A Very Merry Mess (Cider Cove Sweet Southern RomComs #3)

Ryanne

RYANNE

I sit on the closed toilet seat, my eyes closed as Lizzie masterfully does my makeup. I’m saving all my conversational capability for my New Year’s Eve date with Elliott in less than an hour.

“So the store is mostly back to normal?” Lizzie asks.

My eyelids flutter before I remember to keep them closed. “Almost,” I say. “I honestly don’t know what Barry was thinking, especially since he’ll probably never step foot in our store again.”

Both Lizzie and Emma had come over to Paper Trail this week to help me and Elliott get things put back the way they’ve always been. Our store has earned several awards from the corporate office, and I honestly wonder if the temporary manager they sent while Ell and I went to New York had been tipping back eggnog by the gallon.

During the staff meeting I’d held, Mindy, who usually acts as our supervisor on the days when Elliott and I aren’t there together, said that “he just started, and it was so chaotic, that we just ran with him to stay alive.”

I’d filed a report with corporate, but I haven’t heard anything back yet. The store isn’t open tomorrow, but I’m taking Tahlia, Lizzie, and Emma to finish the stationery section. Then, everything will be done moving into the New Year.

I love the beginning of a new year. It’s so exciting, with dozens of doors open and plenty of enthusiasm for making changes. Good changes. I can’t help but think that this year will be pivotal in my life, and that so much of that has to do with Elliott.

My stomach clenches, and I try to push the thoughts and feelings away, because I really shouldn’t hook my happiness onto being with another person. I’ve worked hard to find out who I am and to make life choices that will make me happy, regardless of if I’m single, with someone, at home in New York, who my roommates are, any of it.

But I’ve entertained feelings for Elliott for such a long time, and he’s such a big piece of my life, that I don’t know how to box him out. I don’t know how separate him from me, especially not now.

“Okay,” Lizzie says. “You’re ready.”

I open my eyes to find her smiling at me. “You have the best bone structure,” she says. “What did you decide to wear tonight?”

“Tahlia pulled out her black dress.” I stand up and sigh. “Thank you, Lizzie.” I hug her quickly and then we leave the bathroom on the second floor.

“I’ll get the shoes and come help you zip,” she says, ducking into her room ahead of me.

I continue to my room and look at the dress that Tahlia has hung on my closet door. It holds a curvy shape, with glittery fabric, and I simply love the one-shoulder look. It is hard for me to get into on my own, but I get started by taking it off the hanger and stepping into it.

I shimmy it up over my hips about the time Lizzie enters my bedroom, and she helps me get the strap in place and the dress zipped. “Let me just tuck this…” She flits around me, making sure every little string and flap is in the right place.

Then she sets the shoes out and offers me her hand, so I can step up into them. She grins at me and hugs me, something falling on her face in the moment before her cheek presses against mine. “You’re so beautiful. He’s so lucky.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely.” She steps back and wipes at her eyes. “I can only hope to meet someone like Elliott.”

“You will,” I say.

She nods, her smile watery and shaky. “Does he make you happy?”

I think about her question, because it’s not one I’ve considered before. “Not like a bag of mocha crunch M Claudia is over at Beckett’s aunt’s tonight, and Lizzie and Tahlia have a movie date together on the couch downstairs.

So Elliott has to be here. I haven’t had time to stress-eat my candy or cure my dry-mouth, but my swirling emotions and thoughts propel me down the stairs, where I find Elliott standing in the doorway leading to the foyer, laughing and chatting with my roommates.

His eyes come straight to mine though I haven’t said a word, and the electric zip between us sends a charge through my bloodstream. As if I need another reason to be worked up.

“Hey,” he says, his gaze dripping down my body. “Wow, wow, wow, Miss Luckson.” He looks at me again. “You’re incredible.”

I can’t speak, because I don’t want to say something I’ll regret in front of Tahlia and Lizzie. I really appreciate the fact that he hasn’t commented on how I look. No, he’s complimented me , as if I’m incredible, and that causes a warmth to burn within me.

I move toward him and kiss him in a slow, welcome kiss, then take his hand in mine.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod, smile the best I can at Tahlia and Lizzie, and lead Elliott out of the house. If I can get to the car, I’ll be able to ask him whatever I want.

“You okay?” he asks as we start down the steps. The front door is closed behind us, but I’m not sure we’re out of range of the doorbell cam. My hand tightens in his, and we keep going.

As I approach his car, I slow. “Do you want me to drive?” I finally turn toward him. “New Year’s confessional: Can you see?”

His mouth opens, and his eyes turn wide and round. “I…I’m wearing my night-driving glasses.”

“But can you see ?” I look over to the rock—the huge, decorative boulder marking the edge of the parking space in front of the Big House. He hit that rock…as if he hadn’t seen it.

“Let’s get in the car,” he murmurs, and he opens the driver’s door for me and indicates that I should get behind the wheel. So I do, and my hands shake as Elliott goes around the back of his own car.

It takes him at least thirty seconds, and I know something major is happening by the time he pulls open the passenger door. He slides in and says, “Car confessional: I have a degenerative vision impairment, and no, I don’t see all that well most of the time.”

“Elliott,” I say.

He faces me fully. “Can we please go to dinner? I had to negotiate the reservation, and I don’t want to miss it.”

I turn the key in the ignition and look at him. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Coleman’s.” He looks out the passenger window, his voice barely his.

I don’t know what else to say, and the words degenerative vision impairment have been put on a pedestal in my mind, spotlighted, and they rotate slowly while I try to make sense of them.

I know what degenerative means, and it’s not good.

I drive us to Coleman’s and park, and Elliott practically leaps from the SUV as if it’s caught fire. He comes and opens my door, and when I stand, he pulls me directly into his arms. “I’ve tried to tell you a couple of times.”

He has told me he had something we needed to talk about. Something always interrupted us, and then things at the store have been so chaotic after we returned from my family’s house.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he takes my hand and leads me into the restaurant. It’s extremely busy, and Elliott leaves me near the door to go check-in, and he really has worked some magic, because he returns for me only a minute later, secures my hand in his again, and draws me through the crowd like a pro.

We get a booth against the window, with a view of the downtown Cider Cove Christmas lights. I smile out at the twinklingness, which is something that has always lifted my spirits.

Elliott smiles at the waitress when she comes to get our drink orders, as if this is just a normal date. I’m not sure what to do either. Coleman’s is hard to get into, and I’d only given him the list of my favorite places three days ago. I want this date—this whole year—to be filled with magic and sparkles and kissing Elliott, so I don’t know what to say either.

We’re not even talking about work, and I’ve drunk half my lukewarm water before the soda pop shows up.

“I’ll order for us,” Elliott says, looking across the table and raising his eyebrows at me. “Okay?”

“Sure.” My throat feels so dry, and I’m not sure how much I can speak. I tell myself it’s not me who needs to talk, so I let Elliott order the burrata appetizer I like, as well as the chicken pesto pasta that makes my mouth water, as well as his French onion soup and the mushroom-smothered steak for himself.

The waitress grins at him, then me, and says, “Great choices,” before she leaves.

That’s one of my pet peeves, but I don’t comment on it tonight. Instead, I look at him, everything I want to ask streaming into the silence between us.

Elliott stares back at me for several long seconds, and then says, “The bottom line, , is I’m going blind.”