"And I should get these boxes in." Mason's gaze drifts across me again. "It was nice to meet you, Olive."
"You, too. Um, if you need anything, I'm just right next door. Stealing mail."
"I'll remember that, Rebel."
The way he looks at me says he means it.
I turn, scurrying back toward the safety of the house before I do something drastic and a touch unhinged—like offer to lick the sweat from his abs.
"You told your new neighbor that you were stealing mail?" Sarah Tolliver, my best friend, asks, sweeping her long hair up into a bun as we restock shelves at theBook of Love, the spicy romance bookstore where she works.
I spend most of my free time here with her. Lilah Davis, the owner, pays me with free books. As far as I'm concerned, that's like winning the lottery.
"It seemed funny at the time," I mutter.
"There is seriously something wrong with you."
"Yes. His abs. He had eight of them, Sarah.Eight!"
She laughs softly, flashing me a knowing smile. "You like him."
"Maybe," I mumble, not denying it. "I don't know him well enough to know if I like him or not, but talking to him yesterday didn't suck."
"So…go borrow sugar or something. Stalk him through the peephole and accidentally bump into him while you're both going to your cars." She shrugs. "There are nine hundred excuses for you to run into him again now that he lives right next door."
She isn't wrong, but anytime I try to date, it turns into a disaster. It's Mt. St. Helens bad.
The first guy I talked to post-grad school was great, or so I thought. We talked for weeks before we decided to meet up. Halfway through dinner, he went to the bathroom and never returned. My second date tried to do cocaine on my coffee table. My third date stood me up. So did the fifth. The next one got into a bar fight and got carted away in cuffs.
And my last? Well, let's just say it ended when we got pulled over on the way home from the movies, and he was arrested on an absconder warrant out of Oregon. Apparently, he'd been on the run for a while.
I can read the signs. When the Universe decides that you're destined to spend life with a book addiction and a cranky dog instead of a man, you accept your fate. Before you end up tied up in someone's trunk.
I cannot express enough how much I do not want to end up tied up in someone's trunk, so I took a break from trying to find my forever. Instead, I'm living vicariously through my favorite heroines.
Mason doesn't seem dangerous…but neither did Stephen, and he had a whole damn criminal history. It wasn't even a little criminal history, either. It spanned years! And Joey didn't seem like he was going to pull out a baggie of cocaine and offer to cut me a line, either.
Clearly, my judgement cannot be trusted.
Or maybe it's just something about me that attracts the worst kind of people. I mean, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but anything after that is a pattern, right? It's not like my dating life is the only disaster, either. Basically, my whole damn existence is one isotope from being radioactive.
I'm pretty sure it's me. I am the problem.
"We'll see," I tell Sarah instead of committing.
"Chicken," she mutters.
"You're one to talk."
She just sticks her tongue out at me in a very mature retort. I don't push her on it, though. She's a shy little bookworm who struggles to string sentences together in front of the opposite sex.
She'll never admit it, but she's in love with my brother, Jasper.
I set them up on a blind date recently. Guess how much she's told me about it? Nothing! She has no idea that I know he was her date, though. She still thinks I think the guy was some random man who popped up in her direct messages.Please. It was me, plotting her future wedding to my brother. At least one of us deserves to be happy.
She's still seeing him. She looks guilty as hell, all day, every day, but she hasn't confessed yet. He hasn't either…not that I'm surprised. He's like Fort Knox when it comes to her. But she'll crack sooner or later. In the meantime, I'm happy to wait her out. I don't want to push and ruin whatever is going on with the two of them.
We shelve books in silence for several long moments before the bell over the door rings.