“Well, what is it, and more importantly, who is it from?”
“It’s candy,” I told Mirabelle blandly as a strange feeling built in my belly. Milk Duds were inside, along with Swedish Fish, my three favorite movie theater candy as a kid. I used to mix them all together with the popcorn, a move that never failed to gross Xander out. “Xander,” I growled. He was the only person in my life who knew this information.
“Sheriff Xander?”
Shit. Mirabelle was a lovely woman, but she had a penchant for gossip and she was unapologetic about it. “No, another one,” I lied easily as the pack of lip balm, flavored like soda came into view. Back then I’d coveted the Dr. Pepper and grape soda flavored lip balm, thinking it was so fun. So cool. So normal. Beneath the lip balm were more items, but I felt too overwhelmed with the unexpected walk down Memory Lane, so I shoved everything back inside and pushed the box under the counter. “Next!”
Mirabelle laughed and looked around at the empty bakery. “So, you and Xander, huh?”
“No. Not at all.” I didn’t know what his plan was, but I intended to find out, because there was no way in hell I would let him make a fool of me twice.
The box nagged at me for the rest of my shift, and I scrubbed surfaces a little harder than I needed to, angry and frustrated that Xander couldn’t just let it go. I cursed his name and his stupid smile as I hauled the box the few blocks I had to walk home thanks to my still broken car. Coming up with an extra five hundred dollars wasn’t in my current or future budget, so the walk took a little longer than usual.
And I didn’t get to start looking for Lonnie until it was already dark out, making the task more difficult. More like impossible, I thought, after another hour and a half search turned up nothing.
A big fat nothing.
When I finally got home for the night, I took a hot shower to warm my bones and got dressed in stretch pants, a knee-length cotton nightgown and my favorite wool socks that protected my feet against the night chill. My stomach growled with a hunger I’d been ignoring in my effort to search for Lonnie and I stood in front of the fridge, staring at the emptiness and wishing I’d made time for grocery shopping.
“You can’t live on baked good without getting a bigger ass,” I said into the silent kitchen and grabbed the last of the ingredients for sandwich fixings.
The sandwich sat, untouched, as the box of goodies stared at me. Called out to me. In the end, curiosity got the better of me and I dumped the contents of the box onto my small kitchen table, smiling reluctantly. The movie theater candy and the lip balm were like being trapped in a time warp, but the handwritten words on the front of the cassette tape cover were like being yanked through the space-time continuum. By hand.
Utterly disturbing. Disorienting.
Still, I couldn’t help but smile. The memories of the best summer of my life and the worst heartbreak of my life flooded my mind, the sensations flowed over me, the humid Texas summer, first kisses and more. The jail cell. The rejection. And I stood there smiling, like the fool that I was.
I grabbed my phone and sent Xander a text before I could talk myself out of it. “Thanks for the gifts, but who the hell has a tape player in the twenty-first century?” I sat the phone on the counter and washed my hands, ready to tackle the sandwich with both hands.
The phone rang and I sighed, knowing who it was even before I looked at the screen. “Yeah?” Helen would have smacked me upside the head for answering the phone with my mouth full of food, a thought that made me laugh.
“I happen to have a tape player and I’d be happy to drop it off to you. Anytime.” Xander’s voice was smooth like butter over the phone and I had to suppress a shiver.
I shook my head at his words and his tone, unable to believe I was actually entertaining saying yes. “You don’t have to do that, Xander.”
“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want, Mara. But I’m offering to do it, so I must want to.”
Logic he knew I couldn’t argue. “Still, it’s late and I was just about to sit down to dinner.”
He laughed. “Sounds like you’ve already started eating dinner.”
“Maybe,” I said around another bite of turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato with just a little too much mayo.
“Besides, if I don’t bring you the tape player, how will you listen to the mix tape I made just for you?”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”