It Starts with Us (It Ends with Us #2)(21)

“What do you enjoy the most about your job?”

She’s full of questions tonight. I give her a sidelong glance and smile. “Reading the reviews.”

She makes a noise like she’s shocked. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Did you say reviews? You read your restaurant reviews?”

“Every single one.”

“What? Oh my God, you must not have a single insecurity. I make Serena run our social media so I can avoid reviews.”

“Your reviews are great.”

She practically turns her entire body toward me in the seat. “You read my reviews?”

“I read reviews for anyone I know who owns a business. Is that weird?”

“It’s not not weird.”

I flip on my blinker. “I like reading reviews. I feel like business reviews are a reflection of the owner, and I want to know what people think of my restaurants. The constructive criticism helps. I haven’t had the kitchen experience a lot of chefs have, and critics are some of the best teachers.”

“What do you get out of reading reviews about other people’s businesses?”

“Nothing, really. I just find it entertaining.”

“Do I have any bad ones?” Lily looks away from me, half turning so that she’s facing forward again. “Never mind, don’t answer that. I’m just going to pretend they’re all good and that everyone loves my flowers.”

“Everyone does love your flowers.”

She presses her lips together in an attempt to suppress her smile. “What’s your least-favorite part of your job?”

I love that she’s asking me such random questions. It reminds me of all the nights we would stay up late, and she would pepper me with questions about myself. “Up until last week, it was health inspections,” I admit. “They’re extremely stressful.”

“Why up until last week? What changed?”

“The vandalism.”

“Did it happen again?”

“Yeah, twice this week.”

“And you still have no idea who it is?”

I shake my head. “No clue.”

“Do you have any angry ex-girlfriends?”

“Nah, I doubt it. They don’t seem the type.”

Lily kicks off her heels and pulls one of her legs into her seat, making herself more comfortable. “How many serious relationships have you had?”

She’s going there. Okay. “Define ‘serious.’?”

“I don’t know. More than two months?”

“One,” I say.

“How long were you together?”

“A little more than a year. I met her while I was in the military.”

“Why’d you break up?”

“We moved in together.”

“That’s why you broke up?”

“I think living together escalated the realization that we were incompatible. Or maybe we were just at different points in our lives. I was focused on my career, and her focus was on which outfits to wear to the clubs I was too tired to go to with her. When I got out of the military and moved back to Boston, she stayed behind and moved into a loft with two of her friends.”

Lily laughs. “I cannot picture you in a club.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m single, I guess.” My phone rings with an incoming call from Corrigan’s, interrupting us before I’m able to throw her own question back at her. “I have to take this,” I say.

“Go ahead.”

I answer the call over Bluetooth. It ends up being a freezer issue that requires me to make two more phone calls before I’ve got it sorted out and a repair technician on the way there. When I’m finally able to give my attention back to Lily, I glance over at her and find her asleep, her head limp against her shoulder. I hear a dainty snore coming from her.

The coffee never kicked in, I guess.

I let her sleep all the way to the restaurant. We pull in about ten minutes to seven. It’s dark, and the restaurant looks crowded, but we have a few minutes before I have to check in for our reservation, so I let her rest.

Her snore is as endearing as she is. It’s delicate, almost too light to hear. I take a quick video I can use to tease her with later, and then I reach into the backseat and grab her journal. I know she said not to read it in front of her, but technically I’m not. She’s asleep.

I open it to the first page and begin reading.

I read the first entry, completely captivated. I feel like I’m breaking a rule reading this, but she’s the one who brought it.

I read the second entry. Then the third. Then I log into my reservation app and cancel our reservation because unless I wake her up this very second, we’re going to be late. I’d rather our table go to someone else, because Lily looks like she’s been needing this sleep for a while.

And I want to read another entry. I’ll take her somewhere else for dinner once she wakes up.

Every word she wrote is taking me right back to when we were teenagers. There are so many times I want to laugh at the things she says and how she says them, but I stifle my laughter so that I don’t startle her.

I eventually read a passage that I’m almost positive is leading up to our first kiss. I look at the clock and we’ve already been sitting here for half an hour, but Lily is still sound asleep, and I can’t stop in the middle of this entry. I keep reading, hoping she stays asleep long enough for me to get to the end of this one.