Page 57 of It's a Brewtiful Day
Cassie shook her head. “That was a crazy storm. Alice and I were driving in it from Hinton. We had to pull over when the rain was coming down sohard the wipers couldn’t keep up. The noise it made was deafening.”
“Was there hail damage to her truck?” Chad asked Cassie.
“I don’t know, maybe?”
Opening my eyes, I stared at my big sister. “Speaking of Alice, I met her little brother Fox.”
“Oh?” Her face lit up.
“He’s a Coffee Loft employee.”
“Shut up, he is not.” Cassie had the audacity to look over to Chad with a smirk on her face before looking back at me. “What? She never told me that, just that he was seriously into astronomy and was helping out with the Dark Sky Event.”
I sighed as my heart thrummed louder just thinking of him. “Anyway, I know him as Elliot, my daily barista, and he knew me as the bookshop girl, so your plan was foiled. We’d already met. You two with your planned meet cute thing, well, sorry to say, that never happened either.”
“That was Alice’s idea anyway,” Cassie said with a huff.
“Yeah, well, when you see her next, tell her it was a bust. Neither of us showed up at the school for the volunteer thingy.” Shifting in my spot, I tucked my legs underneath me.
Chad reached for his can of pop and chugged back a drink, eliciting a small burp. “No one did. When the power was wiped out, an advisory was sent out to go home and stay there so the power crews andfirst responders could do their jobs.”
“Not everyone got that advisory.” If there had been any warning, surely Elliot would’ve seen it on his phone and said something, not that there was anything we could’ve done.
Chad got defensive. “It was supposed to go out as an alert.”
“Well, it didn’t happen. The cell phones went belly up at some point.” But I wasn’t in the mood to argue as to when it all went down as I was exhausted to the bone. “Anyway… Elliot Fox,. I stressed the nickname she or Alice had come up with. “Was the Coffee Loft employee I became trapped with.”
“Oh?” That look went beyond gentle curiosity; it had all the makings of big sisterly concern and perhaps a touch of contempt. “Is that where the bruise came from?”
Yes, that tidbit of information would cause her to instantly have her feathers ruffled. That had been her experience, not mine, but it still didn’t stop her from projecting any of those fears onto me.
I touched the bruise I bandaged after I applied a bit of green-tinted moisturizer to conceal the rosacea flare-up. “I fell.” Cassie cocked an eyebrow that told me she didn’t believe a lick of what I was saying. “Honestly, it was pitch black in the back room where we were hunting for the lockers, and I tripped over a wayward box and connected with a corner of a locker.”
“I see. That’s the killer box you spoke ofearlier.” Her words said she understood, but the tightening of her posture betrayed that.
“I swear, nothing bad happened.” Except for a kiss or two that rocked my world, leaving me wanting and begging for more, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. It wasn’t bad. On the contrary, it was magical, and stirred feelings in me I wasn’t sure I could handle. Or trust. “Elliot was a perfect gentleman. A true sweetheart, and—you’ll love and appreciate this—he did his best to block out the sound of the storms.”
Cassie crossed her legs and cupped her mug of tea with both hands while leaning closer to me. “How’d he manage that?”
“Banging pots and pans and having a dance party.” And kissing me, but I wasn’t going to share that with her.
I was all for not keeping secrets from my sister, but this one, I wanted to keep for myself and put a lock on my heart to stop the memory from ever leaving. “And that’s where any little hope of a story will end. We’ll have that one night to keep in our hearts.”
“Why? Why won’t you give him more?” She narrowed her eyes in deep confusion.
I put my feet on the carpet.
“It’s not that I won’t, it’s just I … can’t.” I didn’t want to have this conversation with her. At least not in front of Chad. I knew he loved my sister down to his soul, but so had my dad with my mother, and finding out he betrayed her in the worst possible way, left me forever unable to trust men completely. I was always second-guessing everything.
Dad’s cheating and mom’s heartbreak were the worst, and for some stupid reason, those types of guys were the kind I was most attracted to. If anything was to happen between Elliot and me, he’d just go out and rendezvous with another female. Most started out sweet and charming, and then they turned—like an avocado; one day perfect, the next day they’d gone bad.
However, there was something about Elliot that prevented me from believing that’s who he was—in his core—but still, there was no need to find out the hard way.
“You know what? I need to go get my things from the shop.”
“Sage, wait.” Cassie matched me step for step. “Just wait.” She followed me to the back door where I was shrugging on my red leather jacket and pulling my hair out to drape over the back. “Elliot was that sweet? You sound like you two had a good time despite the circumstances.”
I tapped my pocket for the keys to the store, doing everything I could to avoid looking into her eyes. Doing so would unravel me, and I wasn’t in the mood.