Last Call at the Local (Love, Lists & Fancy Ships, #3)

by Sarah Grunder Ruiz

And to you, dear reader. You deserve every good thing, even when you’re having dark thoughts. You deserve to be happy, even when you aren’t well. And love—you deserve that too.

Besides, it isn’t every day a gorgeous tattooed Irishman offers to flirt with me,

In a family of Dr. Harts, I am the odd one out. A miss in every way.

I hate crying in front of other people, though it happens all the time.

and though I have never consciously thought about freckles before, I discover that I am a man who really likes freckles.

I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me like that, like I’m their favorite person. I’m not sure I’ve been anyone’s favorite anything—daughter, friend, singer, student.

“How about some Niall Horan? Irish singer. Irish song.”

NIALL MENTION

“Bugging people is one of my favorite activities, ciaróg.” “Seeing as you’re the one bugging me, you’re the . . . ciaróg,” she says, pronouncing ciaróg like Keurig. “Close, but not quite. It’s cure-oh-g, not Keurig.” “Maybe I wasn’t calling you a beetle. Maybe I was calling you a mediocre coffee maker.”

being around her is like sitting in the sunshine on a cold day.

How does he turn everything into something beautiful?

“How can you think you’re too much, when I can’t get enough of you?”

He looks at me as if I’m his favorite person.

I don’t know if I’m falling apart or being put back together. All the parts of myself that seemed out of tune before find their place. Or maybe they were never out of tune at all. Maybe I’ve been listening for the wrong key—A minor instead of C major. Maybe I’m not playing the wrong notes, but starting in the wrong place. All that dissonance because I’ve been trying to play someone else’s song.

You deserve to be happy, even when you aren’t well.