Chapter Six
I liked to let myself believe that I was a rather composed sort of person. However, that belief did not often reflect reality.
I had a bad habit of listening more to my emotions than logic. Oftentimes, I found it nearly impossible to separate my heart and my mind.
A prime example of this fact came on the very last day of my first competition with Liam. The Prologue’s poetry night was the last event that I had planned for the month, and it fell on that very same day.
Whether it was the chaos of hosting yet another event or the dreadful pit of nerves building in my stomach as the first competition came to a close, it didn’t really matter.
Regardless of the why, I still found myself running around the shop all morning.
A rush of adrenaline had been pumping through me since I woke up that morning.
“Morning, Jess,” Lily’s cheery voice called out from the cafe as I rushed past, a stack of books in my hands.
“Morning,” I called back.
“Want a coffee?”
My steps slowed. “I don’t know. I have some book requests that I need to put in the orders for—”
Book requests had been a new thing we started that week. It was a whole new realm of excitement for me. People didn’t just come into The Prologue; they came in, and they loved the shop enough that they wanted to request books. They loved it enough to want to return.
“Come on,” Lily whined. “It’ll take five seconds. I already made you one.”
I set down the pile of books on the front counter. “Okay.”
I felt the slightest twinge of dread as I approached. Lily already had a tall paper cup in her hands. She loved to try out different recipes and new flavors, but more than that, she loved to make me her test subject.
“What is it today?” I asked, eyeing the cup suspiciously.
It wasn’t even that all of her ideas were bad.
If anything, most of them came out quite well.
It’s just that when they were bad, they were awful.
On a day when I already felt so scatterbrained and overwhelmed, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to subject myself to that gamble.
Lily smiled. “You’ll see. I made this one for you.”
I couldn’t turn her down even if I wanted to.
“Alright,” I replied, taking the cup from her hands. It was warm, and steam was steadily flowing out from the hole in the lid. “What’s in it?”
“Just try it. You’ll like it. I swear, this one is actually really good,” she proclaimed proudly. “I call it The Dragon Slayer!”
I lifted the cup toward my nose and took a tentative sniff. It did smell quite good, much better than the one she had given me a few days prior—Hero’s Fuel she had called it. I took a slow sip and was immediately hit with the strong flavor of espresso.
“This is strong,” I said, going in for another sip. She wasn’t wrong; the drink wasn’t half bad. Beyond the strong coffee flavor, it tasted nutty and warm.
“I know,” Lily exclaimed, “A triple shot of espresso, vanilla cream, a pump of hazelnut, topped with whipped cream and cinnamon!”
“A triple shot of espresso? That seems like a little much.”
Lily grinned. “That’s the whole point. Enough caffeine to even take out a dragon! What do you think, boss? Can I add it to next month’s lineup?”
I took one more sip before nodding my head. “Make it a double shot, and sure. It does taste pretty good.”
Lily’s smile fell slightly. “Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll consider this a half-victory.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I took another sip of my overly caffeinated coffee. While I wouldn’t let her put it on the menu with all those shots of espresso, I would certainly be requesting it again. If anyone needed that much caffeine, it was me.
The day drifted on, and by noon, I was a jittery mess.
Part caffeine, part nerves. There were only two thoughts in my mind.
One: the poetry event that evening had to be perfect, and two: I needed to win.
I had no idea how close the competition was.
I wanted to believe that I would win by a landslide, but with our track record of Liam somehow always coming out on top, I wasn’t exactly confident.
I tucked myself away in my office and busied myself with the less exciting parts of being a business owner. Payroll and bookkeeping. It was mind-numbing work, but it still had to be done. On a day when I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts straight, it felt nearly impossible.
* * *
Five o’clock finally rolled around.
Normally, that would be the time that we would lock up The Prologue for the day, but not on that particular day. On that day, the doors stayed unlocked, and the shop was instead transformed.
We worked quickly. Lily, Damien, and Autumn helped me rearrange the chairs in the cafe. More customers than I had ever seen before poured into the shop as we created a makeshift sort of stage.
The seats filled up faster than we could set them up with people who were all clutching printed out or handwritten papers of their very own poetry. Others wandered the shop, browsing the bookshelves or buying themselves treats or drinks in the cafe.
I was looking over the poetry reading sign-up sheet when the man, whom I couldn’t ever seem to get rid of, appeared beside me.
“Hey, Jessie,” Liam said.
“What?” My gaze was still fixed on the sign-up sheet.
It was nearly full—something I hadn’t expected to happen.
It would probably take an hour or two to get through them all.
My eyes drifted toward the front door, where more people were continuing to pour into the shop.
“I need more chairs,” I mumbled to myself.
“Looks like your poetry night is a hit.”
“Mhm,” I hummed, stepping around him to hand the clipboard off to Lily. “We need to start immediately if we have any plans of getting through this whole list.”
“Got it,” Lily replied with a nod. “I’ll make an announcement over the mic!”
“Thanks,” I said, my attention already shifting to an old coffee cup someone had left on one of the bookshelves. “Seriously. Has no one heard of a trash can?”
“Jessie,” Liam said, trailing behind me as I made my way toward the coffee cup. A part of me had already almost forgotten he was right there.
“What? Did you come in here to make small talk, or are you going to tell me what it is you want?”
Since coming to pick up his poster a couple of weeks prior, Liam had become increasingly comfortable coming into The Prologue.
He stopped by most days, always asking for something.
Receipt paper, chocolate syrup, paper towels.
It was never-ending. I was convinced the man had no idea what a store was.
Begrudgingly, I always handed over whatever he requested. Both because I knew he would do the same if I ever needed anything, but also because I liked the idea of him owing me favors.
“Can you look at me first?” Liam asked. We had known each other all our lives, but I had never once heard him speak in that way. He sounded so impatient, which was nothing new, but his tone was deeper and almost dominant in a way that had me obeying the request without a second thought.
My eyes locked onto his. “I’m looking.”
Liam’s fingers crept up and ran through the curls of his hair. It was a habit of his that I recognized from when we were children. It seemed that he had never outgrown it.
“What is it?” I asked when he didn’t respond right away. I had a thousand things I needed to do, and dealing with him wasn’t one of them.
“Tonight is the last night of our competition.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “Is that all?” I finally plucked the coffee cup off the shelf and let my attention drift toward Lily, who had just taken the stage.
“Welcome to The Prologue’s very first poetry night!” Lily said into the mic.
“No. I wanted to ask you something—”
“Could you spit it out, Ashford?” I interrupted. “I have a lot of work to do—”
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
I froze. Of all the things I could have guessed would come out of his mouth, I never would have guessed that. “What did you say?”
There was something unreadable in his eyes. It was as unfamiliar as the assertive tone of his voice. Liam had always been confident. Smug beyond belief. But I had never seen him act so… I wasn’t even sure how he was acting. All I knew was that it was different.
“I’m making chicken Alfredo.”
“You’re making chicken Alfredo?” I echoed. The words felt almost foreign on my tongue. What was happening?
“You like that, right? When your poetry night is over, come over to my shop and I can—”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking me on a date, Ashford?”
It sounded like a date. Dinner. Together. At his apartment.
Only that was the most unfathomable thing I had ever heard. Liam and I hated each other. I couldn’t imagine a single scenario where we could sit across from one another at a dinner table and not kill each other. And a date? Why on earth would Liam Ashford ever ask me, of all people, on a date?
“No,” he said. A warm flush of embarrassment crept up his cheeks—another thing that, in all the time I had known him, I had never seen.
“Then what—”
“Will you shut your mouth for a minute so I can explain?”
I snapped my mouth shut and stared at him with wide eyes.
He had never talked to me that way before.
I certainly deserved it, but it wasn’t the first time I had been a little mouthy with him.
That would be almost all of our relationship over the past decade.
Liam usually took everything I said in stride.
More often than not, it seemed that my attitude only fueled him.
For some indescribable and impossible reason, my heart was pounding in my chest. My gaze was locked onto Liam. That look in his eyes. The messy hair he had only made worse by running his fingers through it. My heart was racing, but not from fear. It was accompanied by a wave of arousal.
It was because, for the first time in all our lives, I was looking at Liam, not as the boy I had always known, but as the man that he was. I had no idea how to cope with that.
“Sorry,” he said, and the piercing, almost panicked look in his eyes softened.
“Sorry. I meant… the competition. It’s almost over.
So after you close up shop, bring over your sales sheets.
We can have dinner and go over the results.
I doubt you’ll feel like cooking after this, right?
” Liam asked. He let out a breathy, awkward laugh as he gestured toward the stage where someone was carefully reading through their poem.
“Okay,” I said, because it was the easiest way to get rid of him.
I needed Liam Ashford out of my shop, and I needed to never look at him that way again.
“Really? I would have thought—”
“Yes, Ashford. I’ll be there. Now get out, I have work to do.” I couldn’t meet his eyes as I spoke.
His lips twitched up into a half-smile. “Sure, but did you want to borrow some chairs?”
“Chairs?” I echoed. My brain felt fried, and my stupid heart was still racing.
Liam raised an eyebrow. “Yes? You said you needed more chairs. I can bring a few over.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, that would be great.” I was already backing away from him as I spoke. I needed to put some distance between us. Preferably miles and miles of distance.
“Okay, I’ll bring some over then.”
“Great,” I said before vanishing into the crowd of people.
Liam was back a few minutes later, a few of his employees in tow. Each of them was carrying several chairs that I recognized from the cafe area of his shop.
I made myself scarce, hiding in the back of the shop until he was gone.
I didn’t want to see Liam. I certainly did not want to go up to his apartment and share dinner with him, but I couldn’t back out.
The whole thing felt so utterly ridiculous.
I had known Liam all my life. We were children together.
We spent years of our lives competing with one another.
I hated him. And yet, for one brief flicker of time, I had seen him in another light.
A light that I probably would have always seen him in if we had met as adults, if we didn’t have all the history together that we did.
I had always known that Liam was good-looking.
It was impossible not to. If not from simply having eyes, then from experiencing the pointed jealousy that countless girls had targeted my way over the years.
How I felt never mattered to them. All they saw me as was the girl who spent far too much time with a man as attractive as him.
I had never looked at him that way—at least not until now. Liam had always just been Liam. And, in truth, I hadn’t ever bothered to look at anyone that way. I had goals, and I had dreams. Dating had never been something on my radar. I figured the right man would come around when the time was right.
The time was not right. Liam was not the right man.
I decided that whatever it was that I saw or felt, it had simply been a mistake. It was a mistake, and I would not let it happen again.
As the night trailed on, the pit in my stomach grew and grew. The poetry night was going better than I could have ever dreamed, but as the minutes ticked on, time only grew closer to when I would have to join Liam for dinner.
I couldn’t bail. That would be admitting to myself that whatever happened earlier wasn’t nothing. That it mattered—that it wasn’t a mistake that could be ignored. And a part of me worried that if I did bail, Liam would somehow be able to read my mind and know exactly why.
So, I would go to dinner with Liam. Even if it killed me. Even if, as the time drew closer, I found myself filled with nothing but dread.