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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Burke’s Bakery is both my biggest accomplishment and one of my biggest problems. I love it.
Copper Run smells like crunching leaves and breezes that bite. There’s a hint of something warm in the air too—baked bread of some kind. Maybe a pie or biscuits in the oven. Mazzy Star hums from my neighbor’s open window.
“You already know how to be—what did you call it?—oh, warm.” He nudges my elbow with his. “You should tell more jokes. Be yourself. It’s charming.” “Charming?” “You’ve charmed me.” I roll my eyes. “See?” he says. “Your scowl, for one, is gorgeous.”
“I don’t like being bad at things,” I explain. “I don’t know the last time I was bad at anything.”
He’s so different from me. If I’m autumn, he’s spring. He’s all smiles and glowing warmth. His blue eyes are so deep, like the first beautiful clear sky of the season. He likes to rest them on my breeze-blown hair, drift them down to my painted lips or to the cardigan falling off my shoulder.
I sheepishly confess, “Men don’t want women like me.” “Like what?” Unfun, too serious, workaholics. “I don’t know,” I mumble. He gives a devilish, absolutely wicked smile. “I think men secretly want women just like you,” he growls, leaning even closer. “And the men who don’t are cowards.”
The world tilts. It suddenly feels like I’m falling through the ground, straight to the center of the earth. God, she’s breathtaking.
I let my head fall to his shoulder. His palm cradles the back of my head, his fingers massaging through my hair. Warm. Gentle. “I can’t believe we’re dancing to this stupid song,” I say on an exhale. “I can’t believe I actually got you to do it.”
“Don’t do something you think you’ll regret,” I whisper. He shakes his head without hesitation. “I wouldn’t regret this.”
And that—that right there—is the exact moment I know I need to kiss him. Because, despite Cliff taking a risk, he immediately backtracks when he thinks I’m uncomfortable. Because he’s that kind of friend. He’s that kind of man.
“Ah, screw it.” Cliff sinks his hand into my hair, cups my head, and collides his lips with mine.
I guess you look at life a little differently after everything you thought was real suddenly isn’t. You embrace silly dreams a bit more.”
I don’t want to go on more dates. I want Michelle. Not as a friend. Not as a fling. I want her.
She’s stubborn. I guess so am I. But when you like someone—as a friend or more—you take the good with the bad, and I like Michelle because of her stubbornness and not in spite of it. I have a feeling I’m the biggest sucker in the world.
And all at once, I know it as clear as day. I love him. I love him.
“I want you to be happy and—” His next words almost come out in a whisper. “Have you ever thought I might be happy with you?” I tense, taking in a shaky breath. “You can’t mean that.” “I almost wish I didn’t.” “But you said—” “I say so many things that I don’t know what comes out of my mouth half the time,” he says. “But you do…you make me happy. So, there. I’m stuck in my own damn head with thoughts of you that I can’t get rid of. So, what do I do? Huh? What do I do?”
“God, I like you so much. I like you when you lash out. I like you when you come up with a thousand reasons to hate me.” He cocks his head to the side. “And when you run to my house to tell me all those reasons. And even when you put up so many walls that even God can’t break them down.”
“I like you because you’re Michelle. And that’s enough.”
And it hits me. I love this woman. I don’t know when it happened. It slipped over me so softly, like the changing of seasons. The seeping scent of baked bread first thing in the morning. A wistful sigh on a perfect fall day.
