Gifted Connections 4

with pleasure. It smelled so delightful.

The cover was straightforward and very Drake. He wouldn’t have wanted anything flashy or bold. The only regret I had was that I had to use stock photos for some of his recipes as opposed to taking pictures of his actual dishes.

His name was written in gold on the bottom of the cover. I slowly flipped through the pages, and my smile grew bigger. His OCD tendencies rivaled mine except for his binders and recipe boxes. They had always been thrown together haphazardly. Now he had something that was super organized, complete with colored tabs for each category.

“He’s going to love it,” Sierra said confidently. “The plus side with him is you know you’ll have something to give him every year since he is constantly making new recipes and jotting them down.”

I laughed. “That was my thinking exactly.”

“What do you have planned for the other guys?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t feel like saying yet,” I admitted. “I tried to give all of them a personal experience versus something they’ll just open up.”

She started to giggle. “Maybe I don’t want to know, but maybe I need some ideas for Gavin.”

I laughed as we left the post office. “Let’s just put it this way… the last package I picked up from here was rather large and required me to learn something I generally would have never done in the past, but for Noah I did.”

“Does it have anything to do with that empty room you keep using and locking everyone out of when you’re in there?” Sierra covered her mouth her eyes wide with curiosity.

“Yes and no.” I sighed and braced myself. “You know Noah’s a dancer. Well, once…” I felt my face warming. “He did a strip tease for me, so I saw an ad for a portable stripper pole. I’ve been watching YouTube videos, and it came with a DVD to learn how to do it. So, I’ve been teaching myself how to do that for Noah. For Jace, I’ve written him a song, and I plan to play it and sing it for him when we can go away together.”

I don’t know why I was divulging so much information to Sierra. Maybe it was because I knew she wouldn’t tease me or spill my secrets to the other girls, who seemed worldlier and knew more about relationships than I did. They were a font of information for me at times, but I wouldn’t trust them with my secrets. At least not the ones in the bedroom or when I was trying to be sweet to the guys.

“You are so creative!” Sierra enthused. “I wish I could be just as creative. Instead, I got Gavin his favorite snacks, some new clothing, and now his guitar.”

“He’s going to love it,” I insisted. “He always carries that guitar pick in his wallet, but he hasn’t played for some time. In fact…” I frowned. “I don’t think I have ever heard him play, but I imagine if he’s as humble about his guitar skills as he is about his singing, he’ll be amazing.”

Sierra paused. “Sometimes I feel like you know him more than Jemmy and I do. I didn’t even realize that he carried a guitar pick.”

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel that way. Because of the way I was raised I tend to observe people more than I probably should,” I admitted ruefully.

She laughed and shook her head as she grabbed my arm. “I’m not jealous or even mad at you. In fact, I believe if it wasn’t for you he would have stuck around. He wouldn’t have decided to take the next step with us.”

“I’m glad to see that you guys seemed to have clicked.” I smiled at her.

We went to the pawn shop next, and we immediately were accosted by the merchant behind the counter. He saw us looking at the guitars and came over to us even though his shop was pretty busy.

“Hey, ladies,” he chirped. “Anything I can help you with?” He was an older man, middle-aged, that may have been attractive in his prime, but his love for food and drink must have taken a toll on him. His belly hung over his pants and belt. He smelled like he had been drinking although I had a suspicion he was just sweating out his beer from the night before. Since we’d been standing there, I’ve observed him wipe the sweat from his brow four times.

“May I see that Seagull and Yamaha?” I asked as I leaned over the counter.

“Sure thing,” he said eagerly as he pulled them down off the wall. “Are you sure you don’t want to try out this Gibson?” He pointed to a slightly battered, pink guitar.

I shook my head. I already knew where this was going. He was seeing two young girls and was assuming we wouldn’t know what we were looking at and could easily be swayed.

“No thanks.” I shook my head, picked up the Seagull, and started to strum the guitar. It was horribly out of tune and needed new strings, but she was beautiful.

I looked at the price tag and immediately knew it was overpriced. “You need new strings for this one, and you could probably find it brand new for nearly the same price,” I told Sierra before I picked up the next guitar.

“I just restrung that myself, and you know it’s worth a lot more than what I’m asking for,” the shopkeeper blustered.

I shrugged ruefully. I knew exactly how most of these shops worked. They made their money by overcharging people for stuff they got for next to nothing. Heidi had sold Ella’s keyboard for twenty dollars to a pawn shop, and a week later it was on the sales floor for four times that much. They laughed at me when I showed them the receipt of the original purchase. Places like this had left a bad taste in my mouth.

Instead of arguing with the shopkeeper, I began to strum a few chords on the next guitar and was more impressed with this one. I played for a few more minutes before I looked at the price tag. He was still asking too much for it.

“Soooo?” Sierra asked tentatively. I saw her grimace at a price, but the other ones hanging up weren’t even worth looking at.

“I think that it’s overpriced, but it’s beautiful,” I told her. “There’s a music store on the next block. They might even have their instruments on sale for Christmas.”