Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,27
was asking them for money now.
“So, change of subject,” Rohan said weakly. He seemed thrown for a loop by this news, not that Maya could blame him. “Maya, can you send me the dates for your summer play?”
“Sure,” she said. “But you don’t have to come.”
Her brother, like her parents, was a big supporter of the theater. He drove up from Chicago for every show. She always told him he didn’t have to, but she secretly loved all the big-brother boosterism.
“No, I’m going to come. But I’m going to run the North Country Trail marathon in western Michigan—it’s this trail run in a national forest there—so I gotta get organized with dates. I’m going to do a loop—hit Moonflower Bay before or after the race, depending on what the play dates are.”
“You run marathons now?” Jeez. How was she related to this guy? And “trail” marathons? She didn’t even know what those were, but they sounded a lot harder than, say, pavement marathons.
“Yeah. Kara got me into long-distance running.” Kara was his latest girlfriend. “You remember how my event in track was always the long jump? But then I’d also run the eight-hundred-meter and Ben Lawson would kick my butt?”
“Not really,” Maya lied, picturing teenage Benjamin all sweaty and panting in his little running outfit.
“Well, I could run circles around him now.”
“Anyway,” Maya said, changing the subject, “I’m excited to meet Kara.”
“Oh, Kara’s not coming home with me,” Rohan said. “I’m not sure we’re at the meet-the-family point yet.”
“So, what? You’re just going to leave her in the forest?” It boggled Maya’s mind how her nice, sweet brother who made it a point to come to all her shows had turned into such a player when it came to his own dating life.
“Just send me the dates, and I’ll let you know when I’m coming, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
After they hung up, they tucked into dinner. Maya noticed that her dad served himself only his grilled fish and rice, leaving the Chinese food for her and her mom—this must be the lifestyle changes in action. “In a way, it’s too bad that you’re doing such a great job with the theater,” he said. “You have such a head for business.”
“I do?” If he only knew.
“It was your idea for us to stay open until midnight on full-moon nights, and honestly, I’d never have believed the amount of traffic we’d get. And oh, I forgot to tell you—Ben Lawson stopped in the other day and told me about your idea to sell flowers in the bar.”
“He did?”
“‘She has such a head for business,’ I told him, and he agreed. That says a lot. He’s done a lot with that bar since he took over from his dad.”
She stifled a sigh. She just wanted to be at Benjamin’s apartment already. Which was a weird thing to think. It was weird all around, her asking for an off-season truce. But she’d been so nervous about today. The idea of kicking back on his big fluffy couch and watching some of her beloved Crystal Palace had felt like a sanctuary, a soothing, end-of-day respite.
Of course, if there were a way for her to watch her beloved Crystal Palace on Benjamin’s big, cushy couch without Benjamin himself being involved, that would be even better. But as the universe had so recently and decidedly shown her, a girl could not always get what she wanted.
“Have a fortune cookie,” her mom said, handing her the plastic takeout bag. “Take the rest home. Lisa Kim always gives me a bunch of them because she knows you like them so much.”
Maya did like fortune cookies. Or she had when she was a kid. Back when the future had seemed limitless and she’d still believed in the power of wishes.
She broke open the cookie and pulled out the little strip of paper. Your hard work is about to pay off.
Yeah, right.
Chapter Six
The knock on his door came too early.
Law had left the bar at seven thirty and, not expecting Maya until nine, was sitting on his couch watching Much Ado about Nothing while he paged through the loan paperwork for Lawson’s Lunch and tried to get Jason Sims’s house out of his mind.
He jumped about a foot when her knock came. He started toward the door, but no. He was watching a movie version of Maya’s upcoming play, and he had to turn the TV off before he let her in. Shit.
The remote had disappeared somewhere in the couch, so he jogged