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“Love you!” I shouted as the door closed behind him.
Owning the building meant I got to make the apartment above the bar mine, so I cashed the final patron out, locked the place up, and was home in no time. I’d thought about hitting up a club and dragging someone back to my bed, but for once I was determined to get to sleep on my own. It happened rather quickly once I gave myself permission to imagine oceans and daisies and nights in front of a fire. When I gave myself permission to mourn the fact that the person I most wanted to share my success with that night, hadn’t been there.
Chapter 31
Franklin
He’d named his bar The Daisy.I stood back on the curb, choking on my admiration of him as I reread the two words scrawled across the black awning in white block letters. It was simple, like its owner, yet said so much.
Inside, business was slow, but it was early. With no sign of Leland, Cole, or Jasper, I took the opportunity to explore the place. My exploration ended at a locked door in the back. This was supposed to be an art-bar, but so far all I’d seen was…bar.
“What are you doing here, Franky?”
I pivoted toward the voice that kept me up at night. Leland waited for an answer just outside the kitchen, hints of it revealed by the swinging door still flapping back and forth.God.He was even more gorgeous now than when I’d last seen him a week ago at Cole’s place. Golden brown eyes, framed by thick lashes, glistening under the sun rays bursting in through the windows.
“I’m meeting Cole and Jasper here to go over wedding details with you. They’re probably stuck in traffic, or they would’ve been here by now.” I scrunched my brows together, peering outside. Cole’s text had said to be there by noon, and I’d purposely arrived late to ensure I didn’t arrive first. I went as far as walking there from home instead of riding the train, which added an extra forty-minutes to my commute.
Of course Iwantedto be the first one here. I’d have given anything for a moment alone with Leland, for a chance to simply talk to him, or listen to him rage at me, or suffer through his ignoring me. But what he needed from me overrode what I wanted from him, even if what he needed wasn’t me.
Leland pulled his phone from his back pocket at the same time I opened my text conversation with Cole.
“Oh,” I said, feeling foolish.
“Yeah, you’re a day early,” he confirmed.
“Right,” I said.What now, Franklin?“Mind if I stay for a drink?”
“You’ve got your pick of high-end bars on the upper east side. Why slum it down here at my crummy bar?”
“You know where I live?”
“Cole may have mentioned it.” The long column of his neck reddened. A tell that he wasn’t being completely honest. Had he looked me up? My heart raced at the thought, and I silently warned it not to get ahead of itself.
“What can I say? I like obscurity.” I shrugged, sinking my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “And this place is far from crummy. It’s…” I scanned the rustic bar again with its understated style. “It’s you.”
“You? Obscure?” Leland snorted, ignoring my last comment—and its implication that I knew him. I took his heading around the bar as a good sign, though. “The thing is, you stick out like a sore thumb, Franky.” He turned to pass through the raised counter flap, putting the bar top between us.
“Thank you, I think?” I said, straddling one of the stools and setting my baseball cap next to me. I combed my fingers through my flattened hair.
He chuckled at my confusion. The sound was light, carefree, and at odds with the heaviness that normally surrounded us. “That was definitely not a compliment,” he said.
The corners of my mouth tipped up. I missed the way he used to give me a hard time. My smile seemed to trigger his anger, because his lips thinned and he whirled away from me to grab a beer glass.
“Stella?” he asked, already tugging the lever on the tap before I could confirm.
“You know me well,” I said, my mouth working before my brain.
“Do I?” he asked, setting my drink on top of a bar napkin. “Because one word comes to mind when I think of you, Franky. Whiplash.”
I walked right into that one. “Leland—”
“Don’t tell me that I know you. It’s insulting.” The door opened, and a young couple strolled in holding hands. I’d forgotten where we were. Hadn’t even noticed when the man sitting at the other end of the bar when I’d arrived had left.
Leland hustled down to pick up the cash he’d left behind, then made small talk with the newcomers before making their drinks. The woman asked him a question I couldn’t hear, and Leland smiled, pointing past me to the jukebox in the back. With nothing left to do, he hesitantly returned to me.
“I thought you wanted to open an art-bar,” I said, steering the conversation to what I hoped was lighter territory. Granted, I’d never gotten much from him personally about the art-bar, but the name had given some indication to what he’d wanted this place to encompass, and with not one bit of art in sight, I knew this wasn’t it.
“That was another time, Franky. A lot has changed since then.” His words were loaded, and I sighed. Seemed there was no getting anywhere with him. Any direction I took, whether it was being upfront about my feelings, apologizing to no end, beating around the bush, giving him his space…none of it mattered or got me anywhere.
