Page 57 of A New Chapter

Chapter 28

Instead of driving straight home from the airport, Emma went directly to the bookstore. After spending the weekend with Zack, she dreaded going home to an empty house, plus she wanted to check in with Kelly and see how business had fared in her absence.

Kelly looked up in surprise when Emma entered the store, and she said, “Hey, Em. Welcome back. How was the windy city?”

“It was… interesting.” Emma felt her face flush while Kelly gave her the once-over.

“What does that mean? Did you pick up a mysterious stranger at a bar and have sex with him?”

“That’s your fantasy, not mine,” Emma replied drily.

“So? Don’t make me beg. What happened?”

Emma swung her head around to see if there were any customers within hearing distance. There were only two young women in the store, but their heads were buried conspiratorially in the romance section.

“Zack showed up,” she said and waited for Kelly’s reaction.

Kelly’s caramel brown eyes bulged, and she leaned forward intently. “He showed up in Chicago?”

“Yes. He was waiting for me in the hotel lobby after the show on Friday.”

“Holy…”

“I know. I was as shocked as you are.”

“So what happened next?”

“We hung out. We toured the city together, had dinner, that sort of thing…” Emma’s voice trailed off as the two young customers approached the counter, each with an armload of Harlequin romances.

“Have you read any of these?” the taller of the two girls asked Kelly and Emma.

“Only like every one of them,” Kelly answered enthusiastically. “This one with the cowboy on the cover is particularly juicy.”

The girls giggled and left the store, happily swinging the bags that contained their treasures.

“So, get to the good stuff. Did you and Zack do it?”

“Really, Kell?” Emma turned away and examined a stack of new books that had arrived while she had been in Chicago.

“Sorry. Let me rephrase the question. Did you and Zack make love?”

Emma still couldn’t bring herself to look Kelly in the eye, but if Zack was Mr. Persistent, then Kelly was Ms. Persistent, so she decided to give in. “Yes,” she said quietly.

“Wow, Em. That’s huge.”

In more ways than one, she thought giddily, deciding to keep that part of the story to herself. “It’s not that big a deal. You do it all the time.”

“I know, but that’s me, not you. You’re the relationship type of girl.”

Emma turned to face her. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that you don’t do casual sex, which means that you and Zack must be in a relationship now. No more of that friendship crap you tried to pull off.”

Emma suddenly wished that she had gone straight home. She wasn’t ready to voice her fears to Kelly or anyone else. She had thought about Zack the whole way home, and after replaying the events of the weekend over and over, she was still unsure about where they stood. She purposely hadn’t called him yet because she wanted more time to process it all.

“I don’t know what to call it, Kell. It’s all so new.”

Kelly had to have heard the waver in Emma’s voice because she backed off. “Well, I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”