Page 23 of Tripped By Love

Cassidy

THE WAY YOU TAKE TIME

“I wanna show you,

How thankful I am for getting to know you.

For the little things you do for me.”

Performed by Joe Buck

Written by De Buck / Leferink

Irma was chasing Chevelle around thedisplays in Sweet Lips, and he was giggling. Her gray hair was sticking up at odd angles as if she’d been pulling at it all day. That usually meant she was trying to decide which inventory to rotate out of her antique shop down the street.

It was Tuesday, and I’d spent the majority of the day catching up on household chores, playing with Chevelle, and doing some of the restaurant business that I could do from home while Chevelle had napped. Closing the restaurant one day a week was the only way I’d kept my sanity in the last two years. But it was never enough time to feel like my long list of to-dos was shortening.

I watched with a smile as I handed Helen a check across the counter. Helen was a soft, round ball of goodness, just like her baked goods. When I’d first opened The Golden Heart Café, I’d arranged for all the sweets to be from her bakery and concentrated on the other menu items. But over the last two years, I’d slowly started making a lot of things on my own, and now our roles were almost reversed?she included many of my baked goods in her display cases. But somehow, I’d never been able to master the creation of pies, and Helen’s were the only ones I served at my place.

Helen’s daughter, Belle, poked her head out of the back. “Is that Chevelle’s sweet giggle I hear?”

She came around the counter, and Chevelle gave up on Irma to run to Belle, knowing she’d give him a treat. Almost every store owner on Main Street knew Chevelle’s weaknesses. Irma was always sending over stuffed animals she found in her picking efforts across the state. Her husband, Floyd, was always carving him simple toys. Helen and Belle were always giving him soft candies. Even Patty at the hair salon knew that Chevelle liked animals and had a special cape she’d bought just for him when she trimmed his hair.

My heart swelled. There were a lot of people who would have found the familiarity of a small town frustrating?invasive. For me, it felt like we were surrounded in love. A cushion that could catch us if we fell. People who had, quite literally, picked me up off the ground before when I’d stumbled.

My phone buzzed.

MARCO: How was your day?

My heart flipped. Such an innocuous question and yet one that lit me up, making my stomach curl with joy. Since he’d left on Friday, Marco and I had been texting almost daily. At first, it had been stilted, as if neither of us was sure how to proceed, but then it had eased into a friendliness that had been addicting. I was constantly stopping myself from sending him a new one.

ME: Tuesdays are always a blessing. We’re at Sweet Lips, at the moment.

MARCO: Did Belle give him a caramel or fudge?

I smiled, loving that he knew exactly what my world looked like.

ME: Fudge. How was Maliyah’s day?

MARCO: They moved her to the rehab clinic.

ME: That’s good news, right?

MARCO: Yep. For her. But I’m not sure the people at the clinic agree. You should have seen the way she was ordering them around.

I laughed. From the little things he’d said, I imagined Maliyah as one of those people who whipped everyone around them into shape with a smile, a tease, and a firm hand.

“Who’s put that beautiful smile on your face?” Irma asked.

I looked up at her, flushing. Embarrassed for a reason I couldn’t explain. Like a teenager who’d been caught staring at her high school crush.

“No one,” I said, shoving the phone in my pocket.

“Ooh, Cassidy has a secret boyfriend,” Irma told the others.

Belle looked over with a wide smile. “You do? You can tell us. Who is it?”

“It’s Assad, right?” Helen said with a dreamy look on her face. Assad was my brother’s public relations manager. He was dark from head to toe, always had a perfect drop fade with curls on top, and wore designer clothes that would make a fashion model drool. He also had enough energy and charisma to charm the shyest of people into talking. Helen was old enough to be his mom if not his grandma, but she adored him. Literally fawned over him whenever he was in town to meet with Brady. He lived in New York City the rest of the time and wasn’t likely to ever make a small town like Grand Orchard his home.