Page 46 of Prime Time Romance

“Sorry, but we’re closed,” I call to her.

She turns her head. “I’m tight with the bartender. We crossed a space-time continuum together. It’s bonded us in weird and wonderful ways.”

Her words and her voice crash together inside my brain in a too-familiar way. “Brynn?”

She swivels the rest of her body around to face me.

It’s Brynn, for sure, but she looks different. Her dark, wild hair is gone. She’s wearing makeup, I think. Everything about her is perfectly polished.

“You’re blond.”

She rolls her eyes as she reaches down to adjust one of her high-heeled shoes. “And you need to work on your compliments.”

I shake my head, all the right words currently escaping me. “Sorry, I didn’t expect…What happened? What did you do to your hair?”

She fingers the strands, the smile from before slipping from her lips, and once again, I regret my word choice.

“It’s called a makeover, Josh. Or you might be more familiar with the more colloquial term glow-up. You know? A radical transformation to highlight what was hidden in there all along?” She slides off the barstool and begins to walk toward the door. Halfway there, she spins back around and holds up a single finger. “Actually, that’s not even why I’m here. I came to tell you that I saw Sheldon this morning.”

My pulse spikes.

“What did he say? Did he tell you anything important?”

Color rises in her cheeks. “I was getting my hair done. I couldn’t get to him in time. He was there in the salon one minute, and then he took off before I could talk to him.”

“Where is he now?”

She glances at the door. “That’s the million-dollar question. I looked in every single shop on my way over here, but the dude has vanished. He’s a sneaky little fu…uhhhh.” She groans.

We need to find him. “We should keep looking. Come on.”

I grab her hand.

We walk back out onto Main Street. It’s another beautiful blue-sky day. The grocer is watering his vegetables again. The woman is walking her goldendoodles.

The picturesqueness is almost irritating.

My eyes scan the street. The pharmacy. The fudge shop. Even the ladder where a pair of town workers are adding giant plastic crustaceans to the lamppost with the Ms. Lobsterfest banner.

No sign of Sheldon at all.

Until I spot a blond busker outside the general store.

“Over there,” I tell Brynn and run toward him.

“I’ll catch up,” she yells. When I turn around to see why she’s not following, she holds up one of her high-heeled feet. “It’s like walking on two toothpicks. The best you’re going to get from me is a brisk walk.”

I abandon her and sprint across the street, but just as I reach the spot where I saw Sheldon, I realize that in the brief moment I shifted my gaze to Brynn’s footwear, he somehow managed to disappear.

“Where did he go?” Brynn reaches me a moment later, her breathing shallow and labored.

“I don’t know.” I scan the street one last time. “He couldn’t have gotten far. Maybe he ducked inside?”

The bell above the door to the general store chimes as I open it. There is a man with a mustache behind the counter, ringing up the items of a tall female. Neither of them look up as we walk in, so we head to the back, walking the length of the frozen-food section, checking each of the aisles.

There’s no one down the first two, and when I check the third and fourth, they’re also empty.

“We could ask Mr. Wilder.” She nods toward the front. “He’s the guy behind the counter.”