The Cinnamon Bun Book Store: TikTok Made Me Buy It (Dream Harbor, Book 2)
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store: Chapter 17

‘Earth to Hazel!’

Hazel blinked. Annie was standing in front of her, waving a hand in front of her face. She was thankfully not at the front counter today but getting some work done in the office. She hadn’t even heard Annie come in.

‘Oh, hey.’

‘Oh, hey? That’s all you have to say to me?’

Hazel frowned. ‘What else would I have to say?’ She’d been daydreaming again. She couldn’t help it. It had been a week of the new, very special kind of fun she’d cooked up with Noah, and even when she wasn’t with him she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And more specifically, everything they’d done. And where.

She could barely look down at this desk now without blushing.

Noah was so damn good with his mouth and his hands and they hadn’t gone further than that, but Hazel was more satisfied than she’d ever been. It was distracting to say the least.

‘You’ve been MIA all week!’

Annie came back into focus. Right. Her angry best friend.

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Busy with what? Or should I say with who?’

‘Isn’t it whom?’

‘Hazel Delphinium Kelly!’

‘You know I don’t have a middle name.’

‘And you know that’s why I have to make one up for you.’ Annie put a hand on her jutted-out hip. ‘Now stop distracting me. What is going on with you and the fisherman?’

Hazel shrugged but she could feel the furious blush working its way up her face. ‘We’ve just been hanging out.’ Ironically, Hazel had kept all her new stories to herself. She’d started this whole summer of fun because she’d wanted to shock her friends, to have something new to talk about, to just be generally more interesting and now here she was holding out.

She just … everything happening with Noah now seemed … private.

‘Hanging out? You missed trivia night and now half the town thinks you’ve been kidnapped.’

Hazel huffed. ‘I’m clearly right here.’

‘Hazel…’

‘What? Can’t a girl have a little fun?’

‘Of course you can, but this just feels like––’

‘Like what Annie? Like not my type of fun? Like it’s totally out of character for me? That’s exactly the point! I can’t … I just needed … something different.’

Annie plopped down on the old couch. ‘I didn’t know you were unhappy, Haze.’

‘I’m not unhappy. I’m just … I don’t know…’

‘Afraid of turning thirty?’

Hazel’s eyebrows rose.

‘You’re not the only perceptive one. I notice things, too.’

‘I just don’t want to turn thirty with regrets, that’s all.’

‘And you regret not sleeping with the town hottie?’

Hazel laughed. ‘Well, I might.’

Annie smiled. ‘We wouldn’t want that.’

‘Sorry I didn’t tell you.’

Annie shrugged, leaning back into the couch. ‘That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me everything, although we did make that pact back in tenth grade.’

‘True. Well, in the spirit of honesty, have you been trying to leave me clues or something?’

‘Clues? No, Haze, I usually just go with a text.’

‘Hmm.’

‘What do you mean by clues?’

Hazel pulled out one of the defaced books from her bottom drawer. She’d been keeping them as evidence or souvenirs. She didn’t really know which.

‘Someone has been highlighting lines and then putting them back on the shelf.’ She slid the book across the desk and Annie looked down at the page. It was the line about eating berries, the one she’d followed by accident.

‘Wait, is this why we found you drunk in a blueberry field?’

Hazel shrugged. ‘Yes.’

Annie’s eyes lit up. ‘I know who’s doing it!’

‘You do?’

‘It’s so obvious!’ She slammed the book shut. ‘It must be Noah!’

‘Noah? No, that can’t be right. He’s been helping me follow them. He seemed just as surprised as I was about them.’

‘He’s been helping you follow them?’

‘Well, he was here when I found the first one … and I don’t know, he seemed interested … and then I don’t know, we started having fun…’ Hazel sighed. This was why she hadn’t brought any of this up. Because it all sounded completely insane.

‘Hazel, come on,’ Annie said, like the whole thing couldn’t be more obvious. ‘Then it’s definitely him. He’s been hanging out around here for months now. He’s clearly into you and look, he figured out a sneaky way to spend time with you!’

Wait. Could that be true? Did Noah set up this whole thing to hang out with her? And sneakily made it sound so nefarious.

Hazel’s heartbeat had ramped up over the course of this conversation and now she felt dizzy. Could Annie be right? And did she want her to be? Devising a sneaky, scavenger hunt did not sound casual at all. But the more time she spent with Noah the more she liked him and…

She shook her head. She was getting way off track here.

‘Annie, have you gone down a romcom rabbit hole already?’ Her friend had a tendency to binge-watch seasonal romantic comedies from September through to the new year.

Annie huffed. ‘My viewing habits have nothing to do with what is very obviously going on here.’

‘And that is… ’

‘And that is that the sexy fisherman, who has had the hots for you for months, has been leaving you little love notes so you guys can go on dates together.’

Hazel frowned. That couldn’t possibly be right.

‘But Noah doesn’t do relationships, remember? This feels very relationship-y.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

Noah had said those exact words to her at the carnival. A first time for everything. Was Hazel about to be the woman who got the infamously promiscuous Noah to settle down? Did she want to be? Wasn’t she trying to un-settle herself?

She groaned and leaned her forehead on the desk.

‘Or…’ Annie paused, thinking. ‘It could just be some sociopath who likes to highlight books and then leave them on the shelf.’

Hazel groaned louder.

‘Haze.’

‘What?’

‘Are you coming to the town meeting tonight?’

‘I guess so,’ she mumbled.

‘Great.’ Annie got up and patted her head. ‘I’ll see you then. Love you.’

‘Love you, too.’ Hazel gave her a little wave and went back to staring at the next month’s book orders she’d been attempting to work on for the past hour.

There was no way Annie was right about Noah and the clues, which was fine. It was good, actually, because Hazel didn’t want anything serious with Noah. So really it worked out perfectly. And she could just continue with her reckless summer of fun even though it was nearly September and thinking about the end of her little experiment gave her a stomach ache. But it was all perfectly fine.

Really.

Fine.