He stared at me, as if this was highly doubtful.

“Well…have a good practice, Sean,” I said. “Come on, Bear—let’s go. See you guys later!”

When I went inside the house, Gretchen practically pounced on me. “What was that all about?”

I explained how Sean had to cancel our trip to the mall. Why I said that, I’ll never know. Naturally her response was, “Well, then, why don’t we go to the mall?”

“Seriously? I’m not really in the mood,” I said. “I have some stuff I could do here—”

“Come on,” Gretchen urged. “It’ll be fun!”

Somehow, with Gretchen doing all the shopping, and me entertaining Brett, I doubted that.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to catch Conor and Sean.

Chapter 8

My glasses fogged over completely as I walked into the bakery the next day. I couldn’t see a thing. I hated wearing my glasses when it was cold, but I’d lost a contact the day before and I didn’t have a choice. I held one hand out in front of me, à la Frankenstein, so I didn’t knock anyone or anything down as I slipped the glasses down my nose with my other hand.

I didn’t understand how if they could come up with all these technologies for eyeglasses, like anti-glare lenses and tri-focals, and heck, laser refractive surgery, that they couldn’t have anti-fog lenses.

At least I liked my new glasses. I’d picked them out before the school year and they were very cool tiny brown ovals that I personally thought looked fantastic if I wore my hair in long blond pigtails. (“Again with the Heidi look,” Jones would always tease me when I did this combination, and then she’d sing, “The hills are alive…with the sound of music,” even though that’s neither Heidi nor Switzerland.)

Mom was sending replacement contact lenses from home, via overnight mail. Gretchen was home to wait for the FedEx delivery. If Mom included any baked goods by mistake, they’d be history by the time I got home. So I was here in search of sweets. I’d decided that I must have S.A.D. Not Seasonal Affective Disorder, but Sean Affective Disorder.

Not enough Sean every day.

They say one of the symptoms of S.A.D. is craving carbohydrates. Well, I definitely had that problem, and then some. I was dying for a donut. I was dying to see the sun. And I was dying to see Sean.

But since I didn’t want to bowl him over any more than I already had, I’d headed to the bakery. If he happened to walk out of his house when I went past, well, great.

But he didn’t.

This time, I didn’t plan on staying very long, and I tied Bear to an iron bench outside the bakery so I could keep a better eye on him.

“Hey,” I greeted Conor as I wiped off my glasses and waited for them to adjust to the warmer temperature indoors. “How are you?”

“Double latte,” he replied, sliding a cup across the counter to me.

I turned around, expecting another customer to come up behind me. But there was no one to claim the drink.

“It’s for you,” Conor said.

“For me? Thanks. How did you know I was coming?” I asked.

“I saw you tying up Bear,” he said.

“That’s so nice of you. Thanks,” I said as I slid my glasses back on, and reached for my wallet. When I looked down at the coffee, I could have sworn that the foam on top of the latte had a heart pattern. “Look! A heart,” I said.

Conor was in the middle of making another espresso drink for the next customer, and he didn’t look up at me. “A heart?” he said, sounding very skeptical.

“Look—in the foam,” I said.

“Show me,” Conor said.

“There.”

“Where?”

“Hold on.” I stared into the cup, turning it toward me and then back the other way. Where had it disappeared to? “It was here a second ago,” I told Conor. “Shoot.”

“I don’t make patterns in the foam. Maybe you need new glasses?” he said.

“These are my new glasses,” I said. “I lost a contact sledding with Brett yesterday.”

“Oh. Well then, I don’t know what to tell you.” He finished making the next coffee drink and rang up the other customer’s order.

I grabbed a packet of sugar and stirred it into my latte, then snapped a lid on top so that it would stay warm. I didn’t care what he said. There was a heart there. Once.

“Can I get you anything else?” Conor asked.

I looked into the case, at all the pastries on trays. “How are the raspberry turnovers?”

“Not as good as the cheery cheese Danish.” He pointed to a large, square pastry with cherries on top, drizzled with white icing.

“Cheery cheese? Does it smile at you?” I asked.

“I didn’t say cheery. I said cherry,” he insisted. “You’re strange. Do you see things everywhere? Hearts, smiles—”

“You said cheery!”

“I did not. It’s cherry, and you’re having one.” He plucked the Danish with a pair of tongs and dropped it onto a plastic, flowered plate. “On the house. How’s the novel coming along?”

“Novel?”

“Whatever you call it.”

“That’s the thing. I need a title,” I said. “So then I’ll know what to call it, instead of constantly trying to explain it and failing. Like if I could think of a title that just captured the essence of it.”

He didn’t look impressed. I didn’t expect him to be. Nothing I did seemed to make him think any more of me.

“Did that come out sounding as pretentious to you as it did to me?” I joked.

“You know, I write, too. I’m planning to major in English or Creative Writing,” Conor announced. “Unless I completely change my mind and decide to go into the forest program, which I’m also interested in. You could say I’m a little undecided, I guess.”

We both laughed. “Yeah, I’ve got it narrowed down to English, Teaching, and ah…” I paused.

“Teaching English,” Conor said.

“Exactly,” I said. “I’m all about the teaching English. Actually, I’m thinking about law school, too.”

“Really.” Conor looked very surprised. “You think you could get in somewhere good?”

I wondered if he said offensive things like this to everyone, or whether it was just me. “Do you think I’m stupid or something?” I asked.

“What?”

“That’s like the fourth time you’ve made fun of me and implied I’m not intelligent,” I said. “You realize I don’t have to be in school this semester because I’m basically done, too.”

“Well, sure, who wouldn’t be done at a school that accepts instant messages as term papers,” he replied.

Ooh. He was really going for the jugular now. “Hey. It’s not just IMs,” I said.

“Of course not. You probably have photos and some movie ticket stubs in there, too.”

I glared at him. “Could I just have my Danish now?”

“Sorry. Anyway, I thought you were here to help your sister,” he said.

“I am. Does that mean I can’t be working on an independent school project?” I asked Conor. “You know, you’re really assuming a lot. Like, you don’t even know what else I’m writing, or what I’ve done, or the fact I have a 4.0 average and the fact I’ve already been accepted to college and I have all the credits I need, so this is just for extra credit and for me personally, something I want to do.”

When I took a breath, I noticed him staring at me with raised eyebrows—that look again. The one I kept getting from him when I went on one of my little tirades. “Okay. Sorry,” he said. “The thing about getting in somewhere good—that was out of line.”