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Audrey
Themorningpassedbyquickly, which was understandable, considering I wasn’t present for most of it. My mind fully belonged to last night and this morning. Every touch, kiss, and caress shared between me and Wes played on an endless loop.
I was so far gone. In my heart, I knew I’d need to come back to earth eventually and look at this critically, but for now, I wanted to bask in the afterglow. I deserved at least one morning to forget about the curse and the past and just be happy.
My grandma had been watching me with narrowed eyes. She sniffed every time she passed me to help yet another customer who had asked me the same question three times before giving up. I had no doubt she smelled Wes on me. She had a nose like a bloodhound.
I took a second shower when I got home, due to the tumble in the mud we’d taken with the curse, but his strong spicy scent didn’t wash away so easily. Knowing this would happen, I’d tried to find something else to shower with this morning, but then I walked in on that call with Seth, which threw me for a loop. After that, my focus had been diverted elsewhere.
I meant what I said about not wanting to come between Seth and Wes. Maybe it made me an awful person, but until that call, I honestly hadn’t considered Seth’s feelings. Despite being together for five years, he was pretty much a ghost in my life. We hadn’t stayed friends, and the only time I thought of him at all was in relation to my history with Wes.
I heard Seth yelling through the line, and he sounded pissed that I’d obviously spent the night with Wes, but I didn’t really understand why he’d care. It’s not like he was off in some distant country pining for me all these years. We didn’t send each other Christmas cards. We weren’t even Facebook friends. I doubted he thought about me any more than I thought about him, and the only reason he seemed to care now was because Wes and I were together. Which showed me two things: that Wes had been telling me the truth about why Seth had pursued me so hard in high school, and that Seth was a complete asshole.
But they were still brothers.
As someone who had precious little family left, I understood the importance of those relationships, and if it was going to be an issue, I’d be willing to stand aside. Soon. Like maybe next week. Or the week after. Though Wes did promise he wouldn’t put me in the middle of whatever was going on between the two of them, and I preferred to go with that option for now.
The midday lull hit and my grandma turned the closed sign and locked the door.
“I don’t close for lunch in the summer,” I said. “I usually just grab a sandwich in the back between customers.”
She crossed her arms over her Garfield T-shirt and leaned against the jamb. “I’m not closing you for lunch. I want to know what’s going on with you. Your head has been in the clouds all morning, you’re extra smiley, and I know that’s Wes Latham’s scent I keep getting a whiff of every time I walk by you.” Her eyes lit with hope and I groaned. “Please tell me you finally came to your senses about him.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help the smile that touched my lips. “I’m getting you a foam finger with Wes’s name on it for your birthday.”
“Well?” She would not be deterred.
“Fine.” Putting her off wouldn’t do me any good. She’d find out eventually, then be mad at me for lying to her. There were few things in this world I feared more than upsetting my grandma. “We’re sort of starting to see each other. Maybe.”
That hadn’t been the answer she’d been hoping for. Though I doubted she’d be satisfied with anything less than a ring on my finger. “It’s a start, I guess.”
While my response had been underwhelming, Wes and I hadn’t exactly defined what we were to each other. I wasn’t even sure if I was ready to have that conversation. We needed to rebuild a lot of trust before I’d be willing to dive headlong into a relationship. I already knew my grandma thought of me as overly cautious and just this side of paranoid, but I understood my own heart, and I wouldn’t be able to stand being hurt by Wes again.
“I’m afraid I can’t give you anything better than that.” I unlocked my door when I spotted a customer outside peering in the windows. “Can I get back to work now?”
“Go on.” She waved her hands at me. “Not sure what I’m waiting around for anyway. I’ll be on my deathbed before I get to snuggle my great-grandbabies.”
At the mention of great-grandbabies, I froze. It was way too soon to think about that kind of thing, but… I didn’t hate the sound of it. Which required a different sort of freaking out and overanalyzing that I’d have to do alone at a later time.
Instead, I acted as if I hadn’t heard anything about babies. “Stop being so dramatic.”
She liked to play the part of the frail old lady when it suited her, but at sixty-seven, she was probably in better health than me. She hiked the trails behind her house every morning and swam in the ocean at least three times a week in the summer. We didn’t have any concerning issues in our family’s medical history, and I didn’t see her slowing down any time soon.
She patted my arm. “I’d just like to see you settled and happy is all.”
“I know. If anything changes, you’ll be the first to know.” I kissed her cheek. “I’d hate for you to miss your chance to say I told you so, seeing as how those are your four favorite words in the English language.”
“If you’d just listen to me more often, I wouldn’t have to say it so much.”
She made a good point.
The rest of the afternoon passed as quickly as the morning. Brooke brought by more honey, and I wrote her a check for the sales on her previous batch. Violet’s jewelry had sold out over the weekend. It would take a little longer for her to replace it with more, though. I continued to run low on essential oils, but sales of diffusers remained strong, so I put in another order for those, as well as more crystals and incense. I also scheduled time to hit an upcoming estate sale on the mainland. They had a massive collection of vintage T-shirts, which always sold well.
By the time Ella stopped by to take my grandma out to dinner, I’d done several thousand dollars in sales and was no closer to coming down from the high of spending the night in Wes’s arms. Every time I thought of him, which was roughly every half second or so, little waves of energy tickled my stomach. Eating was impossible. The only reason I finished half my sandwich was so I could keep my energy up on the off chance that Wes invited me over again. Not that I expected him to. We hadn’t made plans.
Fifteen minutes before close, the bell above my shop door chimed. Wes walked in wearing a suit. Those little waves of energy I’d been dealing with all day turned into a full-on tsunami. He had his jacket slung over his arm and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, exposing his forearms. My knees might’ve wobbled. Just a bit.
I approached him and wrapped one hand around his tie while using the other to flip the closed sign and lock the door. Pulling the tie tight, I brought him down for a kiss, in front of my shop windows where anyone walking by could see. I didn’t care at the moment, though. It had been a long day and I missed him. I was going to let it be that simple.
