“Thank you,” I say, and on a scale of one to ten, my frustration is now a zero. Loretta pretty much had me at hello. I went from feeling like an outsider to belonging right here in this little corner of downtown Nashville. “Really,” I say, my mood uplifted as I add, “I do appreciate how you handled this. It was perfection.”
She smiles as if she’s found a new book she can’t wait to break open and read. Feeling better than I have all day, actually, despite the impending presentation, I walk back to my booth.
I’ve just slid into my seat when I discover a white notecard on my keyboard that reads “Girl” on it.
My brows dip, and Loretta appears beside my table. “I told her to rush it and rush it she did. If that’s not perfect, you let me know.”
“I will. Thank you.” But my reply is absent, my mind on the note card.
I don’t know why, but I stare at it as if touching it will somehow change my life when it’s just a note card. Which is ridiculous. It’s probably from Jack, joking about me being called “Girl,” and I glance around, looking for him without success. Still, I hesitate to open the note, and I don’t know why. A note is not going to change my life. Chiding myself for my silliness, I pick it up and open it to read four simple words:
You look beautiful today.
Chapter Fourteen
I stare down at the note, blinking several times, confused, shocked, elated, flattered. It’s as if a waterfall of reactions crashes down upon me, one on top of the other, drowning me in the sheer rush at which they assail me. Confusion wins, dominating the onslaught of my reaction.
What is this? Who did this?
It’s not as if this is the kind of thing that happens to me.
No one ever tells me I look beautiful.
Correction, I think, no one who is not my father ever calls me beautiful, but then parental love—excluding my mother’s, of course—is blind. Only, I realize, someone did, and just last night. Kevin sent me a DM on the dating app with almost these exact same words. I glance around Caroline’s, looking for him, looking for someone else who might have left the note. I don’t find Kevin, and the dining area is never busy at the lunch hour the way it is in the mornings, anyway. There are only a few people in line at present—two women chatting, an elderly man with a younger man, and then another woman who is texting at lightning speed.
Frowning, I return my attention to the note, deciding the script has a decidedly masculine texture to it, though I’m no handwriting expert, either. Ask me about the words between two covers, not the pen by which the story may, or may not, have been inked. I quickly log on to the dating app and find my alerts. I now have thirteen messages. I search for the message Kevin sent me last night, but there is none. I’m confused. I know I saw it. I know he sent it. Just as I know Jack was registered. Maybe it’s a glitch in the dating app.
I search for his profile, and unlike my fruitless search for Jack’s, I easily locate Kevin as an active member. The deleted message may simply be message remorse, and therefore he deleted the evidence. Still, Kevin knows I hang out at Caroline’s, and the note on my keyboard sounds too much like the now-deleted message on the dating app for me to dismiss my ex as the culprit. I grab my phone and text Kevin: Did you send me a message on a dating app?
Seconds tick by, and he doesn’t answer, but he’s a slow texter, and we’ve not exactly been talking as of late, or anytime recently. He also never responded with urgency to my messages. Something about this entire situation is weird.
Unease is clawing at me when perhaps I should simply feel flattered by the random compliment left behind in the form of a note. This just isn’t something that happens to me. I consider calling Jack and finding out if he did this, but if he didn’t, he’ll ask a lot of questions I don’t want to answer. Same goes for Jess.
Turning my attention back to the dating app, I scan the messages, seeking anything that feels unusual. Could this really represent a random compliment? I glance at the front of the card that reads “Girl,” which seems to indicate whoever did this heard that name called for my order. Of course, both Jess and Jack would also do such a thing to tease me, but not laugh at me. More a way to share a mutual joke. Of course that’s what this is. One of them is being funny.
Time to end another chapter, this one rather silly.
I stuff the note in my bag and pull up the presentation.
Chapter Fifteen
With only fifteen minutes until my presentation, I stand inside the doorway of Caroline’s, my bag on my shoulder, and watch the monstrous droplets of rain swell as they splatter the pavement.
The day my father was to appear on Lion’s Den was a rainy day, one of his favorite kind of days. He called the days when a storm splattered about on the rooftop of the garage his most creative. Perhaps his love for the rain is how I came to love it as well. How I learned to appreciate snuggling in by a window, rain pitter-pattering against the glass, a book in my hand, a story enchanting my mind. I wish I could block that day out, but it’s a snake in my mind, slithering about, at the most dangerous of moments, such as right now, right before I give an important presentation.
The television show had been filmed in New York City. We’d flown in the night before. I remember watching the rainfall over Manhattan from my parents’ hotel room, my father stepping to my side and saying, “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
It’s a familiar quote he favors, and quotes often. He’d gone on to add, “I feel it and it feels lucky.”
I’d felt his luck as well, almost as if it kissed the very air we breathed.
I also remember the moments after the disaster of his public humiliation on live TV, when we’d stepped outside the studio, a dank day remaining in the aftermath of the storm merely withdrawn to reinforce its massive downpour. My father had noticed the shift in the weather as well, holding his hands out in front of him, his eyes lifting skyward as he’d murmured, “The rain stopped.” Almost as if my science-driven father was saying his luck ran out when the rain did.
While moments before I’d been willing away the rain to allow my return to my library home, suddenly I don’t want to know when it stops. I’m about to make a run for it, allowing the rain to drench me in luck, when a man in a suit appears on the other side of the door, his umbrella high. I open the door for him, and he steps inside. He lowers his umbrella, pulling it inside and closing it, his dark hair neatly groomed, untouched by the weather.
I cannot help but notice his statuesque height. He turns to face me—no, he doesn’t just turn to face me; he looks at me with striking blue eyes. Eyes etched with lines that age him into his late thirties, a worldly confidence to him I instantly envy.
“Thanks for the assist,” he says. “Let me return the favor.” He offers me the handle to his damp umbrella. “You look like you could use this.”
Stunned by the offer, I am frozen in place, incapable of reacting. He not only sees me; he has not dismissed me but rather, gallantly, offered me a rescue. Thunder erupts above, rattling the walls a bit and jolting me into action. “Thank you,” I say. “But I won’t be able to return it.”
“You don’t need to return it,” he states. “A stranger offered it to me. I’m passing on the same kindness. Maybe you can do the same for someone else.”
“Yes,” I say, pleased by this idea, even more so by being someone included in a circle of kindness. “I will. Thank you.” I reach for the gift he’s offered me, and once it’s in my hand, he smiles a charming smile and opens the door for me.
A tad self-conscious as to how I’m going to manage to open the umbrella and step outside without somehow landing on my backside, I shove the umbrella out the door and pop it open. So far so good as I step out into the storm, protected by an umbrella that represents kindness. The walk to the library is short, and as I reach the main entrance, the security guard opens the door for me. “Thanks, Doug,” I greet the elderly man, stepping inside the foyer of the building and folding the umbrella shut.