It Happened One Night Read Online Free Page A

customers’ lives. But Eli was off-limits—a pleasure so private she didn’t like to share.
    “Say good-bye to Miss Lana, Jackie,” Mrs. Montaigne said, after she’d paid for her purchase.
    Jackie took her fist out of her mouth and gave Lana a limp-fingered wave. Lana bent down to her level and smiled. “You know
     what I think? I think you’ve got a hug for me today, don’t you, sweetheart?”
    The girl grinned, instantly delighted—as if she’d been waiting for permission to throw her arms around Lana’s neck. Then Lana
     straightened her knees, said good-bye to Mrs. Montaigne, and leaned on the counter, hard. She glanced at the clock, wondering
     what she and Eli would do tonight—if they would eat dinner at their favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, if they would
     walk out by the lake.
    At one point after he’d left last night, the meteorite necklace had become the only thing she was wearing on her body. Ron
     had gripped it in tight fingers and pulled just enough to make her worry it would snap.
    “Is he a lover?” he’d demanded. “Was he ever?”
    Lana had told the truth. Then she took the necklace off and tried to put her best friend out of her mind. Unfortunately, knowing
     that Eli was nearby but not being able to see him had made her distracted and anxious at entirely the wrong time. He was on
     her mind a lot these days, so much it was almost bothersome. The solution was simple: She just needed to see him. That was
     all.
    She counted down the hours until her shift’s end, floating moment to moment. And the second the store was closed, she dialed
     Eli’s cell phone, eager to hear his voice. She worried her new necklace between two fingers until he finally picked up.
    “What are you doing right now?” she asked. He was unusually quiet.
    “Why?”
    Why?
Eli didn’t ask
why.
A pang of worry made her grip the phone hard. “I just wanted to know if you felt like doing something with me.”
    “Oh.” Again, another long, terrible pause. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
    “No?”
    “I have plans.”
    She answered as quickly as she could, desperate to hide her disappointment. “Okay. No big deal. I’ll catch up with you some
     other time.”
    When she put down the phone, her heart was beating frantically as if squeezed into too tight a space. She’d planned her whole
     week around Eli’s homecoming. She even would have cut short her date last night had she known he was arriving early. She’d
     expected Eli would have done the same if their roles were reversed. But now she worried that something had changed, that maybe
     their friendship had weakened somehow in the months he’d been away.
    She put on her jacket, picked up her purse, and told herself to cheer up. She was being ridiculous, completely overreacting.
     She would see Eli sooner or later. And when she did, they would pick up where they had left off. Things would return to normal.
     She just had to give it time.

June
    Lady’s slipper: This wild orchid requires unusual help to reproduce. The soil must be pH-perfect and must contain a unique microfungus that
     dissolves the seedlings’ hard outer cells. It can take up to four years for a lady’s slipper to fully recover from producing
     a single flower.
    June 5
    S omeone in the science museum had turned the air conditioner to cryogenic. Eli was comfortable in his khakis and navy polo
     shirt, but his date, Kelly, had wrapped her little pink sweater so tight across her chest it stretched like shrink-wrap, and
     she was furiously rubbing her upper arms to stay warm. In every sense she had overdressed by being underdressed; her knees
     were exposed by her short black skirt, her small toes peeked out of high strappy heels, and her walnut-colored hair was twirled
     up in some kind of knot that exposed the goose bumps on her neck. Obviously she’d dressed for a different kind of date than
     a science museum—a date that didn’t include roomfuls of children with light-up sneakers