Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
A vendor selling Colorado flag branded hats called out to us as we walked by. It was an old woman with what looked like her young granddaughter by her side. “Two-for-one deal, just for you!” she said.
I smiled at the hat vendor. “No thank you.”
“For the happy couple,” she said, with a smile and a twinkle in her eye.
Landry dropped his hand from mine immediately. “No, no,” he corrected her. “We definitely aren’t a couple.”
I felt like I’d just had the wind knocked out of me.
If it were anyone else, I’d have wondered if they were harboring some secret shame about being seen with another man. But I knew Landry had zero shame about that. I knew he’d been out and proud for a long time, and really the only shame he had was… me.
It was like he couldn’t stand to be mistaken for my boyfriend unless it was in front of his awful ex.
As we continued down the road, with Landry’s hands stuffed squarely in his pockets now, I was thrust back into reality. So much for our snowglobe.
“Found a really cool microbrewery down that street the other day,” Landry said, pointing down a quiet side street. It seemed like he was just going to brush past the awkwardness with the hat vendor. “I didn’t go inside the other day, but we could try it out now.”
I pulled in a long breath, giving him a nod. Reality was a bitch, but soon I’d be back home in California, to my life and my responsibilities and my home.
He led me down the street and we looked at the little menu of offerings outside the brewery. I tried to hide my shock as I looked over all of the prices.
Almost fifteen dollars just for a single glass of beer?
“Looks amazing, doesn’t it?” he asked.
I hesitated, but Landry seemed to gloss over the price entirely. He probably hadn’t even looked.
“I actually spent most of my remaining money this morning trying to make an angry florist happy again. I’ve got to skip the craft beer for now.”
“Oh, Jamie, I’ll buy you a drink,” Landry said, taking a step toward the door. “Come on.”
I puffed out a laugh, trying hard not to show how much the day had taken a hard turn in the last five minutes. “That’s very nice, but we should just get back. There will be beer at the wedding.”
“Not handcrafted, once-in-a-lifetime beer,” Landry said, one corner of his mouth curling up into a smile. “I said I’d buy you one, but I’ll buy you two. Three. As many as you want. You made my day better, now I want to do that for you.”
I felt a pressure building inside me.
How could he be acting so casual about this?
How could he not see how he’d made me feel, dropping my hand like it was a hot coal back there on the other street?
Landry was trying to be nice and offer me a beer, no doubt about it. At the root of it all, I wasn’t upset at Landry or at myself. It wasn’t just about the money. So many people would also kill to have hit it off the way Landry and I had, but our connection didn’t seem to hold anything special for him.
It was forming a crack inside me that made me feel like an alien dropped into an unfamiliar and hostile place. Landry and I truly were from two different worlds. Or maybe the crack had been there all along, and I’d just hoped like hell, wished like hell that I could ignore it.
“You know you want it,” Landry was saying, still with a playful, unknowing smile on his face. He reached out for my hand but I pulled away, letting out a breath.
“I… I can’t,” I said, my voice barely coming out above a whisper. I walked over toward a bench at the end of the road, stationed at the far end of a little walking park filled with snow-covered trees.
“Hey,” Landry said a few moments later as he sat down next to me on the bench, looking across toward the park. “Did I miss something? What’s going on?”
I swallowed hard over the tightness that had formed in my throat.
Not much.
I just want everything when it comes to you, and I know I can’t have any of it.
I cleared my throat. “This might sound weird, but I’m just going to say it. Um,” I started, wondering if I was about to say something very stupid.
His eyes were so sympathetic it almost hurt. “Go ahead, Jamie.”
“Usually I like my life,” I said. “I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve gotten good with money. I’ve made peace with the fact that my mother will never be a high earner, and my house will never be perfect, and I’ll never be able to whisk off to Europe on a whim whenever I feel like it.”