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The headlights illuminated the front entrance, just long enough for Lucas to make his way around the vehicle to the door of the old gas station.
The air was damp and sticky, as Birdie watched him rifle through his front pockets and extract a rounder of individually marked keys. How insanely organized of him.
“You have keys to this place?”
He inserted it into the door. “Frank used to own it. About a year after you left town, he retired and moved to Fort Lauderdale.”
“Is this how we’re always going to establish the passing of time? BBST and ABST?”
Lucas raised one eyebrow.
“Before Birdie Skipped Town and After Birdie Skipped Town?”
Ignoring her comment he continued, turning the key and toggling it. “After ten years of watching it sit vacant and listening to members of the community complain about vagrants moving in, I purchased the property. It was an eyesore and I wanted to fix it up. Rent it out. Others would have jumped on it but they learned quickly that it’s not cheap to remove underground gas tanks, which runs about twenty to thirty grand. I’ve got the money set aside. Now I’m just trying to decide what to do with it.”
Birdie’s fine-tuned business radar lit up as she thought about the commercial value of the property, more so than the building, being so close to both the downtown area and coastal waters.
The land alone would be a gold mine if managed and developed properly.
She impatiently watched those capable strong hands as he unlocked the front door. With a rush of excitement, she pushed on the aluminum door handle, grinning at the reminiscent sound of tinkling bells.
Birdie found the contents surprisingly clean as they stood in what had once been the sales and office area of Folsom’s Service Station.
The faint smell of petroleum drifted in from the large metal door to her right, which was left ajar. A door that led, if memory served, to the two service bays with their respective roll-down overhead doors.
She poked her head through the crack of the open door to check out the other side of the building. Again, the service area was almost as clean as the counter sales section of the old station.
Birdie closed the door all the way, making sure it was secured and turned back to Lucas, who was leaning with one elbow on the counter, appearing amused while watching her check out one of their old haunts.
God, he was beautiful.
It really was ridiculous how sexy he was. With his scrupulous good looks and despite his Dudley Do-Right persona.
Or maybe because of it.
Either way, it was a crime that so many years later he still looked like a centerfold inGQmagazine, wearing a white button-down shirt, with the sleeves rolled up past his forearms, and a pair of casual jeans that highlighted certain assets.
He had reminded Birdie of the soccer player everyone raved about and was known for random acts of kindness on Instagram. She had followed him to keep herself from cyber-stalking the man she really wanted to keep track of.
Tall, dark, and handsome. How cliché.
His clothes weren’t terribly expensive but fit like a glove, and his dark hair was perfectly styled. In the past, or BBST, he walked around with his hair sticking up everywhere after running his fingers through it in frustration. Unruly hair, a common occurrence when they were younger and still talking, or rather, arguing with one another.
Of course, Birdie knew that shoes made the outfit, and if he had chosen the wrong pair, then she could go to bed that night knowing he wasn’t picture perfect.
Flawed even.
At first glance, and maybe second and third, he was good and kind. The type of man who showed up at bingo night to celebrate an elderly woman’s eightieth birthday.
What were the chances he harbored poor taste in footwear?
Birdie closed her eyes, silently praying he wore camo-print Crocs or a pair of man-clogs. Or, maybe, those slip-on sandals some men thought they could wear both in a fungus infested public shower and then later at a location for fine dining.
Maybe then, he’d be less intoxicating, less intimidating.
Check out the feet already.
It was absurd that what stood between getting a good night’s sleep or tossing and turning, fantasizing, about the man looking at her with a look she couldn’t decipher, were the shoes he chose to wear that evening.
