Chapter Nine #2
My plan worked. It worked astonishingly well.
Within the first week, The Prologue had jumped from twenty-three reviews to over one hundred.
A part of me wondered why I hadn’t bothered putting in much of an effort sooner.
It seemed that the more reviews we got, the busier the shop became.
Which, in turn, resulted in more reviews.
The month practically flew by, and at the end of it, on the morning of the very last day, we had hit four hundred twenty-five reviews.
Most of them were four or five stars. There was only one singular one-star review.
I noticed it minutes after it came in. Over the month, I had developed a habit of checking the reviews page a few times each hour.
“Nice little bookshop, but the owner is a piece of work. She always has such an attitude when I come in. If you’re looking for a good spot to get a nice cup of coffee and relax, you’re better off at the shop next door. That owner is super down to earth and—” I couldn’t even finish reading it.
I had only read through half of that review written by someone named AshStriker9 before I slid my phone into my back pocket and stormed over to The Galaxy Gamers Cafe.
Liam was standing right by the front of the shop when I arrived. Almost as if he knew I would come. He had the most obnoxious smirk on his face.
“What is your problem?” I asked, stomping up to him. “I thought you said you weren’t going to cheat this time.”
“What are you talking about?” Liam asked, feigning ignorance.
“Quit it,” I gritted out.
He let out a slow exhale. “How’d you know it was me?” Liam’s posture and expression said defeat, but the look in his eyes said something else. He seemed almost hopeful. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why.
“AshStriker9? What is that? The most unoriginal username on the planet?”
The corners of his lips twitched upward. “I thought it was pretty creative.”
“It was half of your last name, your soccer position, and your soccer number. If you were going for secretive, then you did a terrible job. Now delete it.”
Liam was smiling. “Delete it? Come on, I gave you a free point.”
“You gave me a one-star review in which you went on a tangent about how hot you are.” From what I had glimpsed of the rest of his review, it was mostly him gloating about himself. “Delete it. Now.”
He hummed thoughtfully before finally saying, “No, I don’t think I will.”
“Liam—”
“Get ice cream with me tonight. After you close up shop.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“Grab ice cream with me tonight. I’ll delete the review.”
My heart rate quickened slightly. “No. Why would I—”
“There’s a place just down the street. We can check it out, get some ice cream, and then go over the reviews and see who the winner is. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun,” I echoed the word. Memories of the dinner we shared were coursing through my mind. How easy it had been—how fun it had been. And then, how terribly it had ended.
“Yes. Fun. Y’know, that thing people do when they aren’t working all the time?”
I thought about his offer for a moment, hesitant.
We had been teetering on a fine line for weeks now.
Our relationship was shifting and changing beneath my feet once more in the same way that it had back when we were children.
Only this time, we were swaying into the dangerous territory of friendship.
I had planned on turning him down. I opened my mouth with the word ‘no’, balancing carefully on the tip of my tongue. And yet, a haphazard, “Okay,” is what spilled out instead.
“Really?” Liam asked with that smug grin of his. “I was sure that I would have had to wear you down a bit more than that before you agreed. Guess I really am growing on you, huh?”
“Like mold.”
“Maybe one day I’ll even get one of those famous smiles.”
“In your dreams, Ashford,” I said, turning to leave.
“You know it. Meet me outside at six?”
“Six. Sure. Get ready to lose.”
I spent the remaining hours of my workday trying to scrounge up a few more positive reviews, flashing a blinding smile and overly cheery attitude toward everyone who walked through The Prologue’s doors.
Five o’clock came, and with it, the workday came to a close. We locked the doors, cleaned up the shop, and whether I had won or not had been set in stone.
There was a small part of me that almost did not want to know. I was confident in myself, but I knew exactly how I would feel if I lost. I didn’t ever want to feel that way again.
I couldn’t avoid it, though. Showing even a hint of anxiety in front of Liam would be like showcasing my greatest weakness. So I trudged up the steps to my apartment and prepared myself to get ice cream and to finally hear the results of our month-long competition.
After having dinner at Liam’s place and seeing how put-together his apartment was, I took the initiative to make my own place feel a little more inviting.
Now, instead of slipping my shoes off right beside the front door, I had a flowery welcome mat and a shoe rack. I had even ditched the makeshift coffee table and invested in a proper one made of wood rather than cardboard.
Mom insisted that if I were buying a coffee table, I had to buy a couch too.
So we spent an entire Saturday a few weekends ago jumping around every thrift shop in town.
We hung up white curtains, which looked significantly better than the cheap blinds I had before.
I found the most plush, comfortable, sage green sofa that reminded me of home, and with it, I bought a green and white rug to match.
Mom also insisted that a house wasn’t a home until it was full of useless knick-knacks.
Now every surface of my apartment was littered with plenty of them.
A little sea turtle made of rocks and shells, fake potted plants because I couldn’t possibly keep tons of real ones alive, a teapot I would never use sitting atop a pile of cookbooks I would never read.
I was also now the owner of one of those vintage cat clocks where the tail and eyes moved back and forth.
The place still wasn’t perfect. It still couldn’t even compare to Liam’s apartment, but it was starting to really feel like mine.
I flipped through my closet in search of something to wear. I had never cared much for fashion. If I were to list out all of my priorities, keeping up with clothing trends would land at the very bottom of it. But, for some reason that I couldn’t even pinpoint, I wanted to look nice.
I ditched the mom jeans, cardigan, and The Prologue branded t-shirt, swapping them out for one of the few ‘nice’ outfits I had.
It was nothing really that special—I didn’t exactly own anything that was special, but I did have one outfit that I had been dying for a reason to wear.
It was a knee-length, floral pink dress with flowy, long sleeves.
It had been years since I bought it. I never seemed to have a reason to wear it, so it sat in my closet, traveling with me from home, to college, back to home, and then finally to my apartment above The Prologue. I decided that after years of waiting, it finally deserved to see the light.
From the moment I put the dress on, my cheeks flushed with a burning heat of embarrassment that would simply not go away. I felt beautiful, but putting in the effort to make myself look beautiful—specifically before I was set to meet Liam—felt so indescribably embarrassing.
I second-guessed everything. Even as I twirled my hair around the curling iron I hadn’t touched in years, I couldn’t shake the queasy feeling settling in my stomach.
I couldn’t seem to figure out why it was that I cared so much. Whatever the reason, I didn’t have the time to sit there and stew on it for long. Six o’clock had arrived, and it was time for me to meet Liam.