by Blair Grey
But that made sense, I supposed. A lack of furniture was something material. Something easily rectified. The loneliness that I was noticing now, around the place, was something different. Something much more difficult to change.
Whatever my thoughts and feelings were, though, we had made it to Friday afternoon already, and not only had Landon not stopped by my house, but he hadn’t stopped by the pharmacy either. I forced back the bitterness and shoved that mental box with my memories of him just a little deeper inside of my mind. I had to forget about him. I just had to.
“Are you going to be all right without me for the rest of the day?” Donald asked me, startling me out of my thoughts. I looked at the clock and rolled my eyes.
“Yes, Donald, I think I can manage for the final twenty minutes of the day without you,” I told him. “Especially on a Friday afternoon.”
“Okay,” Donald said, raising an eyebrow at me. I could see him preparing to call me out for being such a bitch to him, but finally, he let it slide. “I just know that you’ve been doing some stuff in the back today and didn’t want you to worry about leaving the front unmanned.”
It was actually nice of him to ask, but there was a reason we weren’t both on the shift for the rest of the afternoon: we just weren’t both needed. The place was dead.
“Go ahead and get out of here,” I said to Donald. “I’ll see you next week.”
“Yeah, see you next week,” Donald said. For once, he didn’t stick around regaling me with tales of what he was planning for the weekend. Just as well, I didn’t want to know.
He’s probably going on a date, my inner voice reminded me snidely. I hadn’t heard anything more about Donald’s date from the previous weekend, but again, I didn’t want to know. If he was going on another date with her this weekend, all the better for him. I really couldn’t care less.
Except that thinking of dates made me think of Landon, which meant that I continued to wonder why he hadn’t come to see me again. It had definitely sounded like he intended to after we had breakfast together. He’d asked when he could see me again, and I’d told him that this wasn’t such a good idea, but he’d said that he wasn’t ready to give up yet.
I had thought that that meant something.
But what if he had met someone else over the course of the week? I had to assume that I wasn’t the only person he went out and did things with. If nothing else, there was his brother. Maybe they had gone out to a bar together one night, and Landon had met someone new. Someone who wasn’t as emotionally closed off as me. Someone who was easier for him. Someone who wasn’t afraid to like him and to be liked by him.
I hated the thought of that, if I was being honest. But it wasn’t fair to him. I couldn’t ask him to stay celibate for as long as he lived in Sarasota, all because I hadn’t been able to make up my mind about what I wanted.
The truth was, I was starting to realize that I knew exactly what I wanted. Him. And that fucking terrified me.
So what if he had found someone else. I should be happy for him. Instead, I just felt hollow inside. I was tempted to call Lina and see what she was up to that night. I felt like I had screwed up one of the best chances I’d ever had at love. But a bigger part of me didn’t want Lina to see me like this. She would know that she had been right. That Mr. Right had been there in front of my nose and I had ignored it. Now look where that had gotten me.
I couldn’t stop imagining Landon with other girls, as I continued to work through the back room. It turned out I didn’t need to worry, though.
I was in the back room doing some deep cleaning when I heard the bells tinkle above the front door. I hoped it was just Donald coming back for something that he had forgotten. I didn’t think I had the energy or the patience to deal with a customer right now.
But when I got back to the front counter, I saw it was neither of those things. Instead, Landon was there waiting for me. I stared at him, slowly wiping off my hands on my apron. “How can I help you?” I asked suspiciously, trying to pretend like my heart wasn’t trying to hammer its way out of my chest.
“Nothing in particular,” Landon said smoothly, grinning at me and coming closer. “I just wanted to spend some unattached friend time with you. I figured you probably wouldn’t be so busy since it’s Friday afternoon.”
“Yeah, well, you figured wrong,” I said in a gruff. “Just because I don’t have any customers in here, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty to do.”
Landon seemed taken aback by my tone. But he quickly recovered. “So let me help you,” he said, a challenge in his voice.
“I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head.
“Why not?”
I cast about for a reason other than “because I can’t spend any more time with you.”
“Because I can’t pay you!” I finally blurted out.
Landon laughed, looking like the cat that had got the cream. “Sure you can,” he said. “You can come have dinner with me after your shift ends tonight.”
I stared at him for a long moment. I couldn’t exactly go back on that now. Otherwise, it would seem too much like I was just trying to get rid of him. And for some reason, I didn’t want him to realize that. I didn’t want him to realize the effect that he had on me. If he did, I didn’t know what I would do.
He would never give up on this silly quest to date me if he knew that I was already rapidly developing feelings for him. And that would only end one way: with me in tears. I was sure of it.
So instead, I finally nodded at him. “We’ll see how well you listen,” I told him. Was that enough to get me out of this still? Did I even truly want to get out of having dinner with him? I wasn’t sure on either count.
“Just tell me what you need me to do,” Landon said, grinning easily at me.
“You can start by cleaning the windows and mopping up out here,” I told him. “Supplies are back here, under the cash register. Blue bottle is for windows, purple is the stuff for the floor.”
“Sounds good,” Landon said, as though he couldn’t think of anything better to do with the rest of this day than help me clean up the pharmacy.
I shook my head and returned to the back to finish up what I was doing there. But really, I was just trying to put as much space as I could between Landon and me. Otherwise, I was going to march right up to him and fall into his arms, kissing him mindlessly. That was what I really wanted to do.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left for me to do in the back room. I had planned things so that I would spend the rest of the time I had cleaning up front. Doing the tasks that I currently had Landon assigned to. I sighed and headed out there, hating the idea of standing around doing nothing while he worked away doing my jobs out front. This wasn’t Huckleberry Finn, after all.
I started scrubbing down the countertops and shelves, trying to concentrate on that task and not the fact that Landon was there not ten feet away from me, expertly mopping the floor until it shone like it never had before.
“Were you in here by yourself for the whole day again?” Landon asked as we worked.
I shook my head. “Nah,” I said. “Donald left right before you came in. No point in having two of us on payroll for the end of the day, not when it’s so dead. He’s not much good at cleaning anyway.”
Landon laughed. “Not to be a dick, but what exactly is he good at? Because he couldn’t find that prescription when Braxton and I first came in here, and that’s the only time I’ve seen him even try to do something.”
I grinned over at him. “He’s pretty good at picking up girls,” I said ruefully. “That seems to be what he’s up to most of the time he’s in here.” Then I shook my head. “But that’s mean of me to say. He’s actually really smart. He does his job well around here. And it helps to have some added muscle, with some of the stuff that we need to restock.”
“Huh,” Landon said. He shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s good.” He paused. “It must get lonely when you’re working in here on y
our own, though, right?”
I sighed and shrugged, rubbing at a spot on the counter that had been there for years. One of these days, I was going to get it to come out. It was a good distraction anyway. “To be honest, I’m pretty used to being alone,” I admitted. “Like I told you before, I have no siblings, and my dad ran out on me when I was still young. It’s pretty much been me against the world for as long as I can remember.”
There had been a brief interlude when that hadn’t been quite so true, but he didn’t need to know about that. I didn’t even like to talk about my ex with Lina, and I definitely wasn’t ready to start digging up the old bones with Landon. We might be becoming friends, or maybe something more than that, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to dredge up those memories.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Landon said sincerely. “To be honest, I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. I’ve always had Braxton there. And we have a younger sister as well. And our parents. And dogs, always three or four of them, for the whole time I was growing up.” He grinned at me. “It was the best kind of chaos.”
I couldn’t help grinning right back at him. “I can imagine,” I said, even though quite frankly I couldn’t. But that was the kind of family I had always dreamed of having one day. Back when I’d thought that I was going to one day get married. I’d wanted to have kids. I’d wanted to have someone to start a life together with.
But that was never going to happen. I realized that. If anything, I was just going to be the crazy old lady with more cats than could fit in her lap.
“What do you think?” Landon asked, drawing me back out of my morose thoughts. He leaned against the mop. “How’re these floors looking? You need me to mop in the back too?”
I looked around, wishing I could find even one spot that he had missed. I didn’t know why I wanted that so badly. If I didn’t want to go to dinner with him, all I had to do was say so.
But the truth was, I really did want to go to dinner with him. “The floors look great,” I told him, trying my best to sound happy about it. But I was still thinking about families and children and things that I would never have.
“Anything else you need me to do?” Landon asked, scanning the pharmacy.
“Nah, that’s probably it for both of us,” I said, tossing my rag back into its bucket. “Let me lock up, and we can get out of here.”
“Sure thing,” Landon said, waiting by the door for me. “What do you say?” he asked when I emerged from the back room with my jacket and the keys. “You owe me dinner tonight, don’t you? I did my best to listen.”
I smiled at him. “All right,” I agreed, “I’ll go with you.” After all, what else could I say? He had helped me out at the pharmacy, and I owed him dinner. But what’s more, I didn’t really want to go home alone, not when I was feeling so lonely like this.
He had always been good at making me laugh. Maybe I should try to relax and have a little fun tonight. Maybe it would be good for me.
19
Landon
I could tell that something was off when Anne agreed to dinner with me. But she didn’t seem particularly like she didn’t want to go to dinner with me. More like something else was bothering her. I wanted to get to the bottom of it, whatever it was. I wanted to make her laugh again.
I chose the place this time, leading her down the block from her pharmacy to a little hole-in-the-wall seafood place. Anne looked surprised at the choice. “To be honest, I’ve never even been here before, and it’s been here for almost as long as I’ve been alive,” she admitted.
I blinked at her, suddenly worried. “You do like seafood, don’t you?” I asked her. Jesus, that was such a stupid thing to assume. I knew there were plenty of people out there who didn’t like seafood. Probably even plenty of people in the state of Florida who didn’t like fishing and wanted nothing to do with marine life, cooked or otherwise. I just hadn’t thought about it, though.
“Yeah, I actually love seafood,” Anne was quick to say, assuaging my fears. “I just, I don’t know. I’ve never been in here.” She gave me a nervous smile, and I was tempted to bend down and kiss her right then and there. But I could tell that she would be extra easy to spook that night, and I wanted to at least get through drinks before she decided she needed to run off.
I steered her inside the restaurant with a hand at her lower back. To my surprise, I could feel her relax more and more the longer I left my hand resting there. If I could just get her to calm down a little, to not act as though every little meeting was a promise of forever. But I supposed then she wouldn’t be Anne.
I’d spent the whole week trying to figure out how I was going to get to spend more time with her. I needed some new sort of excuse. I thought again about suggesting that we go for a ride together, but it still seemed too soon for that. She was too skittish, like a newborn colt. No, we needed to work our way up to things like that.
So that left visiting her in the pharmacy or else visiting her at home again. I didn’t want to do the latter because I didn’t want her to start thinking I was creepy, always showing up at her house. But I also didn’t need anything from the pharmacy, so it was tough to think of a good reason to visit. I had a feeling I had exhausted her professional patience by this point, and if I went in there with no reason to be there, she would just simply ask me to leave.
She had surprised me, though. She still seemed wary and guarded, but she also seemed genuinely happy to see me.
Anyway, helping her clean was a small price to pay for the opportunity to spend more time with her.
“So does all of your family still live in Las Cruces?” Anne asked while we waited for our food to arrive. She was staring off toward the back of the restaurant, watching as the cooks worked the fryers. But then, she looked back at me, locking her bewitching eyes onto mine.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to feel guilty about the sort-of lie that I had told her before. I had led her to believe that Braxton and I had had such a great upbringing. I wanted to seem safe, stable. There was still a part of me that wanted a relationship with her, even though I knew that it could never happen.
The truth was that Braxton and I had been orphaned when we were twelve. Ray had taken us in and raised us alongside Belle. And Will and all the rest of them, we’d all been there. A bunch of fucked-up kids, with the MC forming the only family that we’d ever really known. Things had gotten dramatically better for Braxton and me once Ray was looking out for us. But Belle wasn’t technically our sister, and technically my parents were dead.
It wasn’t like I could explain all of that to Anne, though. She just wouldn’t understand. It was hard for an outsider to really grasp the kind of bond that we had in the motorcycle club. For people on the outside, it made it hard for them to even imagine why we would ever want to be a part of something like this. Why we let someone like Ray boss us around, send us across the country to do the dirty work for some other dude we had never even met.
Because Ray was more like a father to me than anyone else had ever been. Because those of us who were in the MC didn’t have anywhere else to go. Cameron, Grant, Will, and Marcus, those guys were like my brothers. We were all like family. It was as simple as that.
“Who’s the one who’s thinking too much now?” Anne asked teasingly, but I could see there was a hint of concern in her eyes.
I shook my head, trying to clear it of those thoughts. “Sorry about that,” I told her.
“Don’t worry about it,” Anne said softly. “I bet it must be hard, being here with just your brother for company. You must miss the rest of them.”
“Yeah, I do,” I admitted. “But it’s also still just so exciting to be here.”
“Because of your contract labor?” Anne joked.
I laughed, watching as she relaxed even further. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Although the work stuff is part of it. But I was serious when I said that I really just wanted a change of scenery. I love New Mexico, don’t get me wrong, but every
thing was starting to feel so routine over there. Here, it’s like every new day is just that: a new day.” I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I guess that probably sounds really corny.”
“Yeah, it does,” Anne said, looking thoughtful. “But I understand what you’re saying. Remember, I’m born and raised here. Don’t I know that sometimes it can get kind of boring being stuck in a place like this for your whole life.”
“You’re not stuck here, though,” I pointed out. “You could leave. Every town in the world needs pharmacists.”
Anne laughed. “Maybe not every town,” she said. “But I suppose you’re right. I could leave if I really wanted to.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t, though. I like it here. I guess I just phrased that in a bad way. I can’t actually picture myself anywhere other than here. Is that a bad thing?”
“Not at all. Actually, that’s good,” I said. “Always good to like your hometown.” But I was a bit distracted, and I wondered if she could tell. My tongue felt curiously thick, and even when I took a sip of water, it felt like it was difficult to swallow. Alarm bells were ringing in my head already, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. What was going on? I didn’t have the slightest clue.
“Are you feeling okay?” Anne asked worriedly, clearly sensing that something was wrong.
“Yeah,” I answered hoarsely, even though I was trying to figure out what the hell was happening to me. It felt like my mouth wasn’t even big enough to hold my entire tongue anymore. But I didn’t know how to describe that.
“Uh, Landon?” Anne asked. “Are you allergic to anything? Shellfish maybe?”
“Not that I know of,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if she could understand me. My whole body felt sluggish, and my tongue still felt overly large and unwieldy.
