My hand is halfway to the card when Jonathan says, “Wait.”
Frozen in place, I sense him behind me. Not so close that it’s inappropriate or invasive, but close enough to feel his solid warmth behind me, to breathe in his faint wintry-woods scent. I hate that so many smells give me headaches, but Jonathan’s is undeniably pleasurable.
Reaching past me, he tugs the poinsettia away from the plastic clip holding the card. “Careful.”
I glance up and meet his eyes. They’re evergreen dark, his jaw tight. Under the shop’s warm lights, I catch a glimmer of auburn in the bittersweet-chocolate waves of his hair. “Careful of what?” I ask.
“Poinsettia. They can cause a rash.”
I snort. “A rash.”
“A rash, Gabriella.” He juts his chin toward the note. “I told you, I’m not the one you have to worry about. Your boyfriend sent your sinuses’ worst nightmare and toxic plants.”
There it is again. My boyfriend.
Trey and I haven’t been together for six months, and even before that, “together” was a generous term. I’m someone who needs time to feel out my attraction, and while I was certainly struck by Trey, the smiling, golden-haired guy who bought my hot cocoa one morning at the coffee shop where I’d seen him ordering his latte, I wasn’t sure how I felt about dating him. But Trey was persistent, and soon he was buying my drink every morning, texting me all day, sending a private car to wait outside the bookshop after work, ready to whisk me his way so he could wine and dine me.
Which, in retrospect, was a red flag. I’d communicated the need for time to figure out how I felt. Trey only pursued me more fervently. And for two months, I let the appealing routine of our dinners out and conversations, being texted and checked in on, dull the warning signals blaring in my brain. I reasoned with myself, we’d turned out okay, hadn’t we? Sure, he’d pursued me a little aggressively, but most people I knew didn’t need the time that I did.
Being demisexual, I experience attraction less frequently and differently than most others seem to. It takes me a while to know whether I find someone attractive or desire them sexually, if I like the scent of their skin or the feel of their hand touching mine or the idea of being physically intimate. Any time I’ve experienced that kind of desire, it’s come after I’ve bonded with that person, established connection and familiarity. And that takes time to sort out.
Trey simply didn’t understand that, and I clearly hadn’t done a good enough job explaining myself. Or so I thought, back then. Now I know better—that what I’d told him should have been enough, that a good partner would have honored my boundaries, not steamrolled right over them.
Jonathan picked up that I was seeing someone. Trey never came by the shop, which made me a little sad since Bailey’s is my pride and joy, but he said he was busy and worked on the other side of town in finance, that the one morning he’d gotten a coffee from my local haunt was because of a meeting with clients, but now I made driving across town for coffee every morning entirely worth it.
I’d get flowers—and yes, they always made me sneeze—with sappy poem notes. He texted me and called enough for it to be obvious there was someone in my life.
But it wasn’t until our summer sale, when I was running around busily, that Jonathan realized who it was when he saw Trey’s name come up on my phone.
I’d watched him point at my cell, then pin me with that arctic glare. “Who’s that?”
“Not that it’s any of your business…” I’d snatched my phone off the counter. “But it’s the guy I’ve been seeing.”
“That’s who you’re with,” he’d said, his voice hard and dripping with disdain. “Trey Potter. Son and heir to Potter’s Pages, our number-one competitor, who’s trying to buy us out.”
I remember my heart thundering in my ears, humiliation flooding me as the world dropped beneath my feet. Trey had told me he was related to the Potters but never that he was the owner’s son, never said anything about a hoped-for buyout. Neither had the Baileys, who by then confided in Jonathan much more than me about the financial nuances of the business.
I stood under Jonathan Frost’s disapproving glare, reeling as the pieces slipped into place—Trey’s questions about the bookshop, about my relationship to the Baileys, his unwillingness to show his face here, his request that we keep our relationship private. Shocked, pride wounded, I lifted my chin defiantly and used every ounce of willpower not to cry as I gave Jonathan the silent treatment and stormed right by him.