Meet Cute Club (Sweet Rose Book 1)

by Jack Harbon

  Almost reluctantly, Rex climbed the stairs to the second storey of the house, then a separate staircase that led to the attic. In the left corner of the room stood a few large boxes that he needed to finish, but after that, he’d be free.

  He made easy work inspecting the largest boxes. Each of them contained baby clothes and some of the toys he and Amy left behind when they spent summers at the house. He pulled a worn-down action figure from inside and smiled, wiping away the dust on his face with his thumb. If Rex thought hard enough, he could still hear the way Amy would make him play with dolls despite their sizeable age gap. He always made an exception for her, but only after Nana encouraged him to spend time with her.

  “She’s the only sister you’ve got,” he said aloud, thinking back to her favorite phrase. “You better cherish her before it’s too late.”

  He tossed the toy back into the box and scooted it aside, squatting down to open the smaller one beside it. Beneath albums and albums of photos of her as a child up until she was in her eighties, Rex found an unmarked leather book. He flipped through it curiously, and when he began to read it, it was obvious this had been one of Nana’s journals.

  Amongst all of her other hobbies, writing was something the woman had done frequently. Not a night went by that she hadn’t put her thoughts on paper, retelling her day to a book that no one would ever read. Well, no one other than Rex.

  Most of the book appeared to be quite uneventful, but as he approached September, he realized where he was in time. His parents had just split, and though Alan always hated it, Nana Bailey had taken him and Phoebe in. The entries grew noticeably longer as Rex continued to read, and rather than giving general overviews of her day, Nana Bailey dug deep.

  She spoke about Alan like she had faith in him. No matter how terrible he was, she’d always yearned for him to make the right decision. It both incensed Rex and shattered his heart that she never lost hope in Alan. No matter how many times he fucked up, she was always there to cheer him on and tell him to do better. Make better decisions.

  “I just don’t want Rexy to see any of this,” she’d written sometime in August. “He’s not that old, but I can see it on his face. He may not understand all the details about Phoebe and Alan’s situation, but he knows something is wrong. Watching his parents fight can’t be good for him, I don’t think.”

  Rex stopped reading and looked away, flooded with memories of the shouting matches his parents got into. All the nights Alan had shown up at Nana’s home, drunk off his ass, demanding that Phoebe give him back his son. The times he cried in his mother’s arms, begging her to go back to Alan and not understanding why she wouldn’t make the family whole again.

  He understood now. She’d fought for years to keep things together, but it was Alan that had ruined everything. He had a knack for that the same way Rex did.

  “I’m worried that if they don’t figure this out, Rexy won’t ever get to see what a healthy relationship looks like. They say that can happen when a child witnesses a nasty divorce. They get so used to fighting and anger that they think love is like that. The only thing that could break my heart more than what Alan’s done is if Rexy suffers from it too. I can’t let him think love isn’t real, or that it means always being hurt.”

  “Nana,” he whispered, pressing his fingers hard against the aged pages of the journal. He traced the cursive letters, grounding himself. But that wasn’t what brought his emotions past the point he could control them. It was the rest of the entry, the way Nana Bailey swore to herself that she would spend every second of every day showing Rex what love looked like that had him dotting the pages of her diary with his tears. How she went into detail in nearly every entry about all the ways she’d do it. Spending time with him and Amy. Taking him down to the library and reading for hours with him. Making sure he knew that he would always have her heart.

  He’d always been blind to it, or assumed that was just what grandmothers did. They spoiled their grandchild rotten because they didn’t have to be around them at their worst. But not Nana. She’d been there through it all, every bitter fight and broken dish, determined to show him that it was all worth it.

  It wasn’t all bullshit the way Rex had assumed. Maybe his father was incapable of seeing it, but Rex could see it perfectly. He knew what love looked like. He knew what kind of sacrifice it took. The strength needed to promise someone that no matter how rough the future for them might get, they would bear it all together.

  All she’d wanted was for him to find love, to find someone to care about the way she cared for him, and he’d utterly, royally fucked it all up. Rex considered himself relatively intelligent, but in this particular moment, he felt so goddamn stupid.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Amy like muscle memory. Just like he assumed something was wrong whenever she called, Amy answered the phone with a wary, “Rex? What’s wrong?”

  “I need your help, Ames. I screwed up really fucking bad.”

  Fifteen

  “So, let me get this straight… He didn’t tell none of y’all why we’re over here so goddamn early in the morning?” Omar asked.

  “No! All he told me was that he needed my help, and to call everyone else up and see if they were willing to help too.” Amy seemed just as confused as the rest of them. Rex couldn’t blame them. He’d been a bit vague when he told Amy that he needed her help. All he’d said was that he’d screwed up with Jordan and desperately needed to fix the situation. That was more than enough for her, given how invested in their…relationship she was. Well, what relationship they’d once had.

  Rex hadn’t been able to sleep a bit since he’d found Nana’s journal, his mind racing with all the ways he could fix this. He spent nights tossing and turning, and his nightmares were all about Jordan rejecting him each time he tried to apologize. It was clear that he had to do something big. Something to show Jordan that he saw how wrong he was, how confused he’d been. It was a stupid mistake, leaving him like that, and now he was willing to jump out of a plane without a parachute if it meant earning his forgiveness.

  That was why he carried two giant handfuls of flyers outside to his front porch where all of his friends were. Omar looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, as well as Amy, Lana, and Charles, but Gloria and Madeline were dressed to the nines. Of course, the two morning birds would show up looking as beautiful as ever.

  “There he is,” Amy said. “What the hell took you so long? I’m out here having to play damage control for everyone. Omar’s pissed,” she said in a hushed voice, looking over her shoulder.

  “Omar’s always pissed,” Rex replied, raising his voice so the man could hear.

  “Damn right. What are we even doing, man?”

  “Well, Madeline told me that Jordan said Meet Cute Club was on hold indefinitely, and I’m not going to let that happen. It’s my fault that he gave up hope on it. I ruined it when he and I…” He struggled to find the words, but thankfully—or unluckily in Rex’s case—Amy seemed more than happy to fill in the gaps for the others.

  “When he and Jordan broke up.”

  Gloria’s eyes lit up as she said, “I knew it!”

  Madeline nodded. “I figured that was what the problem was. You skipped the last meeting, and Gloria told me you were waiting for him outside afterwards. You fucked up big time, buddy. Like, huge. Honestly, I’d be surprised if Jordan ever looked at you again.”

  “Hey, Madeline?” Rex said.

  “Hm?”

  “You’re not helping.” Madeline cracked a bashful smile, and Rex held back a deep sigh. “I’m going to fix this, but I need all of your help. Omar, I know you and Amy don’t care about this club, but you’ve met Jordan. You know how passionate he is about this stuff.”

  “Kind of nerdy,” Omar muttered.

  “Kind of?” Amy snorted.

  Rex narrowed his eyes at both of them. “Amy, you collect anime figurines, and Omar has every Marvel movie in a glass case in his living room. Neither o
f you get to call anyone nerdy.” That shut both of them up, if only for a moment. Then Amy nudged Lana and whispered,

  “Look at him defending his boyfriend.”

  “It’s so cute,” Lana snickered.

  Rex made it a point to ignore that comment, determined to get this ragtag group back in line. “Guys, this is serious. I need everyone to bring their A game today. Jordan is the one that brought us all together. He made this club and kept it running, even when he was terrified it was going to fizzle out for good. He spent hundreds of dollars baking, buying books, and making sure everything looked great for us. Omar, he promoted you when we were handing out flyers, and Amy, he gave you yet another thing to tease me about.”

  “I respect him for that,” Amy said.

  “We owe it to him to bring this club back from the dead. We need to go harder than before. I’m talking chasing people through back alleys trying to get them to agree to come to at least one meeting. Don’t take no for an answer, you hear me? Asses in seats, that’s what we need.”

  Omar gave another sigh, but took a chunk from the stack in Rex’s left hand. “One day, I’mma get tired of saving your little ass whenever you screw up,” he said.

  “But today’s not that day,” Rex remarked. He divvied up the rest of the flyers between the five people on his porch, then checked the time on his phone. “We’ll split up and section off the town. Three on East Sweet Rose and four on West. West is bigger, so we’ll need an extra person to help with that. It’s eight right now, so we’ll meet back up at my house at noon for lunch. If we still need to hand out more flyers, then that’s what we’ll do, okay? Sound good?”

  “Sounds great,” Madeline said, hand on her hip. “I want the OG members of Meet Cute Club.”

  “Perfect,” Rex said. It would be easier for them to all work together since they’d known each other the longest. Omar and Amy were still strangers, and he would have a better chance of keeping them all in line than anyone else in the club.

  “Let’s fucking do this,” Lana said, clapping loudly and heading back to her car. The rest of the group split up and headed off. Amy and Omar stayed on the porch with Rex, where she said,

  “We can all take my car. I don’t think we’ll all fit on the back of Rex’s motorcycle.”

  “Not unless both of y’all wanna sit in my lap,” Omar muttered.

  When Amy smirked and opened her mouth, Rex splayed his fingers and planted his hand on her face. “Don’t you even start, brat,” he said. She laughed and followed the two to her car, sliding into the driver’s seat and buckling up.

  With everyone as hyped up as he could get them, Rex was only now starting to feel the pressure of this. He had so much to do, so many miracles to pull off, to get back in Jordan’s good graces. He knew apologies were one thing, but the best apology was action, and dammit, he was going to do something about Meet Cute Club’s indefinite pause.

  This wasn’t all, though. Handing out flyers and getting the word out there was one thing, but when the others finally took a long look at the papers in their hands, they’d see the small alterations he’d made to the location where the club met, and more than that, there was an added line at the bottom that he knew would come as a surprise to all of them.

  He had to go all out.

  Jordan deserved his romance novel finale, the moment where all eyes were on him as Rex bared his soul and groveled at his feet for forgiveness. For anyone else, he would’ve scoffed at the idea. What did he look like, embarrassing himself like that? He was Rex fucking Bailey. But when it came to Jordan, he was Rhett, who now knew what love looked like and refused to let his own baggage get in the way of something he and Jordan both deserved.

  He didn’t care if he had to go on live TV and make a statement.

  He was getting his man back.

  If there was one thing Jordan was fantastic at, it was slipping into routines. Back in the day, his school counselor told him that he had a special talent for finding his niche and sticking to it. Routines were easy for him. They required little to no thinking, and at times, it felt almost automated. Working at Snapdragon Energy had become that for him.

  In the week and a half that he’d been working the front desk, he’d already put together a simple routine. He sat down, took a long sip of his coffee, logged into his computer, slipped on his headset, and checked his emails. There were never any emails for him, of course, but he still liked to check, just in case. It was basic, nothing that was all too impressive, but going through the movements prepared him for the day, however uneventful it would be.

  “Morning, Jordan,” a woman named Lydia said as she breezed past him. Not very many employees at the company said a word to him this early in the day, so he appreciated her kindness more than she probably knew.

  “Morning!”

  At first, Jordan had anticipated being treated the same way he had at the call center. His managers had somehow found a way to make him feel completely irrelevant and imperatively integral to the company all at once. He was led to believe that his absence would mean nothing and everything at the same time. But Snapdragon was actually quite pleasant.

  The environment was nice and clean, the people were friendly once they’d all had their coffee IV drips, and the pay was substantially better than what he was making at the last place he’d worked. Sure, things got a little lonely, but the computer at his front desk was loaded with stock games like Minesweeper, as well as Candy Crush and Subway Surfers. When no one was around, he secretly opened up one of the games and entertained himself between phone calls.

  At the call center, he used to fill his free time up with reading, but since he’d stopped doing meetings for Meet Cute Club, there was really no point. He needed other hobbies, things that didn’t fill his head with fantasies most men would never live up to. He needed to be realistic. The Jordan from a few months ago would’ve scoffed at the idea, but this one? His perspective had changed, thanks to Rex.

  Denying himself the self-pitying pleasure of wallowing at the thought of Rex, Jordan zoned in on work, going through his calendar to organize all of his boss’s meetings once again. Administrative assistance was much more his speed. He didn’t have to deal with angry customers cursing him out or throwing slurs in his face, nor did he feel the same pressure of keeping Snapdragon afloat. They needed each other equally.

  At lunch, Jordan hung around the small rec room in the back of the building, stirring his cup of noodles while he listened to his coworkers talk about how one of their spouses had ruined her birthday by not mentioning it until nearly eleven o’clock that night. Lydia brushed a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and turned to Jordan.

  “What do you think, Jordan? Should Felicia forgive him for what he did?”

  He didn’t know these two ladies all that well, but not wanting to seem standoffish, he said, “I’d probably give him the silent treatment for a few days.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Lydia exclaimed. “Remind him why you deserved to have a good birthday. If he actually cares about you, he’ll find some way to make it up to you.”

  Felicia sighed and picked at her microwavable fettuccini. “I guess. I’m just worried that if I do anything too harsh, he’ll be the one upset with me.”

  “Men are trash that way,” Lydia conceded.

  Lydia had no idea how deeply Jordan related to that sentiment. Were he closer with these ladies, he probably would’ve commiserated with them about all their relationship woes, but because he still felt new to the team, he remained relatively quiet, nodding when appropriate and keeping up with their conversation from a distance.

  “So, Jordan, why did you pick Snapdragon? Most of our staff here is a bit older. Doesn’t really seem like something a younger guy would be interested in,” Felicia said, turning to him.

  “Honestly? I needed the money and couldn’t afford to be picky,” he said, cracking a smile that the other two women mirrored. “Also, I’m pretty good with older people. Sometimes I like th
em a lot more than guys my age.”

  “Ugh, an old soul. I love that,” Lydia said, reaching out to pat his shoulder. “I think it’ll be a nice change of pace to see a guy out in the front of the office. Especially one so handsome.”

  Jordan glanced at the wedding ring on her finger, then back up at her with curiosity. When she followed his line of sight, she blushed. “Don’t tell my wife I said that, okay? God, do you remember the last time Shauna came up here when she thought I was stepping out on her?”

  This launched another ten-minute conversation about Lydia’s marriage, and thankfully, it put him at ease. The last thing he needed when dealing with a broken heart was a smitten coworker and an even angrier wife barging through the lobby doors.

  After they finished their food, Jordan returned to his desk and flipped through a book he’d brought with him. It felt weird reading something other than a book about lusty maidens and mafia dons with uncomfortably high sex drives, but he wanted to branch out. Test out other genres and see what else was out there besides the books he’d been obsessed with since he was a kid.

  Jordan was so engrossed in the domestic thriller that he almost didn’t notice the front doors open when someone entered the lobby carrying the largest rose bouquet he’d ever seen. The person approached the desk, clearly unable to see, but when they plopped it down, they stuck their head out from the side of the roses, and Jordan nearly died on the spot.

  No fucking way.

  “Delivery for Jordan Collins,” the older Black woman said, pushing the bridge of her ruby red glasses higher on her broad nose. She smiled at him like she knew he knew exactly who she was.

  “P-Patricia?”

  “Jordan?”

  “Yes, yes. Oh my god, yes. What are you doing here? Is this real?” Jordan was sure he’d slipped and hit his head in the shower, and this was all a long, elaborate fantasy. There was no other explanation as to why Patricia thee Hayes was standing in front of him holding an oversized floral arrangement.