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Noah casually led them to the room where the silent auction was going on. Tables lined the entire periphery of the room, with gifts and other goodies piled high. In front of each lot was a code they could scan with their phone that would take them to a website where they could punch in their offer.
Eleanor put her hands behind her back as she perused some of the offerings.
Her eye caught on a figure dressed in black, tall and confident, and she peered through the crowd to try to see him again.
She was pretty sure it was Franklin. She wanted to wish him well. Wanted to tell him that she hoped his evening was amazing and his whole gala was a success. Wanted him to know that she supported him, no matter what.
“He’s over there. I just texted him, and he’s making his way this way,” Noah said as he and Sunday, who had browsed in the opposite direction, met Eleanor on the other side of the room.
Somehow his words made a big lump of nervousness explode in her stomach. It dripped down, coating her entire insides, until she wanted to put both hands over her stomach to try to ease the uncomfortable sensation.
That was silly. The man she was going to talk to was the same man who helped her deliver a kitten, made a fire, and snuggled under the blankets to keep warm and not freeze to death. He was the exact same man.
He was also the man who had asked her to go with him and then changed his mind and made an awkward phone call to her where he basically asked her to back out so he could take someone else when the someone else he preferred above her was able to do it instead.
She tried not to think of that. It wasn’t a date. It was just him doing his auction and trying to make it as successful as possible. And she was just being the best friend she could.
Why was she trying to be such a good friend to someone who hadn’t been a good friend to her? She knew that was a question the rest of the world would ask. After all, wasn’t the point of friendship to have someone who had your back and whom you could trust? Obviously, Franklin didn’t have her back since he’d all but ditched her as soon as someone who would serve him better came along.
But...wasn’t that what being a Christian was all about? She wasn’t supposed to worry about the way she was treated. Instead, she was to love with the kind of love Jesus showed to his disciples. Jesus’s disciples hadn’t treated Jesus well at all—they’d deserted him in his time of greatest need, but he’d loved them anyway.
And that’s the kind of love Jesus modeled because that’s the kind of love he wanted his followers to show. To give the kind of love that didn’t ask for anything in return.
She kept her hands behind her back and strolled on down the table, looking at all of the amazing things being offered at the silent auction. There was a cruise to the Bahamas and another one to Alaska. There were dresses and boots, packages of perfumes which she assumed were expensive, and even a week at a condo in Italy.
High-end type gifts that she would never even dream of. If she had donated something to the auction, it would have been something small, like a free dog grooming for one pet or something like that.
But these, these were huge.
It made her feel like even though she had wanted to think of herself as one of Franklin’s friends, she really wasn’t on the same playing field as he was at all. The stuff was so...extra. So much beyond what she thought of in her little world.
Chapter 18
“Hey there.”
Eleanor recognized Franklin’s voice right away, and it sent some kind of friction of something that felt a lot like alarm wrapped in velvet down her backbone.
