Hunter glanced at the menu, even though he wasn’t hungry. He took a sip of coffee, pulled out his phone, and scrolled throughthirty-second videos on YouTube. There were the requisite silly dance videos, dumb viral challenges that would probably end up with someone getting hurt, and food. Lots and lots of food.
Snap.“Have you decided?”
He set down his phone and nodded. “A waffle and two strips of bacon.” What else would he order in a waffle house?
“Crispy or regular?”
He frowned. “The waffle or the bacon?”
Enid gave him a patient half smile, revealing one incisor that was significantly smaller than the rest of her teeth. “The bacon.”
“Crispy.” The wrinkles at the corners of her lips and eyes made her look too old for multicolored hair, but who was he to judge.
Snap. Snap.She jotted a few scribbles on the pad. “Anything else, handsome?”
He flinched. “No.”
“Coming right up.” She flashed a more genuine grin at him before leaving again.
He let out a long breath. All he needed tonight was to get hit on by a waffle waitress who had a good ten, if not more, years on him. Again, not judging, but she wasn’t his type.
Hunter slouched in the booth, pushing his coffee cup a few inches away with his index finger. The type of women he was interested in weren’t eager to go out with a thirty-year-old entry-level warehouse worker with a GED.
Well, heusedto be interested in those kinds of women. That was before his older brothers—top-notch attorney Payne and venture capitalist Kirk—had married two of them. His sisters-in-law were hot, with toned bodies, perfectly highlighted hair, unnaturally tanned skin, and pearly white even teeth.
They were also self-absorbed shopaholics who were bleeding his brothers dry.
He sat back up and ran his hand through his hair. He’d always been judgmental. About looks, about money, about everything. And now here he was, twelve years past high school, sitting alone at a waffle house on a Saturday night with few prospects—both personal and professional.
Whose fault is that?
He yanked out his phone again, desperate for a distraction. After scrolling through several kitten and puppy videos—they did warm his heart, he had to admit—a girl with a mass of curly, messy black hair popped up on his screen.
He paused. A week ago today she’d somehow appeared in his feed for the first time.Britt Draws Everything.
Out of boredom, he’d clicked on her video titled “Color Theory: Who Needs It?” and surprised himself by watching it all the way through, even though he couldn’t draw a straight line. That sent him on a rabbit trail, and by the time he dozed off, he’d watched more than a dozen of her videos. Some were only a few minutes long, others were comprehensive art lessons. She was talented. She was also cute.
But not cute enough to keep his attention beyond wasting time on a dull Saturday night, and he’d avoided clicking on any of her other videos since then. But now here she was, smiling sweetly into the camera, her black squiggly curls framing a fair, thin face. He started to scroll past her, then went back up. His thumb hovered over the video for a few seconds before he tapped the Play button.
“I just had to try these.” She held up a pack of fancy colored pencils, pushing them closer to the camera, influencer style. The case was crooked in the frame. “Oops.” She quickly straightened it.
He smiled a little. Her high-pitched voice was soft, not grating,and she had a muted Southern drawl. Soothing too. He’d fallen asleep listening to her that first night.
She set the pencils down. “Want to see what I drew with them? Click here.” She awkwardly pointed down, supposedly to the name of her channel or blog, but she missed it entirely.
“One waffle with crispy bacon.”Snap.Enid set the plate down in front of him. “Anything else?”
“I’m good.” As an afterthought he said, “Thanks.”
“Sure thing, handsome.” She winked at him as a group of customers entered the restaurant. She took off to tend to them.
His waffle and bacon forgotten for the moment, Hunter glanced at the video’s view counter. Almost half a million views in less than a week. Wow. Unable to help himself, he clicked on the next one.
“Hi, I’m Britt.” Her mouth turned up in a smile as her gaze moved downward. “Today I’m going to show you how to draw farm animals.”
This wasn’t the first animal lesson she had on her channel. When he watched the first one—“How to Create the Perfect Narwhal”—at first he thought he’d stumbled upon a kids’ channel. Then he found out she was a graphic artist with a passion for animation. She was really good at it too. In this video, her hair was even mussier, as if she’d filmed it on a day with 150 percent humidity. Then she looked directly into the camera and smiled.
He paused the video and saw the reflection of the lights in her jade-green eyes. Her smile was endearingly awkward.
