“Cleanup in produce,” sounded over the intercom and Addison looked over at the very unimpressed man in the deli, who now had one white eyebrow raised in an I knew you’d be trouble arc.
She forced herself to breathe. Then she cleared her throat and crouched down to pick up one of the fallen plastic containers, and then started putting blueberries back into it. The man crouched down, too, which put them in very close proximity, since they couldn’t exactly take a single step without squashing blueberries. It was several fast heartbeats before she stole another glance at him. She had been so distracted by the eyes before that she hadn’t noticed that beautifully strong jawline, or the way that, when relaxed and showing their natural state, the muscles of his face showed that they spent good portion of their time being happy.
And something about him looked familiar. She was about to ask him if they had met before, but then a gangly teenage boy came over to them with a broom and a dustpan and said that he’d finish cleaning up the mess. As she carefully tiptoed away from ground zero and to safety, she decided against asking him. She didn’t want to do anything else that might make her more memorable to anyone right now. And besides, she knew absolutely no one in this town, so she didn’t know him.
The man stepped to the edge of the fallen blueberries and reached across the strawberries and blackberries to grab her two more containers of blueberries. As he handed them to her, he said, “It looks like we both survived the great blueberry explosion. Congratulations.”
“You, too.” She put them into her cart. “But I am sorry that we didn’t all make it. If you would like me to say any words at the funeral of your shirt, let me know.”
He chuckled. “Are you just visiting?”
“Just moving in.” In a panic, she glanced at her watch. She had completely forgotten that she didn’t have all the time in the world. “I’ve got to run. I’m supposed to meet the moving truck at the inn in ten minutes.”
This time, when he gave his amused expression, she noticed the smile that went with it. A smile that could melt the snow on Mount Hood. “I’ll see you around, then.”
“And next time,” she called out as she hurried toward the checkouts, “I promise not to be armed with blueberries.”
It wasn’t until she was back in her car and trying to somehow magically get to the inn more quickly—without speeding—that the embarrassment hit her again. She hadn’t even been in her new city for more than thirty minutes before making a fool of herself. It wasn’t exactly the stellar start she’d been hoping for.
But embarrassing or not, she smiled when she thought back on that last minute or two. Those last few comments she made could probably be considered flirting. She had actually flirted with a very cute man, and she was pretty proud of herself. She and Matthew had been together for more than two years, and they had been long past their days of flirting with each other. And since their breakup, she had been mourning the loss of the future she thought she’d have with him, and hadn’t exactly felt like flirting. She wasn’t even sure she had remembered how to flirt.
Today felt like progress. She kind of wished Matthew had witnessed it.
Not that she was likely to see the man she inadvertently attacked with blueberries again. She thought back to her neighborhood grocery store in Amarillo. She went there for years, and rarely bumped into people she knew. It was good that she probably wouldn’t see him again. It was a nice bit of practice, just to know that one day she’d eventually want a relationship again even if she didn’t want one now, but she was glad he’d stay a stranger. She’d prefer a first interaction to not involve ruining a man’s shirt and then accidentally putting her hands on his chest.
Her face flushed again at the memory, so she forced herself to only pay attention to the road. She hadn’t stayed the summer at the inn with her aunt since she was thirteen, but she’d been back for short visits enough times that she made the drive on autopilot while scarfing down a protein bar she’d grabbed at the checkout stand. Amarillo didn’t have the same tree-lined streets that Quicksand had, and there was something nice about driving in an area where the trees weren’t just along the streets, but seemed to crowd in everywhere, only willing to pull back a bit for the homes and businesses around.
Coming to this place as a kid seemed like a lifetime ago. So much so that during the two years they dated, she hadn’t told Matthew about it once. It felt weird to be in a place he knew nothing about. She wondered how he was doing back in his scheduled, predictable life, when hers was in such new territory.
Amazingly, she arrived at the inn before the moving truck. She pulled into one of the eight spots in the small parking lot on the side, leaving the curving driveway in front of the inn open for the moving truck. After unlocking the door, she walked back out to the edge of the road and stood next to the Hidden Inn sign so she could flag down the truck. The sign that had caused her stomach to leap in excitement as a girl now made her heart palpitate and her muscles twitch. She hadn’t been at the reading of Aunt Helen’s will, and she’d been unable to even form words when she first found out her aunt wanted her to have Hidden Inn. She added the inability to stand on her own two feet to the speechlessness once she found out her aunt said it was because “Addison will know what to do with it.”
Some of her favorite memories of childhood were of staying at the Inn, with her aunt treating her like she was an adult living in her own place, dreaming of the time when she’d be a strong, independent businesswoman in a power suit, living on her own.
She had never dreamed of one day running the inn. Not even for a teeny tiny second. Why her aunt thought she would know what to do with it was beyond her. Her parents were always absent when she was a kid, and they had moved to Florida when she and Chloe became adults. With their absence most of her life, Addison craved family. And running an inn where she always spent time with strangers didn’t sound appealing in the least. It wasn’t until Chloe had suggested that she run it as an apartment instead of as an inn that moving here had felt right.
But was it right? Could the girl who hadn’t ever lived more than five miles from the home where she grew up—and never more than two miles from her sister—make it in a new city by herself?
As she stood at the edge of the road, looking at the inn that she was now responsible for, she wasn’t so sure. Yes, the building was paid for, but she’d done the math, and for utilities, property taxes, taking care of the grounds, repairs, and a million other little costs that came to her one night at three a.m., she would need roommates in at least three of the five other rooms in the inn. Where was she going to find three roommates in a city where she knew zero people?
The speed of her heart rate multiplied as she saw the moving truck in the distance, lumbering its way toward her.
Then she remembered reading in a book once that the only difference between nervousness and excitement was breathing. If you held your breath, your body assumed you were nervous. If you breathed through it, it assumed excitement.
So she breathed. And as the truck neared and she waved and it turned into the curved drive of the inn, the excitement built.
And then the truck ran over one of the shrubs lining the driveway, squashing it completely flat. The driver rolled down the window and called toward her, “Sorry ‘bout that!”