3
Addison
Addison pulled into a parking space at The Oregon Trail Drugstore, turned off the ignition, and slumped back in her seat. Rain had been drizzling on and off all day, and the lack of sunshine for days on end was getting her down. She wondered what Matthew was doing back in Amarillo and grabbed her phone to pull him up on social media.
Then she stopped herself. It wasn’t what she wanted—he was in her head only because of habit, not because she really wanted to be thinking of him.
What she really wanted to do right now was curl up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and an episode of Organize My Space. Or even better, haul her tired bones up the stairs, pretend she didn’t know is was barely six p.m., and collapse into bed and sleep until morning. And not just tomorrow morning. Thursday of next week sounded nice. With the dark clouds overhead, she could probably convince herself it was night.
But as nice as that plan sounded, she had another life goal, and that was to not stink. Since she used the last of her deodorant this morning, a drugstore visit it was. She sat up straight, put her shoulders back, pulled down the visor, and slid the cover so she could see the mirror. Her hair and makeup looked as bedraggled as she felt, so she removed her ponytail band, ran her fingers through her curls, then pulled her hair back into a ponytail and put the band back on. It didn’t help much, but it was something.
She ran her hands over her face, hoping to make it feel more awake, and then she smiled the biggest, happiest smile she could make and held it until she felt it.
Then she forced herself to say, out loud, good things that had happened to her in the past week. The list could only contain good things, no buts allowed, and couldn’t include anything she should’ve done but hadn’t.
“I went from having zero roommates to having three. Me. The girl who knew no one found three people who wanted to move into the inn with me. Girl, you are so phenomenally impressive that you even impress yourself.” And, amazingly enough, all four of them had really clicked.
She chuckled at herself, and then continued. “You are going to have your third weekly roommate dinner tonight, and it isn’t your turn to cook.” Hallelujah on that one. With as busy as her last week had been, if she had been in charge of the meal tonight, the four of them probably would’ve had to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“You finished your first client home organization jobs of your brand-spankin’ new business and survived.” Even though one of them wanted four rooms organized, including their jewelry-making supplies. Organizing the thousands of beads ranked right up there with finding roommates.
“Okay, one more.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking, and then a big smile spread across her face. “And you successfully managed to avoid Ian Kendrick for a full four weeks.” She had made a fool of herself the last time she’d seen him when she was eleven, and the first two times she’d seen him at twenty-six. The amount of potential embarrassment she’d saved herself by avoiding him over twenty-eight days was probably astronomical.
“Nice work,” she said out loud, and she felt it. Between the smiling at herself and listing awesome things that had happened, it was the “Give me energy, quick!” trick that worked for her every single time.
She even managed to have a spring in her step as she swung her purse over her shoulder and headed into the drugstore, and it was only partially because the drizzle had turned to actual rain and probably made her curls even crazier. But she found her favorite brand of deodorant, which she hadn’t been sure she’d find in Quicksand at all, and tossed it into her basket. Life was good. She didn’t really need to buy anything else, but those bins at the back of the store were calling her. Maybe she’d find something fun that she could give to each of her new roommates.
There were other people in the store, browsing, and she managed to not pay attention to any of them. But, even though she could barely see someone at the edge of her periphery, her eyes still went to one of her fellow shoppers at the far side of the store. The guy’s back was to her, and as she looked at the thick, dark hair with the perfect amount of wave that made you want to run your fingers through it, she whispered, “Please don’t be Ian. Please don’t be Ian.”
And then the man must’ve found what he was looking for, because he turned and started walking toward the back of the store. It was definitely Ian. And from what she could tell, the big bins in the back aisle of the store had drawn his attention, too. Addison glanced around frantically, looking for an escape route. None of the aisles were high enough to hide her. If she darted down one and crouched down to look at something and he miraculously didn’t happen to walk down that same aisle to go to the registers, he would see her from the registers.
So she did the only thing she could do—she crouched down where she stood, with one of the giant bins between him and her. Maybe he didn’t see her. Hopefully. All she had to do was wait for him to finish looking at whatever had drawn his attention, cross her fingers, toes, and anything else crossable, and hope that he didn’t decide to wander to the bin of fuzzy socks that she hid behind. She glanced down the aisle that she was completely exposed to, and saw the young man behind the register, watching her with one eyebrow raised. She gave him a pained smile that probably looked more like a grimace. Holding her breath so she could hear better, she strained her ears to catch any footsteps nearing over the sound of Kelly Clarkson’s Catch My Breath coming from the speakers. Ironic.
No footsteps. Only the sound of nothing holding Kelly back. She wished something would hold Ian back.
Addison spent the summers here when she was ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. Ian didn’t spend the full summer visiting his grandparents, like she did, but he did spend all of July there. So four full months together over four years, spending a good chunk of their days playing together. It had given her plenty of opportunities to embarrass herself around him. And every time when she wanted to run and hide under a rock somewhere, he would just continually put himself right in front of her until she had to look at him, and within moments, they would both be laughing.
She crossed her fingers with more force. If he had seen her, he wasn’t the kind of guy who would quietly exit the store, leaving her with dignity. Running off to hide from embarrassment was one thing when you were ten. It was something else entirely when you were a grown woman.
Why did he have to be so good looking now? As ridiculous as it was, she knew that if he was completely unattractive, she wouldn’t be hiding right now.
Hiding was stupid. She didn’t get embarrassed this easily, and she pretty much never dealt with embarrassment by hiding. It was like the girl from her childhood had taken over when she had seen Ian walking down that aisle. She and Ian were neighbors, after all. It wasn’t like she could just avoid him forever. The awkwardness between them would eventually go away. Maybe she should just stand up with her keys in her hand, like she had dropped them and was picking them up, and then face him like the adult that she was.
Or maybe she could’ve done that when she first crouched here, but not when she’d been hiding for a full two minutes. Nope. At some point, she had committed to this winner of a plan.