Page 49 of First-Time Caller
AIDEN VALENTINE:Remind me to tell you about the foot pictures.
The phone won’t stop buzzing.
Aiden handed it to me last night as soon as he got back in the booth, his face fixed carefully in a blank mask. I don’t know what happened to send him from friendly to closed off so quickly, but I know the song had something to do with it.
Maybe he doesn’t like jazz? Maybe I said something wrong? I’ve picked it over in my brain like a misfiring engine, but I can’t find the misstep. I can’t find the piece that’s out of alignment.
It’s a good thing I have about seven million text messages to distract me. My road to love is now a highway to hell.
“Are you going to answer those or let it vibrate a hole through my countertop?”
“Undecided,” I tell Patty, blindly reaching for another cookie from Maya’s plate. She rotates it halfway so I can reach the thumbprint jam ones I like best while she still has access to her avocado toast. A flawless system. “The messages have gotten out of control.”
“Were they ever under control?”
“Also undecided.”
Maya drums her feet against the bar beneath the counter. She hangs out at the café after school sometimes, when my shift at the shop runs late and Grayson is teaching a class. Patty keeps an eye on her and helps her with her math homework, then sets her loose on the sci-fi section at the top of the stairs.
I used to feel bad about relying on the people around me, but Patty insists she enjoys Maya’s company more than mine, so I stopped arguing with her about it.
“Everyone at school says you’re doing great,” Maya tells me, dropping a gigantic hunk of avocado on her sweater.
I’m not looking for approval from a bunch of hormonal-addled preteens, but the praise makes me feel warm and cozy all the same. “They do?”
She nods. “Ms. Parker said you and Aiden have good vibes.”
Patty appears on the other side of the counter with my café au lait. “I agree with Ms. Parker. That man has a sexy-ass voice.”
“Patty.”
“Just stating facts.” She looks at Maya. “Do you find anyone sexy yet, or is that a thirteen-year-old thing?”
“Patty,” I say again, a warning in my voice.
Maya shrugs, scooping the avocado off her sweater. “I think books are sexy,” she says very seriously. “No one at school has quite lived up to Aragorn yet.”
God, I love this kid. I lean over and press a smacking kiss to her temple. “I hate to break it to you, kid, but no one ever will.”
Patty holds up a fist in solidarity as she drifts back to the coffee machine. “The truth,” she yells over her shoulder.
Maya’s shoulders slump. “That’s a bummer.”
The phone dances across the countertop again. Maya perks back up. “Can I look?”
I take a sip of my coffee. Maggie told me before I left last night that she’d flag any gross messages. I think she’s hoping that my text message game might be better than my on-air performance. So far, the only messages I’ve received are a series of truly awful pickup lines and another set of inquiries from the guy from last night who wanted to know about my face.
I looked at the messages for ten minutes this morning, got overwhelmed, and then shoved the phone to the bottom of my bag.
“Go for it,” I tell her. “But if you see something weird, I’ll take you in the back and bleach your innocent young brain.”
“Noted,” she says, her eager, grabby hands already thumbing the screen open. “Oh, whoa. You have like a thousand messages.”
Patty appears on the other side of the counter again. “Read the good ones out loud.”
I arch an eyebrow. There are two people not so patiently waiting at the counter for their drinks. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“This is more important.”
