And tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
CHAPTER 33
RUMI
If Ava wasn’tthe manager of a successful local coffee shop, she would make a very impressive detective.
The way she is interrogating me right now makes me feel like I did something much worse than fool around with Jack in the back corner of the library.
“Rumi Lillith Matthews, I swear, if you had sex bent over a dusty shelf in that library, I will never let you hear the end of it. Tell me what you were up to when he showed up and whisked you away from me and the Pilates Moms.”
I cover my face with my hands, lucky that we don’t open Hey Honey’s for another five minutes and there are no customers to hear my best friend give me the third degree.
I avoided Ava’s accusatory glances during the author’s read aloud, and she let me off the hook long enough to chat with the author, Lauren, about her process and experience in publishing, telling her about the idea I had for my own children’s book. After giving me her card with plans to get coffee and chat more next week, Ava and I headed home with Evee.
Ava had to get ready for her date with Anderson when we got home so she didn’t sit me down and ask what I was doing whenI was supposed to be sitting with her and Evee in the Children’s Corner of the library.
But sadly, that luck ran out this morning when I walked out of my bedroom to a whirlwind of Ava’s questions.
“We didn’t havepenetrativesex,” I say, the words muffled from behind my hands.
“And what the hell does that mean?” Her hands are on her hips when I peek at her through my fingers.
“Oh, I think I hear Evee crying,” I say, dropping my hands and trying to run past her, but she grabs my arm, spinning me around to face her.
“You and I both know she is dead asleep in that Pack ‘n Play. Tell me.” Her grip on my arm tightens, reminding me how scary my best friend can be.
I groan. “Fine.”
Within the five minutes before we have to unlock the doors, and the various lulls we have in our morning shift together, I tell Ava all of the details from my little rendezvous with Jack, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my best friendthisproud of me.
By the time Emerson and Luke come to finish the afternoon and early evening shift, Ava is bursting at the seams to share with her co-conspirators that all their hand work is paying off.
“I’m sick of all of you,” I tell the three of them as I take off my apron, hanging it on my hook behind the office door. But, in reality, I can’t explain how happy it makes me to have friends that care about this relationship with Jack as much as I do. I’ve never had friends, let alone friends who wanted to see me—and him—happy and cared enough about us to help make it happen.
“Yeah, yeah,” Emerson says from next to me, grabbing her apron off her hook, and Ava shakes her head at me as she holds Evee and her diaper bag, already ready to drop her off at Jack’s mom’s house tonight for me.
“Who would’ve thought?” Luke chimes in. “Our first Hey Honey’s couple. This might be the start of a Hey Honey’s crew.”
The three of us look at him, raised brows and cocked heads, having no idea what he’s talking about.
“What?” Luke asks, crossing his arm and leaning against the door frame of the office. The mid-afternoon rush has come and gone, so the four of us are taking advantage of the lack of customers to talk.
“Are we just going to pretend what you said isn’t stupid?” Emerson asks, always the first one to say something, especially when there’s an opportunity to call out someone not making any sense.
“Sometimes I forget how much you’re like your brother,” Luke says with a sigh. “What I meant was, you know what Mia’s brother calls me, Annie, Mia, Eddie, Drew, and Emmett? The Lennys’ crew? It all started with Drew and Emmett, the first Lenny’s couple. From there, it all just bloomed into the family we are now.”
“So?” Emerson says, the three of us still trying to make sense of what he’s saying.
“So,” Luke says, stretching out the word. “The three of you are so close, and now Jack and Rumi are a couple. It’s like you guys are following in our footsteps.”
I open my mouth to correct him—seeing as though Jack and I have yet to discuss him calling me his girlfriend when we went to his mom’s house—but I decide against it, liking the sound of the two of us being a couple.
“Why are you making this so weird?” Emerson asks, and Ava and I laugh, which causes Luke to throw up his hands in frustration, but I can see the grin he’s trying to hold back.
“All I’m saying is, this could be the start of something special. Mark my words.” He turns to head back to the front just as the chime to the front door rings.
The three of us look at each other and let out another laugh, but there’s something about what Luke says that sticks with me, something I can’t stop thinking about on our way home or on my way over to Jack’s for the night.
