Finding the Dream (For the Love of Music #1.5)

by Mia Josephs

  A guy stood on either end of the massive piece and Sierra climbed on the kitchen counter to get a better view of the space. If they could just get it close…

  “There.” She pointed to the corner opposite the couch. “Get it as close as you can.”

  “But we’ll block half the TV and the speakers.”

  “Okay. Not as close, but close enough so I don’t have to move it too far, okay?” she asked as she climbed down.

  The three men gave her a stunned look, but she didn’t back down, folding her arms over her chest and waiting. She’d figure out how to move it the rest of the way once she re-arranged everything else in the living room to accommodate it. The cabinet was a must have. With double opening doors like an armoire, it also had a slide out desk with space for her laptop, paperwork, and sewing machine—and that was just the bottom. It was like an office in a cabinet. Perfect. Well… it would be once she finished her tufted bulletin board, and a few other extras.

  The second the guys were gone she started typing Donovan a text to see if it was okay to move his furniture, but stopped.

  He’d known they were dropping the cabinet off, and he’d chosen not to be there. Whatever. She’d move whatever she had to. She was paying half the rent—or her brother was. Uncertainty knocked at her resolve, but she shoved it away. She could deal.

  “Why do I have to listen to this again?” Lindsey asked.

  Sierra gave the cabinet another big shove, moving it maybe a half inch. “Because if this thing crushes me while I'm moving it, I need you to call 911.”

  “This is insane!” Lindsey squeaked. “Can’t you just wait for Donovan?”

  “Apparently his apartment now has girl cooties, and I don't want to wait.” She’d spent three hours moving the TV, speakers, bookshelves, and movie shelves around the room. She was so close. There was no way she was going to wait around for Van.

  “You’re being stubborn,” Lindsey accused.

  “I’m sticking my tongue out at you right now.” Sierra slid her tongue out of her mouth, pointing it straight at her phone.

  “Don't do that!” Lindsey yelled. “If that cabinet falls on you, you could bite off your tongue, and then how would you kiss that hottie you’re living with?”

  Sierra’s body jerked in laughter. “See?” She gave the cabinet another hard shove. “This is why you get my horrible phone calls.”

  “I’m a glutton for punishment.”

  Sierra shoved again. Almost there…

  “But I’m blessed with awesome friends.”

  Very awesome friends. Since forever. Her heart pinched and Sierra stopped. “Now you’re being sentimental, and I can’t deal with that when I’m three hours away. Stop.”

  Lindsey laughed. “So, how’s it coming?”

  “Ask me in a sec.”

  “Push harder! You can do it! Push! Breathe! Push!” Lindsey shouted.

  And while laughing through tears, Sierra heard the delightful sound of the cabinet bumping against the wall. “Victory!”

  “Is it a girl or a boy?” Lindsey teased.

  “It’s monstrous perfection!” Sierra yelled tossing her arms to the sides.

  “So, now you need to take a “before” picture of that cabinet, the inside of that cabinet, and the living room. Show all the college kids out there how to organize a crap-ton of stuff in a small apartment and make it look awesome while you do it.”

  Sierra glanced around the apartment knowing she’d be pretty limited in what she could do and wondering if that would make the challenge more fun, or just frustrating. She snapped a few pictures, sending one to Lindsey right away.

  “And now you need quiet, right?” Lindsey asked.

  Sierra relaxed. “For organizing. Yeah. I have so many boxes that almost all need to fit into this armoire-type thingie.”

  “Just don’t call it an armoire-type thingie on your blog. You’ll lose all your crafty-person cred.”

  Sierra laughed again. “You’re the best!”

  “I try!”

  “Bye, Linds.”

  “Bye, See.”

  The second they hung up, Sierra scanned the room. Not ideal, but workable. And maybe organizing all of her favorite things would help take her mind off the very absent Donovan.

  Four

  Sierra’s feet ached, and her back had a weird twinge that she wasn’t sure what to do with. But. But. The living room looked like a functioning room again, she just had to reconnect all the mysterious wires behind the TV.

  Her heels were long since abandoned in the hallway, but her feet were still killing her, and probably swollen. Screw that Victoria’s Secret workout. It had gotten her nowhere with Donovan, and she sort of wanted to burn her heeled sandals.

  She took a moment to snap another picture of her progress (to be blogged about later) and sat down next to the TV. Her muscles ached, her stomach grumbled, and she’d barely slept the night before, being in a new place and all.

  Okay… She tapped her fingers on her lower lip as she studied the wires. There had been three power cords plugged into the surge protector. That was simple enough. And then one was screwed on or shoved onto the cable connector-thingie in the wall.

  In the wall… She tapped her lower lip again as she scanned the wall for the right part. There had to be one, didn’t there?

  Her heart sped up as she squinted behind the TV stand, trying to find the cable plug.

  Oh, no. How could there be no cable plug? How had she not thought to look before moving the entire living room?

  She jerked her head to scan the room again as if a magic plug-in would somehow appear. Nothing.

  Sierra’s heartbeat continued to speed up. At some point it was just going to explode. What kind of apartment only had one place you could put the TV? Who could stand to leave their stuff in the same place for that long?

  Keys turned in the lock.

  She was screwed.

  Donovan stepped inside and froze.

  Her eyes fell closed because she could not deal with something else going wrong. She hadn’t planned on re-arranging anything. She’d planned on creating a kickass meal for Donovan to make him fall in love with her, and instead she’d taken away the only thing she knew guys liked as much as food. His TV. And there was no food because the grocery store trip hadn’t happened with the cabinet delivery and the room change that probably needed to be totally put back.

  She slowly opened her eyes to see Donovan still standing between the front door and the kitchen, staring at the living room.

  “I’m so sorry,” she blurted. “The cabinet didn’t fit, so I moved things so it would fit, and now the TV…” Her chin trembled and her voice was starting to get high-pitched and whiny, and turning into a big sobby mess was about the last thing she needed right now.

  Glancing down at herself, she paused. Her shirt was smeared with dust from the TV stand and bookshelf, the old shorts she’d changed into were stretched out from working and sagged off her butt, and her painted toenails were chipping at the edges after dropping an armload books on them.

  Donovan chuckled. “Same energy as always.”

  Sierra blinked and forced her eyes off the dirt smudging her body.

  “I seriously walked in and thought I’d somehow opened the wrong apartment door, which doesn’t make sense because I have a key, but… But just…wow.”

  “I ruined it.” Sierra pushed the stringy wisps of hair off her face. “I didn’t check for the cable plug in over here.”

  “I don’t have cable.” Donovan shrugged. “Was it still plugged into the wall?”

  Tears welled behind her eyes, which made no sense. She was a grown up. She was confident. She’d rearranged his small space to Feng Shui perfection. “You don’t need the cable thingie plugged in?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  She felt her body jerk in relief, or in that horrid sobby feeling she got before she cried. She was not going to cry in front of Van. Was not.

  “Have you eate
n?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Did you sleep well last night?”

  She shook her head again.

  Donovan crossed the room, sat on the floor, and put his arm over her shoulders, the smell of leather and waterproofing spray tickling her nose. She leaned into the warmth and breathed in the smell of dust and man-deodorant and the buttery leather of his coat.

  She’d overreacted, and there was no reason for it. This was Donovan. She knew Donovan.

  “Let’s go get food, okay?” he asked.

  She nodded and let herself be led like a child to the front door where she slid her feet into flip-flops, because that’s probably all they could handle after the heels.

  “I should have asked before I moved your stuff.” She glanced back at the living room, which felt twice as full now, even though she’d only added one more piece of furniture.

  “I like it. It’s your place too.”

  “But it’s yours, and I thought I could just get it done, and that I could do dinner before you got home, and I messed it up… And I want to get hooks for your guitars so you can play, and groceries, and none of that happened.”

  Donovan chuckled as they walked down the stairs. “I think it’s cool. I’m pretty sure nothing has moved since I moved it in, and I kind of planned on being here for your cabinet arrival, and I didn’t make it. Now we get to go eat and catch up, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t worry about the guitars.” He stumbled once when they hit the bottom of the stairs. “I’m almost never home to play anyway.”

  The reminder that Donovan wasn’t playing was a worse feeling than when she thought she’d messed up the TV. A different kind of feeling, but for sure a worse one.

  Hanging out with Sierra after she freaked out was something Donovan knew how to do. He’d been at Sierra’s house off and on since she was about seven, and lived with her family when she was twelve or thirteen until about fourteen when he and Hanson graduated.

  Sierra always just needed someone chill with when she got too excited. Now that he’d fallen back into the role of “brother” or “protector” instead of “creepy ogler,” being around the new version of her felt so much easier.

  “Let’s do something really cheesy like the Golden Corral—watch all the old folks try to slip muffins into their bags.”

  Sierra snorted before wiping her nose with her shirt, which was something else that had followed her as she’d gotten older. A lot about her was the same; he just had to reconcile her age and newness with all the things he’d liked about her before.

  She followed him to his van, since her dad would flip if he took her on his motorcycle, and he took another deep breath in. Things between them were about to settle back into normal.

  Once Donovan paid for their buffet dinner (she forced him to allow her to buy groceries after dinner), Sierra jogged for the bathroom, grabbing a small butter packet off a buffet table as she went. No way she wasn’t a mess from her day, and she had to do something to fix it.

  She was out to dinner with Donovan.

  The dingy bathroom mirror showed red-rimmed eyes, dirt smudges, a stretched t-shirt and saggy butt shorts.

  “Ok, Sierra. Pull your crap together.”

  Wait. This would totally be a good Instagram, or blog, or something. How to give yourself a two-minute fix-up in any bathroom.

  She took a quick selfie using the mirror and went to work.

  Jerking the ponytail holder and pins out of her hair, she wet her hands and bent forward, dumping her hair upside down, trying to use the dampness to ruff up her roots. She snatched a few paper towels and wiped off her face and hands, then stripped off her white t-shirt, slipping it back on inside out and knotting up the back. She couldn’t do much with her shorts, but she unbuttoned the top button and folded them down once, helping her saggy butt. The problem with vintage-y, thrift store jeans is that they rarely had enough elasticity, if any at all. But the waistband fold-over helped.

  She took another few paper towels and wiped the smudges off her shorts and thighs. Opening the butter, she smoothed her fingers over the greasy food then rubbed her dry lips with it. Sort of gross, but at least the cracked, dry lip look sort of went away.

  She fluffed her hair up again, grateful that the high school frizz seemed to be tamed by the right shampoo and snapped another quick pic, determined to blog about this stupid day the minute she got home (aside from the get-Donovan’s-attention part).

  Dumping the rest of the butter in the trash, she pushed out the bathroom door to go find Donovan.

  The second Sierra rounded the corner, Donovan’s stomach flipped. How did girls go into the bathroom looking like a little sister, and out looking like an underwear model? She could not keep looking hot when she was supposed to look like a little sister. Hanson would strangle him—best friends do not date their best friend’s little sister.

  “I’m gonna load up.” He stood and Sierra’s brows twitched as she stared at his full plate.

  “I…” he started. “I…um…forgot some things I wanted.”

  The corner of her mouth turned up in a soft smile. “Just like high school.”

  In that moment, it was the only thing that was just like high school. He couldn’t wait to get to work the next day. He needed some space from her, and some time to force his head on straight. She was just another pretty girl. He’d been with several pretty girls. There were pretty girls everywhere.

  He just wasn’t living with any of them. And…none of them were ‘off-limits’ the way Sierra was. Zoning in on her was exactly the kind of thing he knew his dad would have done for a lot of reasons. Her hotness, her proximity, and the fact that being with her would have pissed off a best friend. Knowing this about his father, and being close with both Clark and Hanson, meant that entertaining thoughts of Sierra past friendship was not okay.

  Five

  The best thing about being a junior in college was that most of the people were fairly serious about getting done and less serious about partying. Sierra still wasn’t convinced she wanted a degree because she had a job she loved, and it was growing almost faster than she could keep up—especially if she could get the attention of an agent to sell her novel. If she could keep up with her Trial by Sierra blog as well as writing books? That would be amazing.

  No. Amazing would be the ability to maintain a blog as a sideline to writing books…and being with Donovan.

  Her quickie fix-up in the Golden Corral bathroom already had a bazillion re-pins on Pinterest and four digits worth of likes on Instagram. #WIN

  Walking out of Business Proposals, she tightened her jacket over her shoulders and headed for home. She’d finally managed to get groceries, and was going to practice her taco shell making skills when she got back. She had four different methods to try—two frying pan ones, one using a Panini press, and another using the oven.

  Her four hundred dollar grocery bill rested right at the top of her business expense folder. She blogged/tweeted/Instagrammed/Snapchatted/tumblr’d every single thing she cooked, just to keep her food as a business expense.

  She cut through a small neighborhood between the campus and downtown and walked more slowly, the clouds graying the day but not taking away the brightness of the small homes. Built in the forties and fifties, each house seemed like part of a painting. Flower boxes, peaked roofs, small porches, and even a few that had been re-done a bit more modern with additions and metal siding. Sort of a perfect little spot tucked just off of downtown.

  After pulling out her phone, Sierra snapped a few shots of the homes along the street.

  As she walked past 5th street, she paused. Wasn’t the store just up this way? She pulled out her phone, changing direction and dashing across the street, tapping on her phone as she went.

  Google maps came into focus and showed her it was a five-minute walk away.

  Perfect. She could check in on her brother’s store. She’d only been there a handful of times,
and most were when he’d first opened. She’d been a mess then. Scared of everyone. Quiet. Total wallflower.

  The store came into view and her stomach fluttered. Would Donovan feel stalked? Watched? Like she was being clingy? Sierra clutched her phone more tightly and sent Lindsey a quick text.

  Sierra: Please tell me I’m being stupid and to just walk in already.

  Lindsey answered immediately.

  Lindsey: See. You’re being stupid. Just walk in already. That work?

  Sierra: Perfectly.

  Sierra pushed open the door and came face to face with a gorgeous woman with dark brown hair framing the kind of thin, dramatic face she’d never have.

  “Welcome to Great Outdoors. Can I help you find something?” she asked with a smile, revealing perfectly spaced, white teeth.

  Sierra hadn’t felt like such a…such a…kid in a long time. “I’m…”

  “You just coming out of the rain?” the woman asked as she tilted her head to see outside. “Or is it not quite raining yet?”

  Sierra glanced back outside. Had it been raining? She only sort of remembered hovering over her phone. “Um…y-yeah… No.” Where was her spine? Seriously. She’d given up this mumbling stuff years ago. “My brother owns this store, actually.”

  The woman’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re Sierra?”

  Sierra felt herself relax and her mouth pull into a smile. “That’s me. Yeah.”

  Movement caught her eye and she turned to see Donovan standing by the employee door.

  She gave him a small wave and a smile, but his face slowly paled.

  What was with him?

  Donovan swallowed, his eyes shifting from Sierra to Alyson to Sierra to Alyson.

  This could end up being really, really awkward, and that’s the last thing he wanted. Why did Sierra drop in?

  Actually. Of course she’d want to drop in. She’d helped Hanson pick out the storefront. Helped design the store, actually.