Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
NOA
Iwaited for him. I can’t believe how long I waited. Am I that desperate? Thirty minutes would have sufficed, but an hour… yeah, I need a swift kick in the ass.
After finishing with my client, who took all of ten minutes, I escorted them out and found the front of my store empty.
The attractive, probably taken, man with the rich coffee scent was gone. So I waited, hoping he’d come back. I stood at my register and watched the time tick by like a desperate omega.
“So when you said you couldn’t do lunch and that you’d explain later…
” Ollie, my neighbor-turned-best-and-only friend, says as she rises from the bench on my porch.
It’s evening now, and I’ve had about six hours of licking my wounds before I headed home.
The workshop in the back of my storefront is filled with both fabric and my tears.
A guy I just met, like literally just met for all of three seconds, should not have impacted me like this, but here we are.
Her short dark hair peaks under a crocheted hat I made her last month; she’s already in her sweats and ready to lounge.
Ollie runs a nutrition business with her twin brother, Luke.
So, having lunch with me on a random Thursday is pretty ordinary since we both run our own businesses.
But I canceled lunch with my friend to meet a boy… who ended up standing me up.
Now I feel like an even shittier person. How great.
“It’s a long story,” I say. Sighing, I open my door, sling my keys in my bowl by the door with my purse, and set down my workbag with my laptop in it. I bend down to grab it out of the bag, but Ollie’s shoe slides in my face, blocking the bag with her foot.
I give her a look, but she shakes her head.
“Nu uh. No work tonight. You’ve already done an extra three. Unless…” She waggles her brows. “You weren’t working at all?”
“No, I was working,” I grumble. Wandering into the kitchen, I grab us my cheap but cute plastic wine glasses and our favorite drinks. Ollie’s trying her hardest to get me to switch to glass. She swears the “taste profile” is different, but the glasses don’t come in ballerina pink, now do they?
I mix her a peach Cosmo and pour myself a cup of orange soda.
Dropping a tiny little umbrella in both our drinks and taking it to my couch.
My house is the smallest on the block, but I love it.
It’s just enough room for me and me alone.
One bedroom, a nest, a living room that was turned into a workstation and recently back into a living room, and a beautiful kitchen for all the cooking I never do.
Ollie sets the snack tray she brought down, this time filled with many candies assorted in a rainbow, and it is perfect for the mood I’m in. She always brings the snacks, and I always have the drinks.
“You’re not drinking tonight?” She asks as I set her drink down in front of her.
“With the mood I’m in, no.” I sigh. No need to dump a whiny, drunk omega in her lap, though she’s helped me pick up my pieces for as long as we’ve been friends.
When I first moved to Nashville with nothing but the clothes on my back, I found a job in a retail bank and worked on Cozy Bear Blankets until it replaced, then doubled my income, and now I rent this house, right next to her apartment complex, all within a year of me being here.
“Tell me what’s wrong?” She says, patting the seat next to her. I drop into the seat, head in my hands, as all my emotions come to the surface.
Since moving away from my parents and the Fallon Pack, it’s like my emotions run much more freely now. Too freely, in fact, and I can hardly control them. Twenty-two years of holding back and appearing perfect has taken a toll on me, and I just can’t do it anymore.
My eyes meet her hazel ones, and I just crumble. Sipping my orange soda between each story of the two incredibly smelling alphas that came to my store and how I’ll probably never see them again.
“Those were your scent mates,” Ollie says with a sly smile on her face. I don’t know what for, since neither of them was interested enough to stick around or ask for my number. Maybe I am destined to be alone.
“Yeah, maybe, but it doesn’t matter anyway, since I’ll probably never see them again.”
“You’re gonna give up just like that? Come on, Noa, that doesn’t sound like you.”
“It’s not about giving up, it’s about being realistic.” I shove a handful of sour candies in my mouth, hoping the sting of the tart taste will distract me from the pain in the back of my throat from holding back the whine that is desperate to escape.
“Realistic? When is meeting your scent match ever realistic? It’s all passion, awkward entanglements, and obsession,” Ollie says dramatically, and we laugh. However, my laugh is painful and sounds like I’m choking a bit.
I can’t help the doom and gloom weighing me down inside. Even with Ollie’s infectious laughter, I can’t pretend I’m alright tonight. I’ve never had a man, let alone two, take over my mind like this. It’s scary.
Oh my goodness, is this how stalkers are born?
“It would help if I had any hope of seeing them again.”
“You said Thorne was a hockey player? I could make that happen,” she says, like it’s so easy. As if it’s obvious and I’m stupid for not seeing it. Whoa, wait, slow down, Noa. Gosh.
“And be like every other puck bunny there, hoping to score a hockey player?”
“Are you going to let your pride get in the way of finding your scent match? I thought that was your dream! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you have to jump on Noa, figuratively and literally,” she winks, which makes my face hot.
I may have a real shot at a future with more than one scent mate. Maybe Ollie is right. I can’t let my one shot go down the drain.
Even though being in a relationship scares me, I can’t let one awful experience dictate my life.