The Cinnamon Bun Book Store by Laurie Gilmore

Author:Laurie Gilmore [Gilmore, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008641573
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Seventeen

‘Earth to Hazel!’

Hazel blinked. Annie was standing in front of her, waving a hand in front of her face. She was thankfully not at the front counter today but getting some work done in the office. She hadn’t even heard Annie come in.

‘Oh, hey.’

‘Oh, hey? That’s all you have to say to me?’

Hazel frowned. ‘What else would I have to say?’ She’d been daydreaming again. She couldn’t help it. It had been a week of the new, very special kind of fun she’d cooked up with Noah, and even when she wasn’t with him she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And more specifically, everything they’d done. And where.

She could barely look down at this desk now without blushing.

Noah was so damn good with his mouth and his hands and they hadn’t gone further than that, but Hazel was more satisfied than she’d ever been. It was distracting to say the least.

‘You’ve been MIA all week!’

Annie came back into focus. Right. Her angry best friend.

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Busy with what? Or should I say with who?’

‘Isn’t it whom?’

‘Hazel Delphinium Kelly!’

‘You know I don’t have a middle name.’

‘And you know that’s why I have to make one up for you.’ Annie put a hand on her jutted-out hip. ‘Now stop distracting me. What is going on with you and the fisherman?’

Hazel shrugged but she could feel the furious blush working its way up her face. ‘We’ve just been hanging out.’ Ironically, Hazel had kept all her new stories to herself. She’d started this whole summer of fun because she’d wanted to shock her friends, to have something new to talk about, to just be generally more interesting and now here she was holding out.

She just ... everything happening with Noah now seemed ... private.

‘Hanging out? You missed trivia night and now half the town thinks you’ve been kidnapped.’

Hazel huffed. ‘I’m clearly right here.’

‘Hazel...’

‘What? Can’t a girl have a little fun?’

‘Of course you can, but this just feels like––’

‘Like what Annie? Like not my type of fun? Like it’s totally out of character for me? That’s exactly the point! I can’t ... I just needed ... something different.’

Annie plopped down on the old couch. ‘I didn’t know you were unhappy, Haze.’

‘I’m not unhappy. I’m just ... I don’t know...’

‘Afraid of turning thirty?’

Hazel’s eyebrows rose.

‘You’re not the only perceptive one. I notice things, too.’

‘I just don’t want to turn thirty with regrets, that’s all.’

‘And you regret not sleeping with the town hottie?’

Hazel laughed. ‘Well, I might.’

Annie smiled. ‘We wouldn’t want that.’

‘Sorry I didn’t tell you.’

Annie shrugged, leaning back into the couch. ‘That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me everything, although we did make that pact back in tenth grade.’

‘True. Well, in the spirit of honesty, have you been trying to leave me clues or something?’

‘Clues? No, Haze, I usually just go with a text.’

‘Hmm.’

‘What do you mean by clues?’

Hazel pulled out one of the defaced books from her bottom drawer. She’d been keeping them as evidence or souvenirs. She didn’t really know which.

‘Someone has been highlighting lines and then putting them back on the shelf.

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