Maybe This Time(2)

“This, Sophie. This.” She smiled, then pulled out a hair tie. “Do you need anything?”

I surveyed the selection—earrings, nail polish, Q-tips, Band-Aids, lip gloss—all in their own little spaces. It was the perfect representation of how Micah liked to live her life, everything in its proper place. “I’m good.” I nodded back toward the van. “I’m supposed to be getting gift bags.”

“Is that why you were sketching?”

“I was not sketching!” I cleared my throat. “I was looking at something I’d sketched earlier.”

“Uh-huh.” She shut her trunk and we walked back to the flower van together. “How did your date with Kyle go last night, by the way?”

My stomach flipped at the mention of Kyle. “Not great,” I admitted. “Gunnar hid in the back seat of Kyle’s car as we were driving off to get dinner, and he jumped out after five minutes to scare us.” I frowned, remembering my little brother’s antics. “Kyle nearly wrecked his brand-new Mustang. And then he talked about nothing else the rest of the night.”

Micah cringed. “First dates are always weird. You need to give him a second chance.”

“I don’t know that he’ll give me a second chance.” I sighed. “My brother nearly ruined his baby. Or so I heard … all night.” I scanned the back of the van again and finally spotted a couple of cardboard boxes behind the passenger seat.

“I would give you another chance,” Micah said. “Besides, Gunnar is adorable.”

That reminded me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent my brother a text: Is your homework done?

Yes. Wanna see a spider? I found a spider under the cupboard.

Yuck. No.

“So that’s it?” Micah asked.

“What?” I turned toward her. She was giving me her impatient eyes.

“You’re done with Kyle after one date? You can’t be done. I gave you a compatibility quiz. He was your match.” After Kyle had asked me out last week, Micah had made me take some online quiz she’d found and we’d laughed over every question.

I rolled my eyes. “Really? You’re going to claim that as gospel now?”

“Whatever it takes.” Micah thought I had a habit of not giving guys a chance. She wasn’t wrong. But Kyle was different. I’d been crushing on him for a couple of months now. So despite having to sit through his detailed descriptions of what a V8, 435-horsepower engine could do, I was willing to agree with her that first dates could be aberrations.

“Fine, one more date.”

She smiled. “Good. Will he be here tonight?”

“Could you see his band playing at this thing? The old people would riot.”

“I meant with his grandma. Doesn’t his grandma live here at Willow Falls now?”

“Does she? She wasn’t at last year’s event. But maybe. I can tell you who doesn’t live here: his car. I know everything about his car.”

“I got that.” Micah tugged on the hair tie to make sure the curly bun on top of her head was secure. “Okay. Better get back to work, love.”

She kissed the air by my cheek, then headed toward the building. I walked around to the side door of the van and slid it open.

“Oh!” Micah turned and walked backward for a few steps. “I have to tell you something later! Something really big!”

“What do you need to tell … ?” Before I finished my question, she was through the door and it swung shut behind her.

Something big? Good big or bad big? Why did she do that to me? She knew I couldn’t sit with information like that.





I slid Caroline’s boxes full of gift bags toward me. Unassembled gift bags. Great. I now knew what I’d be spending most of my night doing. I stacked one box on top of the other and carried them back inside.

I made it halfway down the hall when I heard a voice call out from behind me.

“Excuse me?”

I turned. A guy around my age, dressed in fitted jeans, a pastel collared shirt, and a tailored sport jacket stood there, a smile on his handsome face. He clearly wasn’t from around here. He was citified.

I offered him a polite smile, hoping this wouldn’t take long. “The event doesn’t start for fifteen minutes,” I said. “But you’re welcome to wait in the lobby. Families are already gathering there.”

I knew every school-aged kid in my town (and most of their living and dead relatives). So this guy had to be here visiting for the event. I tried to place him with a grandparent in my head—Betty or Carl or Leo or …

“You’re not from around here,” he said, as if voicing my thoughts.

I shifted the boxes in my arms. They weren’t heavy but they were bulky. “What?”

“You’re not from Rockside,” he said.

“I am, actually. Born and raised.”

“Ah. There it is. I didn’t hear your Southern accent at first.”

I straightened with a bit of pride. I worked very hard on making my accent as minimal as possible so that when I went away to college I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

The guy took several steps forward and pulled his hand out from behind his back to reveal he’d been holding a pink tulip. “Something beautiful for someone beautiful.”