When We Kiss

“I know where you live.”

Giggling, I trot the rest of the way to Betty Pepper’s pack and save, running inside to deliver the goods.

“Café au lait.” André has my usual morning order waiting for me.

“And one hundred scones for you!” I hand over the plastic container, and his eyes go wide.

“A hundred?”

That makes me laugh. “Just kidding! It’s only like twenty or thirty.”

He looks inside the bin. “That’s still a lot.”

“I told her she made too many.” I grin up at him, and he gives me the squint eye.

“What’s going on with you? You haven’t been this perky in the morning since that idiot Travis left town.”

“Travis who?” I widen my eyes as if I don’t know what in the world he’s talking about.

André crosses his arms, sizing me up. “This have something to do with Deputy Tucker’s truck parked outside your house all night.”

My eyebrows rise, and I take a sip of coffee. “Mmm… Perfect. Have a great day!” I prance to the door without another word.

He only laughs, and my stomach is fizzy and bubbly thinking about bumping into Chad just now, almost kissing him, our potential nooner.

Emberly’s pulling the last batch of scones from the oven when I return to the store. “I’ll let these cool then box up half and take them to André when I run Coco to preschool.”

“Here,” I open my laptop and logon to the Oceanside Village website I designed as my class final. “I’ll put an update on the main page and do a little email blast about ‘Emberly’s famous British scones.’ That might help to move some freight.”

“Famously inauthentic,” she quips. “Speaking of, how’s the travel site going?”

“Soft launch on Wednesday.” An additional flutter is in my stomach at that announcement. “Just a few final tweaks and it’s ready.”

“You seem really peppy today.” She puts a hand on her hip and studies me. “And you’re glowing. What’s going on?”

“Just happy.” I do my best to look innocent as I add the update on the website. “I’ve been making a list of where I want to go on my personal around the world adventure. It’s probably that.”

I give my best friend a quick glance, and I can see she’s not convinced. With a shrug, she returns to drying the baking supplies. “What’s on your list?”

“New stuff since we last talked.” Shifting in my seat, I think about the new additions. “I found this island in Croatia called Vis that looks amazing.”

“Ooo,” she coos, leaning a hip against the counter. “I want to see it.”

“Let me finish this.”

“Where else?” She walks across the room to put the glass bowl on its stand under the mixer.

“The Taj Mahal…”

“Wait… I thought you’d crossed India off the list?”

I think back to when Emberly was my original partner in seeing the world. “They do have that human rights problem.” My lips twist. “If you were still going with me, I guess we’d skip it.”

“Are you trying to say it’s safer for you to go there alone?” Her brow furrows, and she grabs a smaller plastic bin and puts half the scones inside.

“I don’t know.” I am not about to say Chad wants to go with me. I’m not even a hundred percent sure how I feel about that. Everything with Chad is moving so fast. It could flame out as fast as it started. Instead, I just say, “It was fun planning with you.”

She smiles. “I wish I could go, but having Coco kind of nixed that idea for a while.”