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I took the dishes out of the bag to find them filled with cookies. That boiling blood of anguish that Cole filled me with? Alex quickly brought it down to a calm, rolling simmer.
Upon closer inspection of the dishes, I noticed inscriptions circling their base. The first one said “I’m sorry for” and the second read “Being a dick”. I let out a soft chuckle. The self-awareness of the whole situation was rather endearing.
“One dish for water, the other for food,” he explained. “I figured they were better as a pair.”
“You really made these?”
“Well, I tried. Pottery is hard and messy. Pat did most of the work, but that is my handwriting.”
“Why did you do this?”
He absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not like you,” he confessed. “Like you said, I’m the black cat, and you’re the golden retriever. You see people as innocent until proven guilty. I see them as guilty until proven innocent. You see the light. I see the dark. We’re different.”
“Yes,” I agreed, leaning against the doorframe. “We are.”
“But that doesn’t mean my ways are right. You were never guilty, and I treated you as if you were. I’ve been a bit darker than normal lately, and I owed you a real apology.”
“Thank you, Alex,” my voice barely audible, as those former dragons in my stomach fell into a slumber. “That’s actually very sweet.”
He gave a slight nod.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, “For my rude remarks I spat back to you before last night.”
“Don’t apologize for that. I like the fact that you stood chest to chest with me. It reminded me that even golden retrievers still know how to bite. I just hope you bite back to some of the other pricks in town, too.”
With that, he disappeared down the hallway, taking the staircase to his apartment. I stood there for a while, staring in the direction he’d wandered before walking into my apartment and taking a bite of his chocolate chip cookie.
“Ohmygosh!” I moaned, taken away into pure bliss from the taste of his cookies. What in the world was that burst of flavor that erupted within my mouth?
Five out of five stars.
Highly recommend.
If I could give a million stars, I would.
CHAPTER 18
Alex
Todd
Where are we at on that property, Alex?
Each day before work, I found myself reading more and more of Teresa’s diary entries.
I walked the streets of Honey Creek with her diary in my grip, reading about the places she spoke of. Seeing the places she spoke of. Sitting on the benches where she sat. Eating the foods she picked up years ago.
It was as if I were walking through her time capsule. I envisioned her walking beside me on the sidewalks, telling me in detail the stories of her youth. She danced down these streets with Peter. She cried in those alleyways with him, too. They’d spend hours in the library, reading to one another in whispers, in different languages.
They had their second kiss beneath the clock tower. They’d first held hands outside of the ice cream parlor. He told her he loved her in the middle of the high school football field. Her father told her they were going back to Madrid in those same football bleachers.
She cried for two weeks straight from that news.
She nannied a ten-year-old girl named Ana, who had a firecracker personality. Those were the main two people Teresa talked about—Ana and Peter. I could tell they were the sparks of light in her life at that time. The two people who kept her going.
She hated Peter’s parents because they didn’t approve of her for their son.
Assholes.
“It must be a good read,” a person mentioned as I traveled through the farmer’s market with my nose in the diary.
I looked up to find Yara standing there with a tote of vegetables. Her smile left me feeling as if I’d missed a step, throwing me completely off balance. Her smiles often left me disoriented.
“A good read?” I questioned, my brain still fumbling over how to exist around her since the shift of our interactions.
She gestured toward the diary in my hand. “You seemed as if you were in your own world, that’s all.”
She straightened her hair that day.
I liked it.
I liked her curls, too.
“Oh.” I shut the diary and tucked it under my arm. “Yes.”
She looked to my other hand and saw the bundle of flowers I’d bought. Teresa wrote that Peter would buy her favorite flowers from Ruth’s Floral Shop every Sunday morning. Since I’d read that, I’d been going out each Sunday and picking up a bundle of tulips.
“For a special someone?” she questioned, looking at the flowers.
“What? No. I, uh,” I shook my head. “They’re for me.”
“Oh, nice. I, too, treat myself to flowers every Sunday. I’m more of a dahlia and peonies girl myself, but tulips are always a good choice.”
