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We spent the next couple of hours planning and flirting. It was a great combination.
I couldn’t help my disappointment when the front door latched open, and Eli walked in. As his scowl flashed into place then vanished behind a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the pit in my chest grew heavier.
19
elijah
I knewI’d see Austin and Kandace together when I got back to the house, but the sight still filled me with intense ambivalence. Was I jealous that they looked like they were having fun? I should be, but mostly I wanted to be a part of it.
The instant Austin saw me, he gathered up the stack of papers he was holding and shoved them back in their folder. “Look. Your date’s here. Time to go.” His tone was light and not forced.
Then again, his tone was rarely forced. He’d always been easy-going.
“Are you sure you don’t have any more questions?” Kandace was more methodical about making a few clicks on her computer, typing a few things, before closing the laptop.
Austin shook his head. “Nothing that won’t wait until tomorrow.”
Because his assumption was that tomorrow she’d still be here. I liked that thought.
“Okay. You crazy kids should be on your way.” Austin made a shooing motion toward the door.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the behavior. “That eager to get rid of us?”
“Nope. But I crashed your date last time, so you should go have a real one tonight. Just the two of you,” Austin said.
It won’t be the same without you there. The unexpected response bubbled up in my throat, and I swallowed it. I looked at Kandace. “Give me a few minutes to change and such, and we’ll go?”
“Sounds great,” she said.
I felt like a giddy kid again, for the second time in as many Fridays. I’d already gotten to spend a lot of time with Kandace, and the phone conversation the other night still teased my dreams, butfirst datehad a sweet-but-high-pressure ring to it. So I tried to force a balance between freshening up and hurrying as fast as was physically fucking possible, and a few minutes later I found her in the living room, exactly where I’d left her next to Joystick.
“Shall we be off?” I offered a hand, she accepted, and I tugged her to her feet.
We said our goodbyes to Austin, who promised not to wait up, with a series of less than subtle winks, and Kandace and I headed out.
The sun had already gone down, though it was barely six, but the air was still warm. Early spring would be nice. “I was thinking,” I said as we walked side by side toward the street. “I keep seeing this little town, every day, and I haven’t really explored it yet.” Just like I hadn’t gotten to explore Kandace yet. “And I want to get to know you better. Walking seems like a great way to do both, if you’re up for it.” I offered my arm.
She hooked her hand around my elbow. “Sounds lovely. I’m in.”
The house was only a block from the end of Main Street, so we headed in that direction. It felt natural to be this close to her. Warm. Inviting. Enticing.
Too bad I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I’d spent the day touching up witty dialogue for Andrew’s film, and when it came to my own conversations? The best I had wasnice weather, eh?
Nope. I wasn’t going to be a small-talk guy. Not like that.
We rounded the corner to the town’s main thoroughfare. The sidewalks were busier than the rest of the week, but that still wasn’t the kind of packed I was used to in bigger towns. I liked it. A handful of the buildings were boarded up and shuttered, but a lot more of them were open. Most still with the classic facings, but well-maintained.
“The hardware store has been in the family forever.” Kandace nodded at one building across the street from us. “Inside you’ll find the normal hardware stuff—hammers, saws, nails, gardening supplies. And then on the other half of the store, it almost looks like you stepped into a Radio Shack or a mad scientist’s lab. Evie insists capacitors and circuit boards have as much right to exist in a hardware store as self-tapping screws.”
“I can’t argue with logic like that.”
Kandace jerked a thumb toward the building we were next to. It had a more subtle look, and no sign on the awning. But the door proclaimed it was a new age tea shop. “If crystals are your thing, Sebastian’s got them. He insists he doesn’t believe, and that he only keeps the stock to honor his grandmother, but his regular clients say he’s got a gift for knowing what they need to cleanse their auras on any given day. He also has more flavors of tea than I’ve ever seen in a single place.”
“That’s pretty cool.” Only two shops in, and this place was already quirkier and more fun than something straight out of an eighty’s movie.
As we continued our journey down the street, Kandace had a story about almost every business we passed. The vintage clothing store, the coffee shop, and the antique store. “He found a secret basement full of sex furniture a year or so ago,” she said about Deacon’s. “And the record store—”
“Wait.” I couldn’t have heard that right. “A secret basement full of sex furniture?” Repeating the words made it sound even more ludicrous.
