She was watching me, too.
A stupid grin lifts my face, and my heart starts to beat out of my chest.
I think I’ve just met the girl of my dreams, the girl who I didn’t even know I was dreaming of.
My hands are shaking. They’ve been shaking pretty much all day. Every time I think about Adam, the shakes start. How I haven’t managed to break a cup, I’m not sure.
He looks the same yet different. He looks hardened to the world. The light that used to live in his eyes has dulled. But he’s still as handsome as ever, if not even more so with age.
Adam never looked like a boy. He was always very much a man, even at eighteen. But now, he’s reached his full potential. He seems even bigger somehow.
Or maybe it was just his anger that made him seem bigger, more imposing.
All that anger, and it was reserved solely for me.
The guy I left behind all those years ago was not the man I saw today.
I have to wonder if I’m to blame for that.
I glance at the clock. Five minutes until the end of my shift. Five minutes until Adam is here, and he wants his answers.
Answers I can’t give him.
So, I’m going to have to lie, something I never wanted to do.
I thought there was a slim possibility that I might see Adam in Beverly Hills, as his studio is here. I wasn’t hoping to see him—well, maybe I had a little bit of hope. But I also knew what kind of complications would come from seeing Adam.
It’s not like Adam and I run in the same circles. I basically come into Beverly Hills for work, and then I go home to my apartment in Culver City. So, I thought the chances of seeing him were minimal. I mean, I work in a coffee shop that’s inside a hotel, for God’s sake. Never did I expect for him to come in here.
Why is he staying at the hotel anyway? Surely, he has a house in Beverly Hills.
I only got this job through a friend who I worked with back in San Francisco. She’d left there and moved here to be with her boyfriend, taking the manager’s job.
When I knew I would be moving here, I got in touch with her, and lucky for me, her assistant manager was pregnant and would be taking maternity leave soon. She couldn’t guarantee me that there would be a permanent job at the end of the six months. So, I’m going to look for another job while I’m working this one.
I had to move back up this way because Casey, my kid sister, announced that she was going to the University of California, Los Angeles.
When Casey had told my dad and me that she wanted to study nursing at college, we knew she’d apply to the University of California, San Francisco, but we didn’t know she’d also apply to UCLA. She applied and was accepted to both, and she chose UCLA. She told me she missed home. And UCLA was as close to Malibu as we could get.
I can’t say that I wasn’t terrified at the thought of moving back up this way, being close to Adam again. But I also can’t deny that the thought of being closer to Adam, although terrifying, didn’t excite me a little, too.
But that’s the thing about us Taylors. We’re a package deal. Where one goes, so do the other two. So, there was no choice.
We rented an apartment in Culver City. It’s not too pricey for Los Angeles, and it’s close to UCLA. For Casey, it’s only a twenty-minute drive to school, and for me, it’s a twenty-minute drive to work.
We didn’t want to wait to move until September as Casey had enrolled in some summer classes. She’d said she wanted to be ready for her courses this fall. Casey has always loved school, loved learning. It’s probably because she missed so much school when she was younger. Me? I couldn’t wait to get out of school. That probably explains why I still work in a coffee shop.
I glance at the clock again. It’s one minute before five.
“I’m gonna head out,” I say to Angie, one of the girls I work with.
We don’t close until nine p.m. I opened up, so Angie will close.