by Pippa Grant
Levi: My mother’s sleeping. Don’t tell her.
Ingrid: You sound like a teenager.
Levi: I know. *eye roll emoji* *shh emoji* *bandaged head emoji* *rock star emoji*
Ingrid: Your emoji game is a little weak. Portia’s pre-teen could kick your ass in emoji speak.
Levi: I’ll concede to the pre-teen emoji master if you’ll tell me what you want to eat when I take you to dinner.
Ingrid: Anything hot that’s supposed to be hot and cold that’s supposed to be cold?
Levi: Very picky of you.
Ingrid: I know. The squirrel is chastising me right now for dreaming too big.
Levi: Ignore the squirrel. Have you ever had Italian gelato?
Ingrid: I have three pounds on my hips made exclusively of Italian gelato.
Levi: The real stuff? From Italy?
Ingrid: I was in the Army for about eight years. My first duty station was in Germany. I used to spend half my leave and every four-day weekend touring Europe. I’d come home on holidays with my suitcases stuffed full of treats.
Levi: Favorite country?
Ingrid: Ah, I see you’re starting with the easy questions. *laughing emoji* You first.
Levi: Definite toss-up between Portugal, Austria, and Iceland. Possibly Italy. Or Norway. Assuming you’re asking favorite European country, as opposed to favorite country on the planet.
Ingrid: An easy decision then.
Levi: Ah, I forgot Romania. Add it to the list of favorites…
Ingrid: I’d find a friend and we’d hop a quick flight to wherever just to dip our toes in the Mediterranean, or to wander around Paris and eat croissants, or to stuff ourselves full of gelato for every meal for two days. And now I miss Europe.
Levi: It’s still there.
Ingrid: Maybe after Hudson survives childhood…
Levi: I give him an eighty-nine percent chance.
Ingrid: That’s highly optimistic of you. *smiley face emoji*
Levi: And once again, you’ve managed to not tell me what you like to eat.
Ingrid: Sleep.
Levi: You like to eat sleep?
Ingrid: STEAK. OMG. My fingers malfunctioned.
Levi: Are you blushing right now?
Ingrid: Possibly.
Levi: Pic or it didn’t happen.
Ingrid: You want a picture of me.
Levi: I can either ask or hit Google.
Ingrid: You wouldn’t seriously Google me.
Levi: *winking emoji*
Ingrid: Stop, or you’re going to get a picture of a beet with eyes.
Levi: *selfie filter that makes his face shaped like a triangle with the pointy end on top*
Ingrid: OMG, I just snorted so loud I think I woke one of my kids.
Levi: Your turn.
Ingrid: *selfie filter that makes her look like a big-eyed bunny rabbit*
Levi: *selfie filter that squishes his face and makes it wide and flat*
Ingrid: *selfie filter that makes her look old and wrinkled with big glasses and a pile of white curly hair*
Levi: *selfie filter that rearranges his features and makes his nose look like a penis coming out of his mouth*
Levi: Oh, shit. Delete that. I didn’t look at it. That’s my nose. I swear to god, that’s my nose.
Ingrid: I AM CRYING. *laughing emoji*
Levi: Shit. Don’t cry. It’s my nose.
Ingrid: *gif of a woman laughing so hard she slides off her chair*
Levi: I’m giving this app one star.
Ingrid: No! Give it five. I’m laughing so hard I got the hiccups.
Levi: Do I need to worry your friend will track me down and threaten me for sending you unsolicited dick pics?
Ingrid: No, she’d leave that to her husband. He’s Mr. May in the Copper Valley Firefighter calendar.
Levi: I am officially out-classed.
Ingrid: I’m wearing ketchup and just noticed a sticky hand about to fall off my ceiling right over my head. You are NOT out-classed.
Levi: The last time I watched Tripp’s kids, I left with a yogurt-covered raisin in my ear, a new hairdo courtesy of Emma and mayonnaise, and apple juice spilled all over the front of my white jeans.
Ingrid: 1. Never fall asleep while watching children, and 2. The white jeans needed to go. They did you a favor.
Levi: WHAT? I love my white jeans.
Ingrid: You do you, boo.
Levi: What’s wrong with my white jeans?
Ingrid: You have many, many other people in your life who could tell you what’s wrong with white jeans. If they choose not to, then clearly, you’re starting a fashion trend, and I need to stay out of it.
Levi: C’mon, Ingrid. You can’t tell me why I’m wrong with yodeling pickles and then not tell me why I’m wrong with white jeans.
Ingrid: *picture of Skippy the Squirrel with a filter that dresses him like Jack Sparrow*
Levi: Adorable. And you’re changing the subject.
Ingrid: White jeans are pretentious. They say “Look at me, I can wear white and sit on a park bench in a field of fresh-mowed grass and not get dirt on my ass or stains on my cuffs,” and then basically every woman who’s ever tried to wear white anything to anywhere other than her wedding or from her bedroom to her kitchen sort of hates you for being able to pull it off.
Levi: Huh. I thought you were going to say they made me look like I was trying too hard to be European.
Ingrid: I can’t even buy white underwear. It somehow gets stained with mud and blue Gatorade too.
Levi: This is where you’ll notice I’m not asking what color your underwear is. That’s third-text-date material.
Ingrid: Text-date?
Levi: Text-date. It’s where we flirt over text before I take you out for a steak dinner.
Ingrid: Are we flirting?
Levi: You sent me a picture of your pirate squirrel. We are definitely flirting.
Ingrid: This is where I’m not freaking out over realizing just how innuendo-filled the words “pirate squirrel” are, or the images they’re causing my brain to conjure.
Levi: Ah, does your… squirrel… frequently need an eye patch or a peg leg?
Ingrid: I’m gonna let you answer that one about the peg leg for yourself.
Levi: *gif of a pirate with a peg leg*
Ingrid: That’s not the kind of “peg leg” that my brain conjured.
Levi: Oh. OH.
Ingrid: Excuse me for a second. I need to ask Portia to raise my kids since I’m about to go die from embarrassment over this conversation.
Levi: Don’t be embarrassed. It’s really not fair that women need peg legs when all guys need is their hand.
Ingrid: Maybe you can talk to the people in power about that.
Levi: For you? Absolutely. So, dinner tomorrow night?
Ingrid: Piper has therapy until five, then Zoe has gymnastics until seven, and Hudson doesn’t have anything, but he gets cranky on Mondays since waiting at gymnastics isn’t his favorite thing, which means dinner and bed will be a chore that I wouldn’t hand off to my worst enemy.
Levi: Thursday?
Ingrid: Penny for Your Thoughts hosts Hot Mess Book Club Thursday nights. Last week was self-help book club. This week’s the romance book club. We’re discussing Nora Dawn’s How To Train Your Vampire. If you crash it, I truly will die, and not in the good way that I die with my peg leg, because there will definitely be at least thirty minutes dedicated to discussing the awkward sex scene, and I don’t talk about awkward sex scenes until the second text-date.
Levi: A challenge. I like it.
Ingrid: Do NOT make me call Giselle. I’ll ask her to temporarily maim you, and I honestly think she’d do it for me.
Levi: She definitely would. But I mean coordinating calendars is a challenge. Not the challenge to not crash your book club. Which I won’t do.
Ingrid: Oh my god, you’re going to crash it, aren’t you?
Levi: No.
Ingrid: I’m texting Gi
selle and asking for your mom’s phone number too.
Levi: You don’t trust me?
Ingrid: I’m still figuring you out.
Levi: I’m simple. Write music, play instruments, eat good food that I sometimes cook myself, shake my booty, shoot hoops, hire spies to find out everything there is to know about my mother’s secret boyfriend, and play poker with my lifelong friends every chance I get.
Ingrid: Nothing’s that simple.
Levi: Right. I forgot – I buy terrible presents for my family too.
Ingrid: Did you do something horrible and need to improve your reputation, but the tabloids haven’t figured it out yet?
Levi: I walked into a bookstore while I was lost in my own hometown and ran into a woman who intrigues me on many, many levels.
Ingrid: Oh.
Levi: Also, I was completely serious about wanting to hang out in your shop for a bit. I like the vibe. It’s inspirational.
Ingrid: You know you don’t have to buy me dinner to hang out in my shop.
Levi: Would you please just say the phrases “Your welcome anytime, Levi,” and “Yes, I want to have dinner with you?”
Ingrid: *You’re
Levi: *gif of himself sliding off a couch on stage, clearly embarrassed*
Ingrid: *gif of Levi grinding on stage shirtless*
Ingrid: OH MY GOD, THAT IS NOT THE GIF I CLICKED ON!!
Ingrid: I don’t keep a collection of shirtless gifs of you. My gif search and my finger malfunctioned.
Levi: If you wanted me to, I could send you a few no one else has seen. Also, does that gif make my white pants look extra tight and clean?
Ingrid: LOL Believe it or not, I didn’t notice the color of your pants.
Levi: You were looking for my scar. Admit it.
Ingrid: I was looking for THIS one: *gif of Levi high-fiving a Muppet on Sesame Street*
Levi: That scored me so many points with Tripp’s kids.
Ingrid: Confession – it might’ve scored you points with me too.
Levi: Excellent. So I’ll consider that an open invitation to your bookstore, and I’ll have my assistant send you my calendar so you can let me know which morning, noon, or night I should make a point to be here to take you to dinner.
Ingrid: Your theory sounds so simple, yet the execution…
Levi: Ah, crap. Mom was in the shower. NOT sleeping. I’m gonna lose my phone.
Ingrid: Of everything you’ve texted me tonight, you should definitely be most embarrassed by that one. Also, you’re adorable, and I’m looking forward to dinner whenever it happens to work out. Thank you.
Levi: *pic of his mom frowning at him with a filter that makes her look like SpongeBob SquarePants*
Levi: p.s. Don’t show her that picture either or I might get grounded.
Nine
Levi
For the third time in two weeks, Giselle and I are marching down the street toward Penny for Your Thoughts, though this is only the second time I’ve known I was going there on purpose.
Giselle is scowling. “You know you shouldn’t lie to women you want to date?”
“I want to flirt with her and treat her to dinner. Also, I didn’t lie. I’m not crashing her book club. I read the book, and I’m here to participate.”
“She’ll want to kill you.”
“That’s why I put on the fake mustache and bushy eyebrows. No one will recognize me.”
“It might be worth never working in personal security again to let her maim you.”
Since I left Copper Valley for my dash to New York and then Miami, the temperature’s dropped thirty degrees and all the leaves have departed the city. My hands are tucked in my coat pockets, with the book under my elbow, and I keep my head down against the wind. But when we walk into Penny for Your Thoughts, warmth seeps from my nose through my chest.
There’s a lively discussion already going on upstairs in the loft.
“Book club only tonight,” Ingrid’s assistant, Yasmin, tells me from behind the cash register. She’s a few years older than I am—maybe more—and she squints her brown eyes at me like she knows what I’m up to.
I wave my copy of Nora Dawn’s How To Train Your Vampire at her, then nod and head toward the curved staircase at the back of the room.
“I don’t like this,” Giselle murmurs as we climb to the top.
“I’m in disguise,” I mutter back. “It’s fine.”
The loft comes into view.
Mostly.
I can’t see it all through the mass of people. “Holy shit.”
“Like I said. Don’t like this. Stay close to the stairs.”
There must be fifty women here. Probably more. Folding chairs are lined in rows, couches and easy chairs shoved between short, overflowing, multi-colored bookshelves and end tables along the wall, all the perfect height for holding a plate of cookies and a cup of coffee. The coffee counter is built into the wall to my right, staffed tonight by two women, one with short green hair and the other nodding her head in time with music I can barely hear flowing over the sound of voices. Plates of cookies are at the ready, and several of the women are sipping out of sparkly gold coffee tumblers.
I think I’m actually in love with Ingrid’s bookstore. This place is brimming with potential.
Not for the store—the store itself is perfect exactly the way it is.
But for me.
For me to disappear into my head and let the atmosphere pull a few songs out.
“Close to the stairs,” Giselle repeats as I step toward the crowd.
“Grabbing a seat,” I tell her. “Less conspicuous.”
“You’re one of four men here. You’re conspicuous.”
I don’t see Ingrid, but I do spot the author. I recognize her from her website—smiling, curly-haired, talking with her hands while she chats with a small group of women up front, but not the same way Ingrid does.
Ingrid’s hand gestures are more precise, almost as if she’s learned to be intentional with her subconscious movements, or like she’s had experience with sign language.
“Dude. What the fuck are you dressed in?” Luca Rossi, center fielder for the Fireballs, squints at me from his perch against the exposed brick wall. Next to him is Brooks Elliott, third baseman for Tripp and Lila’s team.
Unlike Rossi and his apparent horror at my presence, Elliott’s smirking. He nods to me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I got your back.”
Rossi’s horror turns to a scowl as he narrows his eyes at his teammate. “Pick him over me, and we’ll see what happens to you tomorrow when we’re batting off the rooftops.”
That would be weird if Tripp hadn’t told me they were spending the week all over the city and the mountains, shooting promo videos for next season.
Elliott’s still unfazed. “Here for book club?”
A familiar laugh reaches my ears.
Mackenzie. His Fireballs-obsessed, baseball-loving wife.
Huh. Didn’t know she liked book clubs, but there she is, with Beck’s wife, Sarah, beside her. Those two are inseparable, and I’m busted if she spots me.
I hitch my shoulders higher, hoping my collar covers more of my face, and scan the loft again. Still no Ingrid. I would’ve thought she’d be with the author. “Yeah,” I say absently. “Can you pretend you don’t know me? I’m incognito.”
“Why are you here?” Rossi is seriously glowering now.
Oh, shit.
Is he dating Ingrid?
She would’ve told me if she was dating someone. Wouldn’t she?
I lift my book. “Just wanted to participate.”
“If you interrupt Henri’s big night, I will squish you like a bug. You don’t need the attention, asshole.”
Giselle’s lips twitch.
“Who’s Henry?” I whisper.
Elliott chokes on his own spit.
“Levi Wilson, what are you doing here?” Mackenzie demands beside me.
Dammit.
“I’m Bar
ry,” I blurt in a deep voice. “People make that mistake all the time.”
Sarah chokes on a laugh behind the blond spitfire who spent this past baseball season giving my brother more indigestion than she’ll ever know.
“Barry Staniglow,” I add as a few other women shoot curious looks my way. “I work in insurance. Like paranormal romances. Good books.”
“What kind of insurance?” Sarah asks.
“Don’t even think of hitting on Henri,” Rossi growls. “She’s taken, asswipe.”
“Oh my god, you have a crush on Nora Dawn?” Mackenzie whispers.
“What? No! I—”
“What are you doing here?”
“Busted,” Giselle murmurs.
And there she is.
Ingrid’s at the top of the stairs, gaping at me. She has her hands full, one balancing a massive tray of cookies that are tottering dangerously, the other gripping a large carafe that’s making the scent of coffee waft through the air. Her eyes are as wide as the moon, and about as shocked as I would be if this How to Train Your Vampire book’s main character turned out to have a secret twin.
I wink at her. “Barry Staniglow. I like romances,” I repeat as I steady her cookie tray.
She squeezes her eyes shut, but there’s definitely a smile twitching on her lips.
“I don’t think he’s into your girlfriend,” Elliott stage-whispers to Rossi. “You won’t have to defend her honor tonight by beating up a pop star half your size.”
“Three-quarters,” I mutter to him, which makes Ingrid’s face contort a little more, mostly in amusement. Or so I tell myself.
“Two-thirds at best, and that’s only after you make a pig of yourself at Thanksgiving dinner.” He leans forward and nods to the brunette at the front of the room. “Henri, with an i, short for Henrietta, also known as Nora Dawn, is Rossi’s girlfriend.”
“Dude. I didn’t know you were dating someone.” I hold up a fist.
He glowers.
Elliott snickers. “He redefines overprotective, which is reasonably understandable once you get to know Henri. He thought you were here to woo her.”
“Why?” Giselle mutters. “Why is it always woo? You know you all sound like you’re from another planet when you say woo?”
“That’s the irony,” Elliott replies.
“I’m more worried he’s gonna cause a scene.” Rossi’s got a glower that won’t quit.