Page 20 of Mixed Signals
“Way to bury the damn lead!” Stella looks like she’s going to swat me again. “Layla, I swear to god. Why didn’t you start with that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.” Probably because he’s skipped his regular morning stop-in two days in a row and I don’t think he’s gone a week without a baked good since I opened up the shop. Is he getting his croissants somewhere else? The thought settles like a rock in my stomach. No one makes better croissants than me. No one. “I’m not sure he was serious. I haven’t seen him since.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—” I peer over her shoulder through the tiny window in the door and make sure Gus is still occupied. I wouldn’t put it past him to press his ear right up against this door. “I mean he told me when he dropped me off at home that I would see him on Monday, and I haven’t seen him since.”
Stella searches my face. “Did you want him to be serious?”
“I don’t know.” It did sound nice, the things he was talking about. To have a dating experience that didn’t leave me embarrassed and hopeless. “It wouldn’t be real dating. But that might be a nice change of pace.”
Stella’s entire face collapses into confusion. “I feel like I need a roadmap for this conversation. What do you mean it wouldn’t be real dating? Start from the beginning.”
So I do. I tell her about my failed date with Bryce, about the stolen silverware, about Caleb at the bar and the Margaritaville bus. I tell her about Alex and Charlie and the sloppy dancing on the table. I tell her about our drive home, how Caleb told me he’s bad at dating. His suggestion that maybe we should date each other and help one another out.
“So what are you going to say?”
“Nothing if he keeps avoiding me.” I reach for her abandoned cupcake and pluck a bit of icing off the top. “If this is how it’s going to be, maybe it’s for the best if we pretend that conversation never happened.”
“No,” Stella breathes, her eyes as wide as saucers. Oh, boy. I know this face. She isinvested.Like suddenly-buy-a-Christmas-tree-farm-and-demo-half-the-buildings invested. Binge-watch-all-of-Deadliest-Catch-after-reading-one-book-about-crab-fishermen invested.
She bounces up and down on her toes. “No, no, no. You have to say yes.”
“I do?”
“Obviously.”
It is not obvious to me. “Why?”
“It’s the perfect situation. A gorgeous man with dimples—”
“You’ve noticed his dimples, too?” I swear I never once noticed his dimples prior to this weekend.
“You mentioned them several times during that short story.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Anyway, a gorgeous, kind man with dimples wants to take you out.” She lifts up one finger like she’s ticking off her grocery list. “He wants to shower you in the affection you deserve.” Another finger. “And he wants you to critique him while he does it. I quite honestly do not see a downside.”
I take another nibble of my cupcake and consider. She’s right. I’ve put in my time with asshole men. There may be plenty of fish in the sea, but most of those fish are bottom-dwellers with weird lanterns hanging off the front of their faces. They lure you in and steal your brownies.
I deserve to have some fun. I’ve earned that.
“He has to stop avoiding me first,” I say, circling back to the original problem. I can’t take him up on his offer if I never see him again. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s suddenly broken his long standing croissant habit right after our conversation.
And just like that, my anxiety and unease at being ghosted takes a nosedive into irritation.
Typical. To be left hanging by a man.
“That’s an easy fix.” Stella pulls her phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll just ring the phone tree and see if anyone has seen him around town.”
Absolutely not. Initiating the phone tree about Caleb would result in the entire town showing up on my doorstep with their opinions on the situation. I slap the phone out of her hand so fast it goes flying into a bowl of fluffy, white shortcake filling.
Shoot. I was going to pipe that into some donuts later.
We both stare at it as the door swings open and Beckett comes strolling in, his hat on backwards and the sleeves of his t-shirt slightly rolled. He’s covered head to toe in dirt and sweat and—
“Is that blood?”
