Page 25 of At First Smile

Second, is the reputation resurrection theory. Rowan said he punched someone, but failed to share his victim was Landon Phillips, Stanley Cup MVP, NHL Man of the Year, and one of People ’s sexiest people two years in a row.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” JoJo places a warm palm on my shoulder.

I jab at the elevator’s Up button. “I…” Something twists in my belly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“It was just one night.”

“It sounded like so much more than that to me. You opened yourself up to him and even if he didn’t tell you everything, it seems like he opened up to you too.”

I press my pink-tipped nails into my palms and hope the pain holds the tears at bay. “I wasn’t what I thought I was”—I clear my throat— “becoming to him.”

“Do you want me to go steal you some cake? We can eat our feelings and online shop in your office?”

Stepping onto the elevator, I shake my head. “I’ll pass. I’ve hit my emotional eating quota for the week.” Pushing the button for my floor, I offer a small smile. “It’s really fine, JoJo. I’m over this.”

“Are you?” Her head tilts.

“I will be,” I say as the doors shuts.

Back in my office, I lose myself in work. Hours spent drowning in emails and reports is far more constructive than cake. Though my stomach’s grumble while I review the MVP Foundation’s event information makes me regret my cake-free office.

“Pen, I need you!” Devon, our department secretary, whines dramatically from the reception area where he sits outside my office.

Grabbing a granola bar from the desk’s top drawer, I laugh-shout back. “What?”

Over the last three years I’ve memorized Devon’s various whines. This is his classic “it’s not an actual emergency but a tiny blip in the day that annoys me” whine. “I lost the business card for the vendor that came by Thursday. I thought his card was on my desk.”

“Which Thursday?”

“Two weeks ago.” His tone is sheepish.

“The puppet show or Disney character performer guy?”

There’s a long pause before he replies, “Both.”

“On it.” Taking my phone from my purse, I pull up my camera roll.

It’s a force of habit to take a picture of all business cards for easy visual access. Most of these get sent to my work email and stored in a file, but this was taken before I left for New York, so it remains in my personal cell.

As I scroll past my recent photos, my heart aches with the pictures from Michigan. I’ve not looked at them since Rowan took them. I stop scrolling as a video pops up on the screen. Rowan had taken it at the pool at the waterfall’s base.

In it, a tiny puppy jumps and barks at Cane Austen’s ball tip. I swipe the cane left and right, allowing the little guy to play. My head is thrown back in laughter as the dog takes the tip into their mouth and tries to pull it away.

“God, she’s beautiful.” A low timbre, that I know instantly is Rowan, murmurs on the video.

The rumbly Irish lilt wakes up the butterflies in my stomach, the ones that have been asleep or sulking since Saturday.

“That she is.” A raspy female voice almost coos on the video. “Is she your girl?”

After a long pause, Rowans says, “No.” His tone is sad and full of longing.

“But you want her to be.” The woman’s tease is reminiscent of a taunting child.

Rowan doesn’t say anything. The puppy’s bark echoes. In the video, I look up, my gaze dropping to the camera – on Rowan— and a large grin widens on my face.

Watching the video, the memory washes over me. Despite being several feet away, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat, I could feel his smiling gaze on me.

“Stupid men.” The woman chuckles, pulling me back to the video. “If you wait too long to make a move on a woman that makes you look like that at her, you’ll lose her.”

After a moment of shuffled footsteps, an older woman appears on screen beside the old man with the leashed puppy.

“I don’t deserve her…no matter how much I want her,” Rowan says before the video ends with the older couple walking away with the puppy and me, wearing his hat, facing him to ask if he’s ready to grab food. “Yep,” he answers and the video ends.

Staring at my phone, I place my hand on my chest where a sharp fullness pulses.

“Pen? Any luck?” Devon bellows.

“Um”—I swallow thickly and flip to the requested business card pictures— “yep. Sending now.”

Several more emails, two initial calls with potential volunteers for our crafty kids program, and one annoyed huff from Devon after Nelson asked him to rearrange his meetings for Monday around a dental appointment he forgot about, it’s time for me to wrap up.

Boarding the bus outside the hospital, I huff out a long breath.

In just four stops, I’ll be three blocks from my house.

Most Fridays I hit happy hour with JoJo at Harkey’s Hideaway, our favorite cocktail bar along Seal Beach’s waterfront, but she’s on aunty duty. As she’s the youngest of three sisters, two of whom are married with kids, JoJo often is the go-to babysitter, a role she adores.

As much as a cocktail or four sounds delightful at this moment, I’m not-so-secretly relieved to have the night alone. The bus’s gentle jostle unspools the thoughts I’d tucked back inside after hearing Rowan’s unguarded confession.

I don’t deserve her. Those words prick in my chest. I close my eyes. The sensation of Rowan’s arms folded around me as he confessed his fear of always disappointing the people he cares about washes over me.

“Ugh,” I mutter and press my head against the bus’s window. The more the thoughts uncoil, the more I am confused. Rowan’s words and actions have me upside down and right-side up all at the same time.

Throughout the remainder of the ride and slow walk to my house, my heart and brain wage a war against each other. My brain cautions that I’ve been fooled by pretty words and promises before. My heart counters that promises never breached Rowan’s lips and neither did sugary sweet words.

Reaching my house, I unlatch the front gate.

My home is comfortable. A simple, lavender, cottage-style house, one in a row of homes across the street from the beach.

A white picket fence encircles the neatly manicured yard with white flowers bursting from bright green bushes.

A rocking chair, made from driftwood, where Aunt Bea once sat with her laptop balanced on her lap, sits on the tiny front porch.

It’s all she ever wanted, a purple house by the sea. A place where the beach’s scent and the mesmerizing melody of ocean waves filter in through open windows. And it’s now mine.

Cane Austen and I take the two steps onto the porch. My steps cease and pulse ticks up when I discover a vase filled with long stem red roses sitting on the sandcastle-shaped welcome mat. Lines crease my brow as I bend and pluck up the card propped against the glass vase.

Leaning Cane Austen against the door, I pull up the magnification program on my phone to read the card. “Please, don’t be…” I open the card.

Pen,

Congratulations, sweetheart. I hope you’ll let me take you out to celebrate.

~Your Alex

I crumple the card. “Aargh!”

It’s been at least two months since Alex flowers had appeared on my porch.

When JoJo had cut off the heads of the last dozen he’d sent and had her Marine brother-in-law drop it off at his house, it seemed Alex got the message.

The flowers. The pop-overs to the house.

They all stopped. JoJo even recruited Devon to play guard dog.

Hoisting the flowers into my arms, I take the stairs and stride down the cobblestone walkway that loops around to the back of the house. Midway, I stop, open the trash, and look at the flowers. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.”

Sighing, I decide not to toss the flowers. They’re too lovely. Even if they came from Alex, they are somebody’s hard work. Instead, I take them next door and give them to Lenora and Maxine, the retired couple who serve as the street’s unofficial neighborhood watch.

Between the appearance of Alex’s flowers and my knotted emotions about Rowan, sleep eludes me.

Pre-dawn light slips into the room through the open window.

Cocooned in my sheets, I let the freshness of the cool, ocean breeze dispel the jitteriness that caused me to turn to the door each time I heard a noise last night.

I don’t fear Alex hurting me, but I dread interactions.

For four months after we broke up, he’d be everywhere.

There’d be sweeping gestures, gifts, and lots and lots of sweet words.

We’re so good together, you know it.

I’m sorry I pushed you too soon, but I just love you so much.

I just want to take care of you. Let me take care of you… Let me love you.

Then there’s Rowan. His words don’t elicit the same surge of fear inside me. They just confuse me. I know he wants me. No matter how much I offer false comfort that there wasn’t something real between us, it’s just me lying to myself.

Despite walking away, he wants me. In my heart, I believe the fact of his belief that he doesn’t deserve me may be what is keeping him away.

This all may be true, but I deserve a man who will push past his fears for me.

If Aunt Bea’s battle with cancer taught me anything, it’s that life’s too short.

We’re not promised tomorrow with the people we care about, and if they aren’t willing to fight for that limited time to be with us, then they’re not worth exhausting the precious moments on.

Time to move on. I push off the blankets and face the day.

Instead of dwelling in the collision of feelings inside me, I do yoga in the backyard, and get ready for breakfast. It’s Saturday, so I’ll head to Bread for my weekly, albeit now solo, breakfast date.

Having flown to Buffalo the Saturday before last, I’ve missed two weeks in a row of baklava croissants.

Trying not to think about how I’d not missed all croissants, I stride down the brick sidewalk along Main Street. Due to the hour, the boutiques and seaside giftshops that line downtown Seal Beach are still closed. A few cafes and coffee shops stir with early morning customers, but it’s quiet here.

Bread is tucked between a dog groomer and Chez Jen’s, a French clothing boutique.

It’s a tiny bakery with only three bistro tables in the small dining area.

It not only serves the best pastries and lattes in town but offers an array of mouth-watering breakfast dishes.

The rows of red umbrella patio tables lining the alleyway that runs between Bread and Chez Jen’s gives the popular bakery some much needed additional seating.

Reaching the front of Bread, I smile at the hostess.

“Pen!” She looks up from the tablet on the small podium tucked under an ivy-covered white lattice arbor. “We missed you.”

“Hi, Jela.” I brush a tendril that escaped from my messy bun behind my ear and look around.

It’s devoid of the typical hustle and bustle of a busy bakery’s morning.

While I came early enough to ensure I wouldn’t have a long wait, there’re no customers flowing in and out of the bakery’s front door.

No hiss of the espresso machine from the other side of the counter.

No clatter of dishes or hum of patrons talking in the alleyway.

My nose wrinkles. “It’s quiet this morning.”

“Yeah,” she says, her tone a little confused. “Let me take you to your usual table.” Lifting the tablet to her chest, she rounds the podium and motions me to follow.

The alleyway is as quiet as the inside confines, the brick buildings on each side and oversize potted palms and Ficus trees create a secret garden aesthetic.

“Your usual table with a little surprise,” Jela says, sweeping one hand toward the table nestled between fat leafy palm plants at the back of the alley.

My heart jumps into my throat at the vibrant flower arrangement on the table. Pink, white, and pale purple roses pop against greenery in a clear vase.

“No,” I gasp and spin, slamming into a hard chest.

“Pen.” Strong hands grip my biceps.

I force my gaze up. “Ro—Ro—Rowan?”