She rolled her eyes. “Goodbye, Cal.”
“Goodbye, my panic station chicken.”
“Hey,” she said, eyes narrowing. “That was no tic.”
He was chuckling when he ended the call.
Hollyn shook her head and got up to pull her dinner from the oven. She only had a few minutes before she needed to head out. She had two spots to check out tonight. Thursday through Saturday was usually the busiest part of her week, and she wanted to pack in as much as she could.
She’d been looking forward to tonight. There was an eighties drag show that she’d heard great things about, and that was first on her list of stops. But the call with Cal had left a knot in her stomach.
Mainly because he was right. She hated when he was right.
No matter how awkward it would be to face Jasper again, she couldn’t walk away from something she’d worked so hard to attain. Getting an office at WorkAround had been a huge accomplishment for her. It was one step closer to the kind of life she dreamed of. She didn’t want to have to work from this little kitchen table or, worse, move back to her hometown with her well-intentioned but hovering mother. She liked having a reason to get out of her pajamas in the morning. It had felt like progress.
She straightened her spine like she was doing one of her yoga videos on YouTube and made a vow. Tomorrow she would go back to WorkAround, and she would order her damn decaf from Jasper. If she could eke out an apology, she would. If she couldn’t, she’d deal with him thinking she was rude.
She could do this.
She pulled out her journal while she ate dinner and scrawled a title on a fresh page. Days without a panic attack. She drew square number one and hoped she’d be able to mark an X there tomorrow.
Chapter Four
Jasper should not be looking at the theater-for-sale info that Fitz had emailed him. He absolutely one hundred percent had lost his damn mind. He should throw his phone in the coffee grinder. He clicked on a photo of what used to be a vaudeville theater in the twenties and then a one-screen dollar theater in the nineties but had been shut down and left empty since. Well, the ad read former dollar theater, but it probably meant former porn palace. The part of town it was in had only just started to become a section you could walk in after dark without ending up on the nightly news. He’d spent his first few years of life in an apartment not far from there.
Jasper zoomed in, trying to see more detail in the photos. The place was definitely run-down. Stephen King could set a movie in it. But it had retained some of the original details with its decorative moldings and arched entryway. It was no Saenger Theatre. For one, it was a shoebox in comparison, but it had potential to be pretty cool if given a renovation. It also had space upstairs that could be used for offices or classes. He scrolled down for more information.
The price came up in bright blue.
He groaned. “Fuck me sideways.”
“Um.” A throat was cleared.
Jasper looked up from the spell his phone screen had woven around him and found himself staring into the wide green eyes of Ms. Busy. His phone slipped from his hand and clattered onto the counter.
She winced and looked down, her mane of hair blocking her face.
“Sorry about that,” he said, sliding his phone out of the way. “Um, hi. What can I get you?”
“It’s Holland,” she said without looking at him.
He cocked his head. “What’s Holland? Is that a type of coffee or are we naming countries? I choose Denmark.”
She glanced up at him, and her nose wrinkled. “No, Hollyn. My name. And Holland is actually a region, not a country. The country is the Netherlands.”
“Oh.” He nodded, trying to figure out if she was still angry or if this was some sort of olive branch. “Duly noted for the next time I’m on Jeopardy!”
“It’s just…you wanted to know my name and I was—” She huffed a breath and a sour expression crossed her face. “I was rude yesterday. I’m sorry.”
Hollyn. Mystery woman’s name was Hollyn. And she was apologizing. Awkwardly.
He smiled, her let’s-get-this-over-with approach kind of endearing. “No worries. I know I sort of surprised you. I don’t like to be interrupted mid-porn-scrolling either.”
She cringed.
Shut up, dumb-ass. Stop talking about porn. Stop trying to be funny.
“It was spam.” She pushed her hair behind her left ear and made a little humming sound, the other hand tapping a pattern on the counter impatiently. Her face shifted into a half scowl. Clearly, he was impressing the hell out of her.
“Sorry. I was kidding. I have a tendency to do that,” he said. “I don’t really think you have a shoe fetish.”
“Iced decaf please,” she said, ignoring his comment and looking at the menu board behind him instead of at him. “Whole milk. One sugar.”
If he had a white flag, he would’ve picked it up and waved it.
“You got it,” he said and moved toward the supplies. He peeked over at her while he dumped in the ice, trying to observe her without her noticing. But she’d turned her back to him and was busy on her phone.
Alrighty then.
An apology but the cold shoulder remained.
He needed to let it go. She didn’t want to be friendly. Her prerogative.
He poured the coffee and caught sight of what she was scrolling through, recognizing the logo. One of his favorite sites—the Miz Poppy blog on the NOLA Vibe. He read Poppy’s reviews and entertainment articles religiously. Even when he was living in LA, he’d followed her posts. Sometimes he did it because he was homesick or wanted to know what movies to see, but he mostly read it for the humor. Miz Poppy’s bad reviews were so full of snark that he had a bit of an internet crush on her.
“I love her,” Jasper blurted out.
Great. Now she knew he’d been spying on her screen. Again.
Her head popped up, but she didn’t turn toward him. “You do?”
“Yeah. A buddy of mine turned me on to her NOLA Vibe posts a while back because I like knowing what’s cool to do in the city. But I ended up searching for her original blog and reading her entire backlog of movie reviews. That was a big commitment because she’s been doing those for years, but she makes me laugh.”
“Cool.”
It was a cool, now-leave-me-alone tone, but he couldn’t seem to stop talking to this woman. The ADHD kid with no filter still lived right under the surface when he wasn’t careful. “Did you see her post the other day? The one where she called that pretentious dude and his funk pop band Flunk Pop? That was the best.”