By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(45)

Finally, she forced herself to get up. She had to go down to the kitchen, get coffee, pretend everything was normal. Except she and Beau had decided to work in the library this morning. Oh no.

She gave herself a stern talking-to once she got in the shower.

“Look, Isabelle. It’s normal that you feel like you’re getting close to Beau—you’re living in the same house with him, you’re working closely together, you even eat dinner together. But he’s obviously not interested in you, you’re not at all his type, you know that! He dates models and actresses, remember? He’s not your type EITHER! You, unlike Priya, do not like big, brawny guys! It’s just that he’s the only man you’ve really interacted with in person for weeks, and your silly brain has latched on to him! You need to take a step back from all this! From him!”

“Are you sure about that, sweetheart?” she heard a tiny voice from the bathtub say as she turned off the shower.

“Yes, I’m sure!” she snapped. Oh no. She was talking to inanimate objects again. She had to stop that.

When she finally got down to the kitchen, Beau was there, sitting at the kitchen table with coffee and…

“Ooh, are those cinnamon rolls?” she asked.

He grinned at her and gestured to the top of the stove. “There are more over there. They might need more frosting, though.”

She looked at the pan on top of the stove, at the buns slathered in frosting, and laughed. “I’m not sure if that’s possible.”

He looked at her, and their eyes met. They both smiled.

“I was a frosting fiend when I was a kid. My mom used to tell a story—I don’t remember this, but it sounds like me—that one year for my birthday, she gave other people cake and just put a huge scoop of frosting on my plate.”

Izzy felt so relieved, she couldn’t hold back her smile. She was glad she had the excuse to put a cinnamon roll on a plate so she could turn away from Beau. She was just happy everything felt…normal between them.

“Want to take these to the library?” he asked. “If so, I’ll grab another one.”

She nodded.

“And I’ll grab the wipes. We can’t get frosting on the books, after all.”

They worked together like normal that day, though Izzy tried her best to remember the lecture she’d given herself, and not let herself get too close to Beau. Or think about him too much.

On Sunday, their work time in the library started like it always did. Izzy pushed Beau’s notebook across the table to him, he opened it, wrote for a while, then typed, and kept typing until the timer went off. Afterward, though, Beau did something different.

“Izzy,” he started. And then stopped and looked down at the table.

“Yeah?” she asked. Was something wrong? He looked nervous.

“I. Um.” He took a deep breath. “Can you…Would you like to read something? I mean, some of”—he gestured to his laptop—“this? If you don’t want to, it’s okay.”

Izzy tried not to react. Beau was clearly stressed about asking her to read his work; she didn’t want to make it into an even bigger deal. But inside, her mind was one big exclamation point.

“I’d be happy to,” she said.

He nodded quickly. “How about, um, right now? Because if I don’t show you right now, I might lose my courage here, so…”

Izzy tried to smile as encouragingly as possible. “Right now is great.”

Beau brought her his laptop and then sat back down in his chair. “Okay. Um, just that part. The part that starts with ‘This house.’ It’s rough, and it needs a lot more work, obviously, but I think it’s time to see if I’m on the right track or not, and if not, what to do, or…something.”

Izzy wanted to reassure him, but she knew that wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed actual feedback.

“Sounds good,” she said, and started to read.

This house has always been a refuge for me.



Beau jumped up when she was only one sentence in.

“I can’t sit here while you read that. I’m going outside, okay?”

He raced out of the library before she could say anything. Izzy looked after him for a few seconds. Then she turned back to the screen.

This house has always been a refuge for me. When I was little, I would come here, sometimes with both of my parents, sometimes just with my mother, to visit my grandparents. There was so much to explore in the house and the gardens, it was like I found something new to see, to experience, to play with, every time. New corners, hiding places, flowers, books. It always felt like there was a little bit of magic here.

The best times were when I got to spend weekends here with my grandparents alone. They would let me roam free, occasionally coming outside to bring me more snacks or call me in for meals, sometimes just yelling my name to make sure I answered. My grandmother was always in the kitchen, baking something delicious, so I would usually stumble inside, clothes torn and dirt on my face, and sit at the kitchen table, and she would set a stack of cookies in front of me with a smile.

My grandfather was always in the library. I spent hours there with him. He had shelves of children’s books in the corner, just for me. He never told me when he’d added a new book to the shelves, but I would just check every time I came in, and there was almost always something new there, something I would grab, along with an old favorite or two, on my way into the room. My grandfather would nod at me, and I would nod back at him, and I would feel very grown up. I would curl up in the window seat and sit there in the corner for hours, as he sat at the long table, or in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, working or reading.