Oops… My New CEO Saw Me in a Towel Chapter 12
I threw myself into work. Head down, no distractions. My
manager noticed – I was bumped up to permanent status early.
Weeks slid by before I felt it.
At my level in the company, I never crossed paths with Harrison at the office. But the gossip found me anyway.
Harrison spotted at dinner with Elise Kensington. Someone had photos.
My hand slipped. Hot coffee spilled over my knuckles, and
my eyes burned – from the heat, I told myself. Just the heat.
That evening, Mia texted asking if I wanted to hang out this weekend. She’d been hard to pin down lately – new
boyfriend, apparently – and hadn’t stayed over in quite a while.
The dinner photos flashed through my head. I typed back [Okay],
I didn’t expect her to pick The Rustic Mug, I hadn’t been
there in years. Walking up to it felt like stepping into a time capsule.
The Rustic Mug was this tiny bohemian cafe run by an owner who couldn’t care less about profit. One entire wall
was covered in sticky notes customers would grab one
from the counter, scribble a wish on it, and stick it on the wall.
Mia and I stumbled on the place freshman year. It looked quirky, so we wandered in. We each picked a note, wrote our wishes, and added them to the wall.
That was years ago. What made her think of it now?
Mia was already waiting at the door when I arrived. She spotted me, grinned, and pulled me through the door.
Something about her face made me look twice. She was glowing.
We both had secrets we weren’t sharing.
“Why do you keep staring at me?”
“Why here? What made you think of this place?”
Mia just smiled – that dreamy, lovesick smile – and said
she was here to check on an old wish.
Since when did a cafe wall make wishes come true?
Mia walked up to the wall – buried under layers of overlapping notes by now – and started searching. She was looking for her note. Years of new wishes had piled on top of it. It took her a while,
I figured I might as well look for mine too. It didn’t take long before I found it.
The thing was… I’d only written one line back then.
Some jerk hadn’t even bothered to grab their own blank note – they’d written their wish directly on top of mine.
Annoyed, I peeled my sticker off the wall to get a better look.
One look, and I stopped breathing. My fingers crushed the paper before I could stop them.
That handwriting. I knew that handwriting anywhere.