Page 9 of Just a Number (Magnolia Row #2)

RHODES

I check out of the hotel and arrive at Bread Crumbs early. They’re still serving breakfast, and it smells like bacon and eggs. My stomach howls, but I sate it with a simple bottle of water while I wait for Micah.

I’m scrolling through pictures my son posted from a law school party when Micah walks in at exactly eleven o’clock.

The whole energy of the place shifts, like a fresh spring breeze wafting through the door.

She’s wearing red lipstick, dark jeans, an open knit sweater over a tank top, and sandals with flowers on them.

Her bright red hair is down, and the waves frame her face perfectly. She’s a vision.

I stand up to meet her and we hug before sitting down. The waitress comes over and hands us paper menus, but Micah puts hers down without looking at it.

“I always get the fried green tomato BLT,” she tells me. “It has an amazing aioli sauce.”

“Sounds delicious,” I say, putting my menu down. “Thank you for meeting me for lunch.”

“Thank you for asking me,” she says. “It’s not every day a handsome stranger shows up in town and asks me out, so this is new.”

My heart flutters when she calls me handsome, and I’m surprised by how forward she is. “I don’t know about being handsome, but I’m delighted to be here with you.”

“Oh, please,” said Micah. “Every girl at Cattywampus was staring at you last night.”

I shake my head. “They were probably wondering who the weirdo alone at the bar was.”

“Nope. Trust me.”

“Do you go to Cattywampus often?” I ask, then take a sip of my water.

“Most weekends. That’s pretty much where everyone goes to hang out, whether they drink or not.”

“It’s a cool space. It used to be a mill?”

“Cotton mill. You’ll find that most of the buildings around town are old and repurposed in some way.”

“I love it. That’s what I do. I recently started my own firm specializing in historic restoration work.”

Her face lit up. “Wow! A man after my own heart. I love old things.”

The first thought that crossed my mind was maybe, as an old thing myself, she could love me too.

I’m tempted to ask about her age, but I don’t want to come off as rude.

From a distance, she looks like she’s in her twenties, but on closer examination, she has a few fine lines around her mouth and eyes, so I’m hoping she’s at least thirty.

“Me too,” I say. “I love the history and personality in these buildings. Each one has a story, like the table in your shop. The wood and tile speak to you when you walk in. It’s a spiritual experience, really, to exist in a space with so many stories.”

She smiles.

“Is that weird?” I ask.

“Not at all.”

The waitress comes and we order our BLTs.

“So,” says Micah after she leaves, “tell me about yourself.”

“Well,” I begin. This feels like a job interview. “I live in Birmingham, as you know. I have one son, who is twenty-three. He recently started law school at Alabama, which is crazy to think about. I can’t believe I have a son old enough for grad school.”

She raises her eyebrows and makes a surprised face. “Wow. That’s impressive.”

“What? My son being in law school or me being old enough to have a son in law school?”

“Both. You don’t look old enough to have a grown kid.”

“I’m forty-five. He was born while I was in college, which was tough, but my former wife was a rockstar mom.

She took care of him and worked so I could finish school.

” There’s a pause in conversation, and I decide to bite the bullet and ask the one thing I know you aren’t supposed to mention on an early date.

“How old are you?” I say. I have to know, to make sure I’m not a creep going after a girl my son’s age.

“Thirty,” she says, making a face like she can’t believe she’s admitting to it.

“Thirty is young,” I say in an attempt to reassure her, but in reality I think I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

She’s closer to my son’s age than mine. I was learning to drive when she was learning to walk.

That’s a little weird to think about, but I push it to the back of my mind.

At least she’s not in her twenties. That would be too weird.

“So you’re divorced?” she asks.

“Yes. Five years now. Right after Mason went to college, we separated. She had met someone else and waited until Mason was grown to pursue it.”

“Wow,” she says, her eyes dropping. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug my shoulders. “To be fair, I was a little too career-obsessed and wasn’t home much when she was doing all the work to raise our son. That’s my one regret in life. But it is what it is, and I think we’re all happier now, including Mason.”

“That’s good,” she says. “So your son handled it well?”

“He was shocked at first, especially since it wasn’t a situation where Mom and Dad were fighting all the time. We never talked at all, so he didn’t see it coming. He’s okay now. He stays with his mom and her new partner at their lake house a lot. I think he’s accepted this as the new normal.”

“Yeah, that’s a lot to wrap your head around.”

“It is, but he’s a great kid. Well, I call him a kid. He’s grown, which still blows my mind.” I drink my water and clear my throat. “What about you? Any kids?”

“No, my nana is enough of a handful,” she laughs. “I can’t handle anyone else.”

“Sounds like it.” I almost ask her if she wants kids, but I know that’s not first-date conversation.

I will need to know at some point, assuming we make it past this lunch date.

If she has dreams of a young husband and a house full of babies, I’m not the guy for her, despite how gorgeous and captivating she is. I can’t go back to diapers and t-ball.

I decide to change the subject. “What was it like to grow up here? In a town this magical, it had to be like something out of a Hallmark movie.”

“Well, I thought it was boring when I was younger, and I guess it was, especially for a high schooler. There wasn’t much to do besides wander the cemeteries and break into old houses.”

“Seriously?” I ask with a small chuckle.

“Oh, yeah. There’s an old graveyard on the other side of the historic district where we used to walk at night, and if you drive about a mile past the Florablanca Inn, there’s a dilapidated house on the river in the Victorian Village where we would go to drink and hang out.”

“Okay, now that sounds like a horror movie.”

“No, it’s absolutely enchanting. I love that house. I wish I could afford to buy it and fix it up. I guess that’s my dream in life. If I win the lottery, that’s what I’m doing.”

“That’s a good dream,” I say. “I’d love to see it sometime.”

She nods, fingering her glass of water. She seems anxious somehow and it’s flattering, not to mention adorable.

“So the Victorian Village…I heard most of the houses are gone?”

“Yeah, unfortunately. Only a few are left. A massive lightning fire took out a lot of what was on that street before I was born.”

“It was one street full of Victorian houses?”

“Yep! There are photos at the Finnegan House. The Florablanca Inn was the star of the street, though. I’m so glad it’s still there.”

“I went to Finnegan House. They gave me an album of hotel photos.”

“Nice!” An awkward silence settles over us for a few moments, and I take the opportunity to notice how nervous she is. It’s endearing.

“So,” she finally asks, “you went to Auburn? Kendall went there too.”

“Yeah, I loved it. It’s a great town. Did you go to college?”

“Just one semester at Savannah College of Art and Design.”

“Wow! I love Savannah. The GC I’m wanting to use for the hotel is out of Savannah.”

“GC?”

“General contractor.”

“Ah,” she says with a nod. “Yes, I absolutely adored Savannah. I could’ve stayed there forever if things had been different.”

“What happened?”

“Nana was already starting to go downhill when I left, but during my first semester she had a heart attack while she was driving. She veered off the road and hit a tree. She’s lucky she even survived.

When I came home, I realized her blood sugar was out of control.

She really wasn’t taking care of herself, so I decided to quit college and stay. ”

“That’s a very selfless thing to do.”

“Quite the opposite. Sometimes I think I’m forcing her to live for me. She dropped everything to take care of me when she didn’t have to, so I’m returning the favor.”

I smile and resist the urge to take her hand. I want to, but it feels like too much.

Our food comes, and it smells amazing.

“This is the best sandwich you’ll ever put in your mouth,” says Micah. She takes a bite and somehow manages to not mess up her bright red lipstick.

I try it and my taste buds are immediately overwhelmed. The spice from the aioli, the salt from the bacon, the bitter of the green tomato, and the sweet bread meld together into an explosion of Southern fried goodness on my tongue.

“I may never go back to Birmingham,” I say after swallowing. “You weren’t kidding. This is wonderful!”

She laughs. “Told you! I love this place.”

We each take another bite, and it’s all I can do not to roll my eyes back in my head. I grew up on Southern food, yet this is the most delicious fried green tomato I’ve ever had in my life.

“What do you do in Birmingham?” she asks after downing a gulp of water.

“Work, mostly. I know that’s boring, but it’s true.”

“What kind of projects do you normally do?”

“Well, at my old job we were doing a lot of commercial buildings, office spaces, things like that. It was good money, but I wasn’t passionate about it.

I started moonlighting to help a firm out of Nashville on some historic restorations and fell in love with architecture all over again.

After my divorce, I figured it was now or never, so I opened my own firm.

I’ve worked on a few houses in north Alabama, but the Florablanca Inn is my biggest and most challenging job.

The lady who owns it is kinda crazy, but I’m pretty ecstatic about the project overall.

It’ll probably consume the next year of my life, but there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing. ”

“That’s incredible. It’s good to know your passion.”

I nod. “What were you planning to study at SCAD?”

“Preservation design.”

“A woman after my own heart! You would’ve been great. I can tell by the way your store is laid out that you have a great eye.”

“Thank you. I recently helped redecorate my friend Kendall’s house. She’s divorced, so our friend Patsy and I completely changed her entire house to erase all traces of her ex-husband. It was SO much fun. We basically took everything out and started with a blank slate.”

“I’d love to see it.”

She pulls out her phone and scrolls through the pictures.

I continue eating my sandwich as she shows me shot after shot of this beautiful house full of light on the river.

She narrates each room, showing me what they added and describing how it looked before.

It had an eclectic mix of antiques and new furniture and was decorated with massive photo prints of local sites and white architectural pieces.

It’s feminine and classy, like Micah. Her face lights up and her green eyes sparkle when she talks about it.

“Did any of that come from your store?” I ask.

“Oh, yes! A lot of it did.”

I’d love to set her loose in my loft. When I moved in, I thought it would be fun to decorate in earthy grays and dark colors with crisp, clean lines, but now it feels too masculine and cold, like I live in a factory. A woman’s touch would do it some good.

We continue to chat about our favorite books and movies while we finish our sandwiches. I tell her about my wealthy, eccentric client and her plans for the hotel. After about two hours, we wrap up the date and I walk her to her car.

“What are you up to the rest of the day?” I ask.

“I left Nana alone at the store, so I need to make sure she took her meds. Once we close up, I’ll probably go home and read.”

“Well, I’ll definitely be stopping by the store in the next few weeks. Don’t let the fountain get away from me.”

“It’s been there for as long as I can remember. It’s not going anywhere, I promise.”

Her hair is so bright it looks like it could burst into flame in this hot sun. I want to run my hands through it, but even I know that would be weird. In fact, I’m not sure how to close this date.

“Thank you, Micah, for meeting me today. I really enjoy talking to you.”

“Me too. I mean, you know, I enjoy talking to you. Not myself.” She shakes her head and closes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so bad at this. It’s no wonder I’m still single.”

I laugh. “No, you’re great. I’m just as bad, if not worse, I promise.”

I give her a hug, and she hugs me back. Her body is warm against mine and even though it’s a hundred degrees outside with high humidity, I want to hold her here forever.

“See you soon,” I say. She waves goodbye and gets in her car. I watch as she backs out and drives down Main Street.

It’s only after she disappears that I realize I’d failed to get her number.