“Oh, you don’t want to hear about every mundane minute of my day?” He laughs softly, and the sound does funny things to my insides. Between his rich voice and clever fingers, I’m roughly three seconds away from melting into jelly. “Well, in between filling orders and handling customers, I finalized the volunteer schedule for the festival.”
My eyes fly open and I sit up straighter. “Oh yeah? Can I see it?” I don’t want him to stop, but we’ve been chipping away at the volunteer schedule for the last two weeks. I’m dying to know how it turned out.
“Sure.” His fingers slip from my neck as I shuffle my chair back around to face his desk. I steal a glance at Perry’s face as he reaches for his clunky ancient laptop. His tawny brown hair is mussed, like he’s raked his fingers through it one too many times today, and his cheekbones are tinged with pink. Our chairs are so close together that his leg brushes mine as he swivels his laptop to face me, and I swallow hard.
On the screen is a neatly typed spreadsheet. “We had fourteen people volunteer total—eight on Saturday and six on Sunday—not counting Alma or Chuck. I figured we should have volunteers work the ticket booth in pairs, in case anyone needs to step away for any reason, and I assigned each pair to work one-to two-hour shifts,” he explains.
I scan the spreadsheet and smile at the roster of familiar names—Jai and Anisha, Brie and Marcus, Mikey and Gavin. But there are a host of unfamiliar names as well. “Who are all these people?”
“Friends. Mostly from high school, but a few are from our rec softball league too.” My chest fills with warmth at how many people in Perry’s life have rallied to help him in his time of need—even bigmouthed Mikey.
“What about Alma and Chuck then? What will they be doing?” I ask.
“Alma will staff the store so I can man the Blooms & Baubles booth outside. And Chuck is going to manage setting up and tearing down the tents both days and take over the Blooms & Baubles booth whenever I need a breather.”
I nod. “What about me though? My name’s not on there.”
“I thought you could serve as an unofficial coordinator with Devin. We could use someone else to help direct volunteers and vendors, announce when the musical performances are starting, troubleshoot any problems that come up, that sort of thing.”
My eyebrows raise. “You sure I can handle such a big job?” With my short-term memory still on the fritz, I’m not exactly the safest choice.
“You practically planned the entire thing. I can’t think of anyone better.”
My cheeks flush. “I’d love to then. You can put me down for both days.” Something nips at my memory. “Oh, wait a sec.”
Springing from my seat, I retrieve my bag from beside the door. Returning to my chair, I plop my bag onto my lap. I dig around its depths, removing my wallet, Hydro Flask, and pocket sketchbook, and set them on Perry’s desk as I rummage.
Perry picks up my sketchbook and his eyes widen as he holds it up. “May I?”
Nerves pluck at my spine, and I lick my lips. “Sure.”
I watch him carefully as he flips through the pages. He pauses on one of the drawings, studying it carefully. Finally, he flips the book around. “I love this,” he says, tapping the page. “Who is it?”
“Just an old woman I see by the office every now and again. Sometimes when I take my lunch outside to eat on the bench by the river she’s there.” Her deeply lined face is angled to the side as her deep-set eyes gaze into the distance, her wrinkled hands clasped on top of a cane.
“It’s beautiful. I’m so glad you’re drawing again.”
“Painting too, thanks to you.” A flush creeps up my neck when he smiles at me, and I hastily return to the mission at hand: finding my phone. When I finally locate it at the bottom of my bag, Perry hands me my sketchbook and I toss it and my wallet and keys back inside. Plopping my bag onto the floor, I gnaw the inside of my cheek as I pull up my calendar app.
“Shoot, I was right. I might have to cut out early on Saturday.” I look up at Perry. “I’ve been meaning to tell you: one of the managing partners asked us the other week to block off this coming Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. for this stupid mandatory social event thing for work, and with everything else going on, it completely slipped my mind. The event should only last two or three hours, but I don’t know exactly what we’re doing yet or what time it starts. They’re announcing the details tomorrow. I’m sorry if I can’t be there the whole time.” I wince.