One True Loves(57)

I laugh and I can feel myself blushing. “I missed you, too.”

“You did?” he says, as if this is news, as if he wasn’t sure.

“Wait, are you kidding?”

“I don’t know,” he says. His voice is teasing. “It’s hard to know what happened while I was gone.”

“I was more heartbroken than I’ve ever been or I think I will ever be again.”

He looks at me, and then out the windshield, and then out the window on the other side of him.

“We have so much to talk about and I don’t even know where to start,” he says.

“I know, but even if we did know where to start, I can’t now. I have to go to work. I should have been there fifteen minutes ago.” Tina won’t be in until the afternoon. If I’m not there, the store doesn’t open.

“Emma,” he says, looking at me like I’m a fool. “You’re not going to be at work on time, that’s clear. So what’s a few more minutes? What’s an hour more?”

I look at him and find myself considering it. And then I feel his lips on mine. They are just as bold and surprising as they were almost fifteen years ago, kissing me for the first time.

I close my eyes and reach for him. I kiss him again. And again and again and again. I am soothed and invigorated all at once. Never before has something felt so exciting and yet so familiar.

I lose myself in him, in the way he feels, the way he smells, the way he moves.

Can you ever put things back the way they were? Can you chalk the intervening years up as a mistake and pick up as if you never left each other?

I feel Jesse’s hand slide down my arm and then I hear myself accidentally hit the horn with my elbow.

I snap out of it. I pull myself away from him and look forward, out the windshield. Two of the servers at Julie’s Place, including the woman who waited on us, are staring at us through the window. When they see that I see them, they start to turn away.

I look down at my phone. It’s almost a quarter of ten. The store is supposed to be open in less than twenty minutes.

“I have to go!” I say, shocked that I could be running this late.

“OK, OK,” Jesse says, but he doesn’t move.

“Get out of my car,” I say, laughing.

“OK,” he says, putting his hand on the door handle. “There’s just one thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Jesse! I have to go!”

“Come to Maine with me,” he says as he gets out of the car.

“What?”

“Come to my family’s cabin in Maine with me for a few days. We can leave tonight. Just the two of us.”

“I have a store to run.”

“Your parents can manage it. For a little while. It’s their store.”

“It’s my store,” I say.

“Emma, we need time. And not stolen moments before you go to work. Real time. Please.”

I look at him, considering.

He knows I’m considering it. Which is why he already starts smiling. “Is that a yes?” he says.

I know my parents will step in and I’m late and I don’t have time for this.

“OK, a couple of days.”

“Three,” he says. “Three days.”

“OK,” I tell him. “Three.”

“We’ll leave tonight?”

“Sure. Now I have to go!”

Jesse smiles at me and then shuts the door behind him so I can finally leave. He waves at me through the window. I find myself grinning as I drive away from him, leaving him there in the parking lot.

I make my way to the road and wait for a clear opening to take a left. I watch as Jesse gestures for me to roll down my window from the other side of the lot. I roll my eyes but I do it.

He cups his hands over his mouth and yells, “I’m sorry I made you late! I love you!”

I have no choice but to scream, “I love you, too!”

I bang a left onto the main road and fly through town. I get to the parking lot of Blair Books at ten eleven and I can already see there is a customer waiting at the door.

I jump out of the car, open the back door, and run through the store turning on all the lights.

I gather myself and calmly walk to the front door and unlock it.

“Hi,” I say to the woman waiting.

“Your store says that you’re open from ten to seven. It’s ten fifteen.”

“My apologies,” I say.

But when the woman heads right to the bestseller section and is no longer in my line of sight, I can’t stop a smile from erupting, pulling my cheeks as wide as my ears.

Jesse.





My dad comes into the store around eleven. He is here to grab some books that he ordered for my mom, but I pull him aside to discuss the idea of my leaving for Maine.

“What do you mean you’re going to Maine with Jesse?”

“Uh . . .” I say, unsure which part my dad is confused about. “I think I mean that I am going to Maine with Jesse?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

That is such a stupid thing to say. There are about twenty thousand reasons why it might not be.

“Emma, I just . . .” He stops there and doesn’t finish his sentence. I see him rethink his entire train of thought. “I read you loud and clear. Of course Mom and I can cover. We’d love to, actually. I’m bored stiff at home now that I have finished watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights.”