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“You got this girl,” Marley exclaims as she hands over a travel mug with coffee, just the way I like it.
“Thanks,” I reply as I grab the drink and take a sip, the flavor bursting on my tongue. The concoctions that she comes up with may sound crazy, but the taste is amaze balls. “What do you call this?”
She has crazy names for her crazy drinks. When I asked her about her concoctions, she says she got creative at the coffee shop where she worked at when she was in college.
“I got the job!” she shouts as she bounces in place and waves her hands above her head.
“Don’t jinx me,” I utter while rolling my eyes at her quirkiness. I’m already nervous enough as it is because I’m heading for a job interview. Then add in the fact that I’m about to interview for said job with a man that I have silently crushed on for years. Between the interview and him, my stomach is a ball of nerves.
Him. Micah Reynolds. The man that I have compared every other male species to.
He’s not Micah to many people anymore, most town’s folk calling him Reaper. But some of the old-timers still call him by his given name, as well as his sisters.
I’ve known of Micah for years. It’s part of growing up in a small town. Everyone knew the Reynolds family. His dad and uncle ran the town hardware store and his mom was everyone’s favorite English teacher in middle school.
Everyone who walked the halls of XXX High School with Micah knew who he was. Any many of us girls harbored huge crushes on the football superstar. So I watched from afar, knowing that I was not like the bubbly, beautiful, confident girls that surrounded him.
I watched as the town rallied around him and his best friend, Connor James, as they left for the service. I watched as he came home after his parent’s death and became his sister’s guardians. I watched as he and the other men started their motorcycle club and helped to clean up our town. Because our once small town grew and grew when developers came a scooped up land to build houses, shopping centers and other business to take XXX from a rural area to the urban metropolis that our mayor envisioned.
But the last year has turned my crush into complete infatuation. When Marley started working as the receptionist at the vet clinic where I worked, she decided we had to be friends. I tried to avert it, but Marley doesn’t let things go that easily. She effortlessly captured me in her web, and I haven’t been able to escape yet.
Not that I would want to. Marley has helped me build confidence in myself that has surpassed what I ever hoped to do. She has been an influential person in my life this last year and I couldn’t have taken on the challenges I have faced without her.
Like Micah, I knew of Marley, but we didn’t run in the same circles and I was a grade above her. But when she returned to XXX from college, she wasn’t the person I thought she was. I’m ashamed to say I thought she was an entitled, self-righteous person, but she’s not.
So with my friendship with Marley, came more of Micah. The way he takes care of his sisters is amazing. And between the stories that Marley shares or the times I have seen it in person, make my heart melt.
“Earth to Bailey,” Marley calls from her perch on the kitchen counter.
“Sorry, got lost in my head.”
“No worries, girl. But you need to get going.” She hops down and grabs her phone and keys from the counter. “Call me afterwards,” she hollers as she heads out the front door.
“Okay,” I mumble as I grab my belongings to follow her out. She heads across the hall to her place as I lock up my apartment and wait for her when she comes back out and does the same.
We walk outside and she gives me one more good luck before we both get in our cars and head our separate ways.
* * *
Pulling up to the garage, I see one of the large doors open and a few men standing around talking, but their eyes follow me as I park towards the front door. With all eyes on me, I take a moment to get myself composed. Even in my car, behind the metal and slightly tinted windows, I feel exposed. Like every person can see my flaws, my insecurities.
Before I have a chance to turn off my car, there is a knock on my window. The sound loud and startling next to my ear.
“Ahh,” I sputter as I jump in my seat, my hands raising to shield me from the intrusion, as my cell slips through my fingers and falls to the passenger seat. I reach over and grab my cell and hold it close to my chest, clutching it like a lifeline when the shrill of ringing echoes through the car speakers.
The man outside forgotten, I look at the radio dashboard and see Marley calling. I press the phone button on the screen and her voice fills the car before I have a chance to speak.
“You got this girl. Get your butt out of the car and walk on up.”
“How do you know I’m sitting in my car?”
“Life 360,” she replies, and I can only shake my head that my friend would use something we put on our phones for safety as a way to give me one last pep talk before I walk in. “Now, from the looks of it, Micah is there too, so chop, chop.” She emphasizes with clapping her hands in line with the last words.
“He might be,” I answer as I peek over to my side window. “But there’s some other man at my door right now.”
“Roll your window down,” she demands.
“Ugh,” I moan, doing as she said.
