVE
A NYA
No, I didn’t thank him for rescuing me. Yes, I knew that was rude. But would anyone blame me?
I needed help getting out of the space and spent about a half hour stuck in there trying to figure out what to do next. My options were few. I didn’t have my phone, there wasn’t an emergency phone line in the vault, there were no windows, and ventilation came from a small grate in the ceiling that didn’t have enough room for me to crawl through.
So, I had to wait. Wait for a customer. Wait for someone to come by. And wait for help to arrive.
Just didn’t expect that help to come in the form of Robert Kilgore.
He never came to The Green Frog. He wasn’t a customer. He was—at best—my rival.
Still, there he was, helping me.
And I was still seething about it four hours later as I waited for my microwave to ding, signaling my Lean Cuisine fettuccine Alfredo casserole was cooked. A sad dinner, for sure. One full of sodium and preservatives and not healthy in the slightest, despite what the packaging said.
Sometimes, I was too tired to cook. Even if I were the most accomplished chef, I doubted I’d want to whip up something fabulous each night for one. Sadly, skills in the kitchen ended with my dad. Mom tried and often created delicious meals, but Dad was the master chef of the house. His sudden death over a decade ago surprised both Mom and me. He was too young to die at fifty-five. God, I miss him.
So, Lean Cuisine it was for tonight.
My parents had both expected me to marry straight out of college, but life had a way of throwing curveballs right at you when you least expected it. In this part of the Midwest, where most people were on their first or second kid by this age, being single in my early thirties without a long-term relationship to speak of made me an anomaly. Or fussy. Take your pick.
Keeping The Green Frog going didn’t really count as a major professional accomplishment, no matter how I dressed it up on social media...and despite what Gwen told me on the days she was lucid. But hey, who’s asking anyway?
I knew should have gone to Ohio State instead of Kenyon College, but the allure of a small liberal arts school in a progressive town had been too much to resist. Try telling an eighteen-year-old they’ll regret their theater degree once they leave school. They might hear you, but none of them will listen.
Like me, most of them learn things the hard way.
The bell sounded, and I wrenched my meal from the microwave, the cheese bubbling, heat radiating from the corners but not from the center. I dumped the food on a plastic plate before I took it, a fork, and a glass of wine into my living room. A few new shows waited for me on Netflix, and I browsed through them, wavering between a regency series starring Timothee Chalamet, a dating competition show set in Bora Bora, and a couple of independent films I’d missed in the last few years.
I settled on Chalamet and sank into my overstuffed couch. The minutes ticked away as I stared at the large screen, the food getting colder. I took a bite and grimaced. Why can’t I stop thinking about Robert?
He’d been kind. Helpful. And polite.
Even though I was none of those things in return.
God, why did he have to be so nice? Why couldn’t he have been a jerk? Why couldn’t he have kept on driving and not made the decision to come inside? Why did he have to be the one to rescue me from the vault, one of the things that gave The Green Frog a competitive advantage?
That was perhaps the most annoying part. When I took over the business, I was the one who convinced Gwen we could make a tidy profit in rare books and first editions. There was a nuance to it and an increasing demand, especially given the ease of online sales. One or two specialty customers a month went a long way in helping us make our year and was one of the major reasons why the store turned a profit under my leadership.
The rare books were my secret weapon.
Now Robert Kilgore had gotten a glimpse of how many we had. My soon-to-be direct competition knew one more thing about the store. I hated that. Most people knew we sold those books, but they didn’t know how many we had or how we stored them. I didn’t even let Janet, the overnight janitor, into the area.
But Robert had just been inside.
Shit. One thing’s for certain though: I need a phone line installed in the vault.