The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob(29)

She smiles, but it’s not the kind of smile you wear before you ask a celebrity for a selfie.

It’s the kind of smile you wear when you don’t trust the guy sniffing around your best friend. “I hope you’re not making Ingrid any promises you can’t keep. She and her kids have had enough of that for one lifetime.”

I don’t remember my own father. Tripp doesn’t either. We both knew Mom made sacrifices for us, but I’m realizing more every day how big those sacrifices were.

The thought of me being the person who disappoints Ingrid the same way my father disappointed my mother makes my gut tighten and sour. “I was one of those kids once.”

No free passes from Portia though. Her eyes narrow. “You were. And now you get everything your little heart desires, don’t you? Some people forget where they came from. I don’t care what your reputation says about you, if you’re playing some kind of sick game with Ingrid, I’ll make sure this entire town knows.”

“No games. I won’t hurt her.”

I’ve been threatened with having my nuts removed, with having naked pictures of me posted online, with having my food poisoned, and with eternal damnation, but the idea of losing my reputation in my hometown is one of the few threats that makes me uncomfortable.

Home is who I am. This place made me. It keeps me rooted.

Doesn’t it?

Or am I one more idiot who doesn’t realize how much he’s changed?

Ingrid’s helping an elderly lady in pink polyester pants and a Hot Mess Book Club sweatshirt to the stairs, both of them smiling while the customer chatters about picturing Cash Rivers as the lead vampire if they ever make the book into a movie.

They pass a small group of women, and every one of them interrupts to thank Ingrid for a great night out.

I needed this.

I’m so glad we can bring our own wine.

My husband has texted me six times to ask what to do since our son won’t stay in bed, and I’m like, welcome to my world, buddy.

Can you send out that work excuse note for staying up all night reading to the newsletter list again? My kid got on my computer and now I can’t find the folder where I stored the last one.

Portia’s still watching me, and it’s dawning on me that I haven’t changed.

I’m still the same idiot who has no idea how much my mom—and all the neighborhood parents—did for me while I was growing up.

How much she probably needed a break.

How hard it must’ve been when Bro Code went viral on YouTube and all five of us left the neighborhood to see the world.

I make sure she’s taken care of now, but it’s never a sacrifice. I can afford to pamper her. Spa days. Vacations. The latest phones every year.

But I’m still not around often. I call her at weird times.

And I take for granted that she’s cool with that, because she’s my mom.

Yeah.

I’m an idiot.

In so many ways.





Ten





Ingrid



Levi’s still here.

Everyone else has departed the store, including Portia, who gave me a quick hug and whispered a girl, be careful, he looks deadly for the heart before taking off. Giselle is making a show of checking that the front door’s locked, and I’m sinking into one of the easy chairs at the coffee bar.

Levi hands me the last cookie off the tray. “This one has your name all over it.”

I should head up and relieve my babysitter, but there’s a hot guy who looks like he’d be willing to rub my feet if I play my cards right, and I technically told the sitter I wouldn’t be back until ten. “Thank you. I’m always super hyped up but extra tired after book club night.”

He grins as he takes the seat next to me, his leg barely an inch from mine. “I know that feeling well.”

“Did you know your friends would be here tonight?”

“Nah. Sarah’s basically family, but we don’t compare schedules. She comes with Mackenzie, who married Brooks Elliott a few weeks ago, but I didn’t know all the connections through the baseball team to Nora Dawn.”

“I adore Nora.” I stifle a yawn. “She came in here over the summer, not long after she moved to the city, looking for other books a few times before I realized who she was. I’m glad she has good friends too.”

And I don’t think he’s here to talk about Nora Dawn’s friends.

I bite into the cookie, and half of it crumbles and falls to the floor, but not before bouncing off my chest and dropping crumbs into my bra under my shirt. “I meant to do that,” I say around a mouthful of cookie.

“Three second rule.” He snags it and pops it in his mouth before I can warn him of some of the things Hudson’s done on that rug.

“Oh my god, don’t eat that. Not off the floor!” I do clean it regularly, but it’s not like I can have it shampooed daily.

“The thing about being eighteen when you leave home to tour the world is that you eat and drink a bunch of really stupid things,” he says, also around a mouthful of cookie, which makes me feel infinitely better about my own lack of manners. He pats his abs. “Stomach of a goat now.”

He’s so flipping adorable, comfortable as if he’s just as at home in my grandparents’ renovated bookstore as he would’ve been in his condo here or his penthouse in New York, and he’s here, and he wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t into me, and I haven’t done something frivolous and just for me in so long that I suddenly can’t fight the overwhelming urge that comes over me to kiss him.