What a bitch I was, I thought glumly. I'd been at work for over an hour, and I hadn't spoken two words to anyone, heading straight back to the kitchen to work on bread and mini berry pastries for the case. Jennifer had given me a concerned look when she caught sight of my face but wisely gave me space. Her eyes, man, they freaked me out. Joy had tried to talk to me. Tried. I'd been about receptive as a concrete wall.
No wonder Levi called me Sonic. When my prickles were up, they were up, and God help anyone who tried to approach.
So even though I didn't want to answer Joy's question about whether I was okay, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
"I asked someone out today. And he said no."
"Ohhhh," she breathed. "I'm sorry, Joss. He's stupid."
I smiled a little bit. "He's not stupid, just unavailable."
She nodded earnestly. "I understand unrequited love."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She sighed.
I wiped my hands on my apron and eyed her expression. "So no boyfriend for you?"
She leaned up against the large stainless steel island, facing me. "Nope."
"Me neither."
"No girlfriend, either," she continued. "Not even a dog or a cat."
Nero's dopey face popped into my head. It was nice to have someone to cuddle with at night, even if he got around on four paws and ate his own shit from time to time.
"It's depressing, actually."
I grimaced. "Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."
Behind Joy, Jenn's husband Cletus came in, giving me charming, wide smile in greeting. He was a giant grizzly of a man, barrel-chested with a full beard covering his handsome face.
If my sweet co-worker understood unrequited love, it was probably because of this guy. I tried to elbow her, but I missed because I wasn't looking.
Joy was off in her own head, staring straight ahead at the large trays of finished cupcakes. "I really need to replace my vibrator now that I'm thinking about it."
My eyes widened, my mouth fell open, and Cletus froze midstride with a horrified expression on his face.
"I, uhh," he said haltingly, "I'll go now. Just … just trying to find Jenn."
Joy gasped and whirled around, her hand clasping the front of her apron. "Oh Lordamercy, did I say that out loud?"
His bright red face clashed with the shade of his hair, and I had to bite my lips not to burst out laughing. Thankfully, his legs were long because it only took him a few strides to exit the kitchen, a proverbial cloud of dust in his wake.
I dissolved into laughter when the door swung shut, and Joy covered her face with her hands.
"I really said that in front of him, didn't I?"
"Yes."
She groaned. "I'll never be able to face him again, Joss."
Suddenly, my morning didn't seem all that bad, so I laid a hand on her arm. "Hey, don't worry about it. Seriously. You're a grown ass woman, and if you want to talk about your vibrators in public, you go right ahead."
To my absolute horror, her eyes were full of tears when she dropped her hands.
"Oh Joy, please don't cry."
"I'm not crying," she said as she started crying.
"Shit," I whispered under my breath. I locked my wheels and pushed myself up to standing so I could shuffle forward and wrap my arms around her.
"Oh, merciful Lord in heaven, you can walk!" she shrieked, jumping sideways, almost knocking me over in the process.
"Would you calm down so I can hug you?" I snapped once I'd gotten my balance. Sorry, Doctor, I didn't mean to fall over and break my leg. I was trying to awkwardly comfort a co-worker who started crying.
Joy flung herself at me, and I breathed out a laugh, patting her back with one hand while I braced myself on the counter with the other, just in case.
"You're so tall." She sniffed.
Pat, pat.
"I am."
Sniff, sniff. "I'm sorry I almost knocked you over."
I sighed. "It's okay. I did kind of spring that on you."
Joy pulled away from my hella awkward hug, wiping her face. "So you can walk?"
"Not exactly." After lowering myself back into my seat, I leaned down to straighten my feet on the footrest. "I'm working on building my leg strength, but I still don't really have much feeling from just above my knees down to my feet. So with a walker or arm braces, I can walk. On my own, I can only manage about fifteen feet right now before I need help with my balance."
"That's amazing, Joss," Joy said, eyes dry and clear, full of more than a touch of admiration. That always made me feel twitchy, and I'd never wanted to delve into why. As if I should be handed a trophy because my body did something I had no control over. I didn't feel like there was anything about me worth admiring, other than that I was living, like everyone else.
We all had shit we dealt with—things that made life hard sometimes—and mine was just simply more visible to the naked eye because I sat in it every single day. I think that was what made it seem bigger to people. Because you couldn't not be aware of it.
If Joy was lonely or depressed, she'd be able to hide that.
Someone who was anxious, stressed, or whatever it might be could paste a smile on their face, and even the people closest to them might not understand the challenges they faced every day.
My challenges were different; they involved narrow doorways and more of a workout to get dressed, skinnier legs than I would've preferred to have, and looks of pity or active ignorance.
"I think you're amazing too, Joy," I told her. She could tell I meant it, based on the shy smile covering her round, happy face. "Your parents picked a good name for you."
"Isn't that funny? I could've been the grumpiest person on the planet, but it's like they knew. I'd much rather be happy and make people happy than dwell on the awful things. Because dwelling on them doesn't make them go away."
"Aren't you insightful today?"
Joy laughed. "I guess."
I glanced at the wasted dough on the island. "I'll start over on the bread. Sorry about that."
She waved it off. "No worries. Listen, if you don't feel like sticking around, we're pretty slow today. I think because the weather is so nice, people are out enjoying it instead of loading up on sugary treats."
"What idiots," Levi said from the doorway of the kitchen.
Joy beamed at him. "Hi, Levi!"
"Good afternoon, ladies." He gave me a look. "I think you should take her advice and leave early."
"You really don't mind?" I asked Joy.
"Not at all. Besides, I think you're a danger to the well-being of the rolling pins if you stay for another two hours."
I rolled my eyes. "Ha, ha. Okay, thanks, Joy."
Levi waited patiently while I took off my apron and washed my hands.
We left through the front door, Joy sending us off with a beaming smile as Levi swept his arm in front of him to let me through the door first.
"So romantic." I heard her sigh.
I was still shaking my head when he jogged to catch up to me.
"What was with the rolling pin comment?" he asked.
I pushed down hard to be able to keep his pace. "Nothing."
He gave me an epic side-eye, but I didn't answer.
We passed two women who couldn't have been much older than me, and they both smiled widely at Levi, complete with hair flounce and obvious arching of the chest area.
Nope, I couldn't answer Levi. That man had probably never been turned down in his entire life, so there was no way I was going to lay out my pathetic attempt with Andrew during the one time I'd ever asked someone out.
"Your brain is working awfully hard over there," he said casually.
"What was your first date like?" I heard myself ask, not even aware that I was going to ask it until the words were out. Suddenly, I wanted to know.
"Geez, like, very first?"
He thought for so long that my annoyance popped up like a damn jack-in-the-box. Because clea
rly, he'd been on so many dates over the years that his tiny, pea-sized male brain couldn't filter through them all?
My hand shoved down hard again, gripping the circle outside the wheel so tight that my fingers almost got caught in the spokes. Great. Now I was making rookie mistakes.
"Yeah, first-first date, where you have no clue what you're doing and everything feels huge and important." Or so I imagined. "You know what? Never mind."
My pace was slightly faster than his, but he caught up with a couple of quick steps. "Hold up, Sonic, what's this about?"
"Nothing," I snapped. A curl fell out of my ponytail, and I shoved it ruthlessly behind my ear. "Never mind."
"Stop." He laughed. "Just give me a second, okay? It's not like I think about my first date often. I'm old, and my memory sucks."
I stopped, giving him a look over my shoulder. "You're hardly senile. You're twenty-three."
Levi sighed, propping his hands on his hips. "I was sixteen, and I asked Katie Sue Wright to the movies. She was in my algebra class, and I thought she was the prettiest girl in school. I picked her up, bought her popcorn, and she tried to shove her hands down my pants before the previews ended."
My nose scrunched up. "Seriously?"
"We hadn't even kissed yet." He set a hand on his chest. "I was traumatized."
I snorted. "Yeah, right. I'm sure you put up a valiant fight."
"Considering a young family was sitting right next to us, yeah, I politely yanked her hand out of my Calvin Kleins and told her that it wasn't the place to make a man out of me."
This time, I laughed because I could imagine his horrified expression pretty well. That was only a couple of years before he and I would've met. He seemed so smooth back then, so sure of himself.
Just like that, the proverbial bomb went off over my stupid, senile head.
I blinked. Levi had been turned down. I turned him down.
Holy mother effing shit, I'd turned down Levi Buchanan once upon a time. The fact that he'd asked me, that he could've been my first date, a full five years earlier, knocked the breath from me.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing," I answered in an absentminded tone. "Just thinking about something I'd forgotten."
Back then, I'd told him I wasn't in the right head space to date, and I hadn't been. It took a solid eighteen months after sitting in my chair for the first time to stop thinking about things like catheters and bed sores and needing to be turned when I slept and learning how to navigate the world. About how to exit buildings with no ramps or elevators. About how to pay attention to the parts of my body that I couldn't feel but still needed to be taken care of. There was no way I would've been a good dinner date back then. It made sense that I said no, at the time. And it brought me his friendship, which I could never, ever do without.
But looking up at him now, I felt irrationally furious with myself.
All this self-pity about Andrew, when he had a perfectly justifiable reason to say no to me, was ridiculous. Here I was, so wrapped up in what hadn't worked out at my request that I'd forgotten about the things I'd turned down. The opportunities I'd been given and had passed up.
"What about you?" Levi asked.
"What?" There was a fire in my belly, stoked higher and higher the more I thought about it.
He started walking, and I followed. "Your first date."
Immediately, I stopped again, gaping up at him. "Give me a break."
Levi turned to me. "What?"
Maybe I didn't have flames shooting out of my eyeballs because he gave no indication he could see the bright anger making my skin melt.
"You know I've never been on a date, you insensitive ass," I snapped. And okay, Levi was apparently my new scapegoat for my internalized anger that I couldn't unload on myself. "And apparently, I never will because men are stupid."
His mouth fell open.
I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away. If there was a list of most irrational creatures on God's green earth, I just took the top spot. But I could no more calm myself down than I could cap an erupting volcano with my bare hands. Oh no, the lava was a-spewing, falling out of my mouth with a hiss and spit and a scratch.
"Jocelyn Marie Abernathy," he said calmly.
I closed my eyes. "Shut up, Levi. I know how I sound right now."
He got closer; I could hear him. His hands landed on my armrests, and I pinched my eyes shut tighter, blocking out even the slightest glimpse of him as the sun beat down on us.
"Look at me, Sonic."
"No."
Then he did the worst possible thing he could've done. Gently, so very, very gently, he ran the edge of his thumb over the arch of my eyebrow where my forehead was probably wrinkled from the effort to keep my eyes shut. If he'd commanded, I could've ignored. If he'd pounded away at my defenses with a hammer or chisel, I would've been able to mute him.
But the gentleness slipped through the hairline crack in my anger like a fog, and I couldn't stop it. He did it again, a slow swipe over my eyebrow and along my hairline, and I felt my face relax with every centimeter of skin that he touched.
When my eyelids lifted, a devastatingly handsome smile split his face.
"What?" I asked suspiciously.
He crouched down so we were eye level, and I hated how that made the backs of my eyes burn. "I'd love to take you out to dinner tomorrow night if you're available."
"What?" I whispered.
My heart flip-flopped as he searched my eyes.
"You heard me."
Cocky ass. My thoughts must have stamped across my face because he tipped his head back and laughed.
"Do you have plans tomorrow night?" he asked.
I pushed my tongue against the inside of my cheek while I studied his face. "No."
"Good. You get dressed up, I'll pick you up at six, and I'll take you out for a nice dinner." His tone brooked no arguments.
I swallowed and found myself nodding. "Okay."
He stood, clapping his hands. "Good."
"Good," I repeated dumbly.
"Wipe that look off your face, Sonic." He started strolling, his hands tucked into his front pockets. "It'll be great."
I was still locked in place as I watched him walk toward his truck.
"What the hell just happened?" I whispered when I knew he couldn't hear me.
Chapter 15
Jocelyn
"What are you going to wear?"
My mom sat on the edge of my bed, twisting my hair into a complicated knot of tiny braids and curls anchored at the base of my skull. Normally, there wasn't much to be done with my hair, but when I told her Levi was taking me out to dinner, my "practice first date" so to speak, she threw herself into it in a way that had me side-eyeing her all damn day.
Since I couldn't move my head, I'd been staring at my closet for the past fifteen minutes while she worked.
"Maybe the blue V-neck. The silk one with the flowy sleeves, and my nice dark jeans."
"Jeans on a first date." She clucked her tongue. "Fix it, Jesus."
Her Southern belle came out swinging when she was confused. I winced when she tugged on a chunk of hair with a misplaced bobby pin.
"Ow."
"Sorry," she mumbled. "Goodness, no wonder you never do your hair. I can hardly see what I'm doing in all these curls."
Ahh, there was the first minor sideswipe of the day. We'd made it all day, which was pretty good for us.
I didn’t answer because I was determined to stay in a good mood until I was out the door with Levi. There was no way I would let her ruin this for me.
"I don't want to wear a dress," I said, directing us back to the clothing situation.
Behind me, she was quiet, because she knew why I didn't want to wear a dress.
"Your legs aren't that skinny. I think it would be fine." Another bobby pin stabbed me, and I hissed in a breath. "Besides, it's just Levi. He doesn't care what your legs look like."
I'd once heard someone say Be t
he thermostat, not the thermometer. Set the bar for your reaction instead of allowing outside circumstances to tell you what the temp was.
Today, I'd be the fucking thermostat if it killed me.
It wasn't even that she was wrong because I knew Levi didn't judge my chicken legs. It was that she couldn't understand that it was about what was in my head and not what anyone else thought.
"There," she said, standing up from the bed. "Looks good. Want me to help you get dressed?"
"No, thanks."
Her sigh was heavy, like I'd managed to offend her because I didn't accept her offer, and hoo boy, I let that slide in one ear and riiiiight out of the other.
"I manage just fine every day, Mom. I have for years."
"Just trying to make things easier on you, Jocelyn," she said, words crisp and cold. "It's my job. I can't really turn it off."
I didn't say anything until she was facing me. Nero sat up, his head moving back and forth between her and me. A small whine came out as if he knew she was upsetting me, and it made him uncomfortable.
"I know, Mom." What I wanted to say was that her babying me, treating me like I wasn't capable, only made things hard in the long run. But that would only trigger the same conversation we'd had forty-seven thousand times in the past seven years. "Thank you for offering."
Oh, look at that! I didn't even choke on the words. I was the best freaking thermostat ever.
She nodded, not meeting my eyes. "I'd try that black shirt. The one with the lace sleeves and the boat neck. Lots of mascara. It'll make your eyes pop."
My smile was tentative. "Good idea."
It was a good date shirt.
She smiled back and left me to finish getting ready.
I almost wish she'd stayed, so she could watch me. That was the thing she didn't realize. The system I had down, the way I shifted from chair to bed to pull up my pants, or how easily I could reach the things I needed in my closet, it was something I didn't even have to think about anymore.
I leaned toward the mirror, mouth open because who could put on mascara without their mouth open, and I made a few choppy swipes on my lashes. Then a few more.
It was so rare for me to wear makeup that even the thick black coat of liquid over a tiny row of curled hair made me stare at my reflection.
The Love at First Sight Box Set Page 13
