Cleo’s Date with Bryce
Cleopatra Evelyn Anderson, step away from the mirror!
I ignored the little voice in my head—which sounded exactly like my mother— and added a tiny bit more mascara to my lashes.
My blond pixie cut lay perfectly. My makeup was understated, yet applied as expertly as when I did the makeup of a bride, making my brown eyes look larger behind my glasses. And the cobalt-blue sundress I’d chosen to wear, after long consideration, was darling. Perfect for what sounded like a fancy “first date” in Dogwood Springs.
Bryce Parker, who was supposed to pick me up in twenty minutes, had texted yesterday to say that he had something special planned.
In Dogwood Springs, something special meant the nice Italian place downtown, La Villetta. Or maybe, if Bryce was really trying to impress me, a restaurant in Jefferson City, an hour away. That’s where the pediatrician I dated a few months ago had taken me for our first date.
That voice in my head was right, though. If I didn’t get away from the mirror, I’d add a bit more makeup here, a bit more makeup there, and eventually it would all be too much. I forced myself to lay the mascara wand on the counter and walk into the living room.
I was almost to the couch when my phone dinged with a text.
I raced across the room to grab it. Was it Bryce?
No. It was Libby, texting from her apartment downstairs.
Are you ready? Do you want company?
My thumbs flew as I replied.
Yes! And yes!
Thank goodness. Waiting for this date, the first real date Bryce and I had been on in more than ten years, was killing me.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and I heard a loud woof.
“Libby!” I opened the door. “Thank you for coming up to wait with me. I’m so nervous it’s ridiculous.”
Libby’s golden retriever, Bella, wriggled her way in the door and circled me, tail wagging.
“Oh, no,” Libby said. “I didn’t think about dog hair on your dress. It’s really going to show against that blue. Let me take her downstairs and get my lint brush.”
I sat down on my couch and pulled Bella to my side and rubbed her ears. “Don’t even think about it. Bella is just what I need. Besides, do you really think a veterinarian is going to care about dog hair?”
Libby sank into the chair across from me. “Good point. But why are you so nervous?”
I sighed. “Well, you know the backstory on this. Bryce and I were pretty serious in high school until I—in my vast teenage wisdom—decided he was boring. I broke up with him and started dating Jimmy Sykes. Talk about a mistake. Jimmy and I only lasted a couple of months before I got sick of being stood up or having him pick me up when he’d already been drinking.”
Libby’s eyebrows rose.
I had a pretty good idea that Libby had been a lot easier to parent as a teenager than I had.
“By then,” I continued, “Bryce was dating someone else and I…well, at seventeen, I was never going to admit that what I overheard my mom saying was right. I’d made a huge mistake.”
“But after you moved to New York, you realized you should have been with Bryce?”
“After I dated one wrong guy after another. I finally saw that what I had with Bryce wasn’t boring. It was the real thing, simply free of all the drama that most high school relationships have. And well, you know the rest.”
Libby nodded. She’d heard more than once about how I moved back to Dogwood Springs a few years ago, ready to start my own hair salon and win Bryce back. Even though I’d been in New York at the time, I had my sources. I’d heard that Bryce and Darcy Jackson were about to break up. Unfortunately, they hadn’t. They’d gotten engaged. And stayed engaged until this past spring, when they’d broken up for good—right before Darcy had been murdered.
“Maybe,” Libby said, “this second chance is exactly what you need. Maybe this time around, your relationship with Bryce will work better. Like maybe the two of you weren’t on the same page back in high school and now you are.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s a very polite way of saying I might have been an immature idiot in high school.”
Libby laughed. “That’s not what I meant. Bryce might not have been that mature either. Teenage boys…” She shrugged.
“Bryce always seemed like he had his head on straight, even at seventeen.”
“Then he probably knows what he wants now, as an adult. And he seemed very deliberate about asking you out.”
“I don’t know.” I grabbed a decorative pillow from the end of my couch and crushed the corner of it in my hand. “I think this date means a whole lot more to me than it does to him. What if he’s just asking me out because there’s really no one else single in town and—”
My doorbell rang.
I let out a yelp and jumped off the couch. “It’s him!”
“I’ll lock your door and go back downstairs after you two drive off,” Libby said. “And trust me, Bryce didn’t ask you out because there’s no one else single in town. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He likes you.”
I made a nervous gesture with my hands. “Let’s hope so.” I grabbed my purse and walked down the stairs, reminding myself that I was normally a bold, confident woman, not a jittery glob of Jell-O.
At the entryway at the base of the stairs, I spotted Bryce through the front door. I drew in a deep breath and opened the door.
A lump rose in my throat. There he was. The man I’d moved back to Dogwood Springs for.
An unbiased observer would say Bryce was attractive, but not drop-dead handsome.
To me, though, he was perfect.
He wore his warm medium-brown hair in a classic short men’s haircut with a slight taper on the sides and back. His face was clean-shaven. And he exuded a calm presence that promised he would be kind and gentle with every animal he treated and every person he encountered.
“Cleo.” His hazel eyes lit. “It’s great to see you.”
I bravely smiled and gave myself a mini pep talk.
I. Was. Not. Nervous.
“It’s, uh, it’s great to see you too,” I said, glancing down at his legs. La Villetta wasn’t super fancy, but even in August, if we were going there for dinner, I’d have thought Bryce would have worn long pants.
Not khaki shorts.
Here I was in heels. Seriously overdressed.
“You look fabulous.” He gestured to his T-shirt, which featured a small logo for his veterinary practice. “I got called out to see two little patients and didn’t have time to change. But it will be okay. There’s no dress code where we’re going.”
No dress code. What was that supposed to mean? It was Dogwood Springs. There wasn’t a dress code anywhere, except maybe at one church where I thought they discouraged shorts on Sunday morning. But I’d also heard that was mostly because the air-conditioning was either off or Arctic.
Maybe I should change what I was wearing. “Where—?”
“Nope. Can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.” He grinned at me—which made me too frazzled to plan a new outfit—walked me to his truck, and helped me climb in.
In that moment, despite the fact that Bryce’s truck looked nearly new, despite the logo for his veterinary practice that I’d seen on the door, I was back in high school. In my mind, I was climbing into his dad’s old red Chevy pickup, eager to drive out to Gerry’s Hot Dogs at the far end of Porter Street to share a foot-long with plenty of mustard.
I blinked, drawing my mind back to the present. “Was everything okay with the patients?”
“Everything was fine. Just a nervous client.” Bryce proceeded to tell me about the twin baby goats he delivered the day before.
“Oh, I bet they’re darling.” A corner of my heart melted. Bryce would look adorable with two baby goats frolicking around him.
“They are pretty cute.” He chuckled. “The owner is a woman who moved here from Chicago. First time she’s ever had an animal bigger than a house cat. But she’s had this dream of a house in the country with chickens and goats and four dogs. And for some reason she started by a buying a pregnant goat. She was worried today and asked me to come out. But those two little goats are doing just fine. Before you know it, they’ll be climbing on her porch rail and then onto her roof.”
I grinned. I’d had a friend growing up whose family had three pet goats. They’d been on the roof more times than I could count.
Bryce asked about my salon business, and I excitedly told him all about how—with my parents co-signing the loan—I was buying the building. I had to admit, I was rather impressed with myself. This was a big step.
But as I talked, we drove past La Villetta. We drove past the Dogwood Café. And we drove past three other restaurants where I would have thought we might go. We even drove past the neighborhood where Bryce lived, so that ruled out him cooking us dinner.
I shot him a look. “Are you sure you won’t tell me where we’re going?”
“I think you’ll figure out it really soon.” He turned onto Porter Street.
There’d only ever been one restaurant on Porter Street, Gerry’s Hot Dogs. It had closed four years ago.
And I wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but all those rumors about gossip at hair salons were true. If someone else had bought the place, I’d have heard. Probably before the ink was dry on the contract.
But Bryce pulled into the parking lot, took the spot that wasn’t marked handicapped closest to the door, and came around to help me down from the truck.
I swung my legs around to climb out, peered inside the restaurant, and stopped. It was still daylight out, but I could tell the place wasn’t open. “Bryce, there aren’t even any lights on inside.”
He pulled a keychain out of his pocket. It held three keys and a little plastic hotdog. “We can turn them on.”
I stared at him but let him help me slide out of the truck.
Once I had both feet on the asphalt, he caught my hand and gave it a squeeze. And then he walked right up to the door, unlocked it, and held it open for me. “Just a second.” He stepped into the back, and the lights came on.
And I gazed around in amazement.
It looked just as it had when we were in high school. Same cinder-block walls painted a grayish beige in a time before influencers latched onto the word greige. Same six booths with red vinyl seats. Same long counter.
But only one table had the little chrome holder that corralled the sugar packets and the salt and pepper holders.
And only one table was set with two white paper napkins, two sets of silverware, and a bouquet of red roses, the blossoms packed closely together, the stems cut short, held by a modern vase, and tied with a thin silver ribbon.
My heart turned completely to goo. “But how…?” I turned to Bryce.
“I contacted the owner, got the electricity turned on, and spent the past week here every evening, cleaning.”
My mouth fell open. And tears welled up in my eyes.
“We’re starting over, Cleo. So, I wanted us to go back to the very beginning and do it right this time. I thought about things a lot over the summer. This second chance with you…” His chest rose and fell. “It means the world to me.”
My heart pounded and warmth swirled through me. Why on earth had I ever broken up with this man? How had I possibly thought he was boring?
Maybe Libby was right. Maybe we each hadn’t been at the right place in our lives back in high school. But maybe now we were.
A smile spread across my face. “Foot-long hot dog?”
“Ready to heat up in the kitchen.” Bryce grinned. “I hope you don’t mind that it will be microwaved. I didn’t trust the stove here, so I borrowed the little microwave from the breakroom at the clinic.”
“Microwaved sounds great. As long as there’s—” I looked over at the table.
Just fast enough to see Bryce pull a yellow plastic bottle from a bag in the booth seat and place it on the table.
“Mustard!” we said in unison.
Delight rippled through me, and I burst out laughing.
And then—as the most perfect appetizer ever—he kissed me.