8 Lattes #3
This. This was what I’d almost ruined. This happiness, this love, this perfect thing between them. I was filled with joy, just watching them together. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that there was still another feeling. A feeling that I wanted that too.
James.
When would I stop being so afraid?
“But back to Willa, yeah, you really need to shoot your shot,” Krista said.
“Oh my God, you do,” added Avery. “Like I did with Brody at the game the other night.” I wondered what had happened to Carter Blake in her list of priorities. “And all you need to know is that it paid off …” She winked, and Krista screwed up her face. “Ugh, Av, gross.”
“Love is not gross, Kris. Love is not gross.”
“So what are you going to do?” Sara asked, now fully invested in my disaster of an off-on romance.
“I don’t know.” In my head, though, a scene was starting to come together …
I’d show up at the coffee shop, apologize for being insensitive, tell him I wanted to start over, say that he was the best thing in my week too, and promise that even if I left for a while I’d be coming back. The rest would be history.
“How cute would it be, the two of you, being in love, still working together …” Lennie said, and I couldn’t help smiling at that image. Our lives together in Oak Falls … it sounded perfect.
But it wasn’t the whole story. And I had to tell them.
“There’s something else I need to tell you guys …” I looked around at the faces of my friends, open and interested, totally on my side. Leaving them, if I did it, would be hard.
“I kind of got this email …” I added. “I already told Lennie about it, but I also got a letter, Len, my aunt left it for me. It’s real, the whole thing is real.”
Avery, Krista, and Sara looked at each other, puzzled, and Lennie’s eyes widened in shock.
“Okay, confused over here,” Krista said, putting up her hand.
I inhaled deeply. “My aunt Lisa died last year and she left me twenty-five thousand dollars but I can only use it for ‘seeing the world beyond Oak Falls,’ so travel and stuff … And the deal is, I have to decide what I’m doing with it by Thanksgiving.”
“Wow,” said Sara.
“Holy crap,” Avery added. “Twenty-five thousand dollars. Maybe one of my aunts could die …”
Krista shoved her. “You’re a terrible person,” she said.
“Well, I guess that does complicate things a bit with hot James …” Sara pointed out. “And it’s getting kind of close to Thanksgiving now.”
“I know!” I said, ducking under a quilt.
“It’ll all be okay, Will. Everything will work out just fine.” Lennie put her hand on mine and squeezed.
“You think?”
“I know. I know everything,” Lennie proclaimed.
“Okay, great, then tell me what to do about James …”
“Oh no, sorry, that one’s all you.”
“I’ve got an idea what you can do with him …” Avery said suggestively.
“I don’t think that’s what she meant.” Krista rolled her eyes.
It wasn’t what I’d meant. But it didn’t mean that it wasn’t on my mind.
Being around the girls made me feel braver. We kept on talking, and they seemed to think that long-distance for a few months while I traveled was a totally reasonable thing to propose if we really liked each other. So by the next morning, I’d figured out exactly what I was going to do.
I put on my green scarf and spent some extra time on my hair.
Teasing the red waves and keeping them loose, which I knew James liked, and putting on some mascara and lip gloss.
I was going to confront him. Like I wasn’t going to be rude about it, but he’d admitted he had feelings for me and I’d done the same, so I wanted to know once and for all where I stood.
Because I realized I couldn’t make any decisions about the money, about my future, until I knew if James Parker was going to be a part of it. I looked at myself in the mirror before I left. Same red hair, same green scarf, but I was different. Ready.
My phone buzzed just before I walked out the door.
Lennie: Go get him RED x
I smiled at my best friend’s message, then headed right onto Maple Street.
When I got to the coffee shop, I stopped outside the window. Because something had changed! Along with all my decorations, there was a new sign:
DON‘T MISS
WILLA’S PUMPKIN SPICE COCOA! IT‘S TO
DIE FOR!!!
He’d drawn a creepy face beside it, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even think he’d been listening when I suggested that. Now my confusion evaporated into the cinnamon-scented air, and my stomach turned somersaults.
There he was. And every single one of my nerve endings wanted to feel his touch.
I gazed at him for a few seconds, then followed his smile across the coffee shop.
Talk about a shock to the system. James was smiling at the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in real life.
She was tall with blond hair and a perfectly symmetrical face.
So tall and so perfect that she could easily be a model.
She walked over to James, in her warning-light-red coat, and hugged him.
I couldn’t look away, so I watched him hug her back as I caught the initial on the cream tote bag hanging off her shoulder.
A. A for April?
Oh my God, of course it was. His girlfriend. And if she was here this early in the morning, she’d clearly spent the night.