22
" The bell over the front door chimed, and I caught my breath as Simon walked in. After all this time, we hadn’t interacted much outside of Faire. (Unless you counted one pretty significant interaction in his bedroom the night before last. I for one counted the hell out of it.) He looked like a strange amalgamation of his identities: the crisply ironed shirt and immaculate jeans of Simon Graham, but with the longer hair and face-framing beard of Captain Blackthorne. The juxtaposition was . . . well, I squirmed a little and fought the urge to hop the counter and wrinkle that shirt in the best possible way.
Simon stopped short inside the doorway when he saw me, and Chris nudged me with her shoulder. “Now, I know for a fact you can handle him.” While my face flamed with mortification and Simon’s eyebrows knit in confusion, she snickered at her own joke and walked out of the store with a wave. Simon held the door for her, then turned back to me.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” I dropped my head to the counter and let the cool glass soothe my forehead. “God, it’s like working for my mother.”
“What was that about?”
I shook my head as I stood back up. “She knows.
Apparently, the whole town does.”
“Knows?” After a beat his expression cleared and his eyes widened. “About us?”
“Yeah.” I bit the inside of my cheek and waited for his reaction.
“Huh.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction Chris had gone, as if he could still see her. “Well, if Chris knows, that’s as good as taking an ad out in the paper.” He tilted his head, thinking. “Do people still do that?”
“Do what?”
“Take ads out in the paper. Do people still even read the paper?”
“I . . . I guess?” I was a little confused by the direction the conversation had gone, but now that he mentioned it I was curious too. “I mean, my mother does. The Sunday paper has coupons, you know.” Coupons that she still clipped and sent once a week to April and me, inside greeting cards where the coupons fell out like oversized confetti when we opened them.
He considered that. “Seems like a dying thing, though. So will the idiom change? Should we start saying things like ‘posting it online’?”
“‘Create a banner ad’?” I suggested, leaning my elbows on the counter.
“See, I like that better.” He mirrored my pose and he was
close, so close to me that my heart pounded. I was no match for his smile. “Close to the original idiom, and it implies the same thing—spending money to make an announcement.”
I allowed myself a second to be lost in his smile before I laughed. “Good God. Once an English teacher, always an English teacher. "
― Jen DeLuca , Well Met (Well Met, #1)
26
" What are those people doing there? Of course April had to notice and ask me about it. I sighed inwardly. It wasn't her fault; I'd never told her about this part of my time at Faire. So I forced a smile and a casual tone of voice.
"Oh, it's this mushy thing, it's for couples, no big deal."
"It looks cute. Let's go see."
"April, no." But she would not be deterred. She hooked a hand around my elbow and practically dragged me over there. "No," I said again, squirming in a pathetic attempt to get away. "Why do you want to see happy couples? I'm still in the ice cream and brownies and booze phase of my breakup, you know. This could set me back weeks."
"Ah, the holy trinity of heartache." She grinned at me over her shoulder. "Shut up and come on. "
― Jen DeLuca , Well Met (Well Met, #1)
29
" Seriously, Em, go back to bed. There’s no reason for you to be up at this hour. Especially since you were out so late last night.”
“Ugh.” My head thudded to the table. Ow. “Don’t remind me. Mistakes were made.” Mistakes of the multiple-tequila-shots variety. I wasn’t a tequila girl, but Mitch could be very persuasive. That boy was something like ninety-eight percent muscle; he could drink. I shouldn’t have even tried to keep up, but I’d been so discombobulated by the roller coaster of emotions that weekend at Faire. Simon was a dick. No, Simon was kissing me. No, he said he’d made a mistake in doing so. No, we were kissing again, and he was damn good at it. No, once other people were around he was back to acting like I was the living embodiment of gum stuck to his shoe. I’d hardly seen him all day Sunday, and while he’d shown up at Jackson’s with everyone else, he looked like he hated being there and was gone after about fifteen minutes.
Which had left me with Stacey, Mitch, and his endless tequila shots. "
― Jen DeLuca , Well Met (Well Met, #1)
