A Simple Wish About love - Karice Bolton Page 0,25

Christmas? All the kids love her.”

Slade stared at her blankly. “I don’t have any kids, so I don’t know what those youngsters love,” he joked, trying to sound like his grandfather.

“Well, her name is Miranda Cherry.”

Slade’s mouth dropped.

“What? Was that who stood you up?” She only half-joked.

“No, but I actually do know who she is since the weekend. The son of someone I met has a crush on her. He’s like twelve.”

“Well, I’m sure most twelve-year-olds have a crush on her.” Charlotte smiled. “Heck, I even have a crush on her. You should look her up.”

“I’ll do that when I get in my office,” he assured her. “First thing.”

“You should.”

He smiled. “Anything else I should know about?”

“Not that I can remember.” She eyed him carefully. “You look . . . different, somehow.”

Slade shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“You didn’t do a spa day or anything?” she hollered after him.

“Only if you call hiking up a mountain a day at the spa.”

Slade heard her laughter ring through the air as he closed the door to his office. He counted on coming here and burying himself in work to distract himself, but suddenly, he was trying to distract himself from something he didn’t expect.

He missed Erika.

Missed her smile.

Her jokes.

Just her.

Slade let out a sigh and logged onto his computer. He foolishly clicked on his profile page and saw countless messages from Penny.

“Yeah, right,” he said under his breath and proceeded to type in Erika Larson’s name.

The moment her picture popped up, his chest tightened.

Would she expect him to do this? Would she think he was crazy for caring?

He shrugged and glanced around the empty office as if someone saw him debating with himself. Slade was already walking the fine line of sanity, so this new bad habit didn’t surprise him. Hopefully, he wasn’t going to need the services his firm offered.

When he clicked on Erika’s name to befriend her, his stomach knotted, and he suddenly felt sick.

But for a good reason. It wasn’t like social media did him any recent favors with Penny.

But this was different.

Erika was real.

She had no motives.

But he was a grown man.

It was crazy how these same tools that allowed us to hide from civilization could also force us to be vulnerable in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise let ourselves be exposed by.

Slade knew he would never have reached out to Penny, but when she contacted him, he decided to open up.

With Erika, he was desperate to hear from her again, even if that just meant getting to see some random update about her life.

Within minutes, she accepted his friend request.

He felt like he’d just won the lottery.

He smiled. Was that a good sign?

Slade glanced around his empty office once more and quickly started scrolling through Erika’s feed.

“Man, she was gorgeous,” he muttered to himself.

“Did you say something?” Charlotte asked through the door.

“Just having a great conversation with myself again.”

“Oh, okay. Have at it.”

Slade smiled and clicked on a photo from a couple of weeks ago with Erika hugging Scott on the snowy mountaintop. He found another from Christmas with her dressed in holiday pajamas and Scott in the same matching pair.

He didn’t know what was happening, but he was getting warm and fuzzy all over.

Until his computer beeped and he saw a message pop up from Erika.

Slade wasn’t expecting to chat with her yet. He was too busy snooping.

What’s up, stranger?

He smiled and could hear her voice saying those words she typed. He drew a deep breath.

“What the hell? Might as well strike out twice online,” he whispered as he typed back.

Not much. At work being a fixer, doing fixer things. You?

He patiently waited for her reply.

Not much, but I’m happy you reached out. Hear any more from Penny?

“You are?” he asked aloud, chuckling to himself.

I received a few more messages, but I haven’t bothered to pay attention.

She wrote back immediately.

Aren’t you at least a little curious?

He sat back in the chair and scowled. Why wasn’t he even a tad interested in what Penny had to say? Erika had a point. He’d just been set up, played for a fool, and yet it no longer mattered.

Slade quickly typed back.

I guess I had such a great distraction over the weekend that I could care less. No time to lick my wounds.

She typed back a smiling emoji with the tongue out. Was that a good thing? Moments like these made him feel extremely old. Then another message came over.

Off to work. Chat later . . .

Damn! He wasn’t ready