Wallflower In Bloom by Claire Cook Page B

of Herman’s Hermits. I had a huge crush on him. After Sajid Khan and before Micky Dolenz.”
    Belinda leaned forward as if she were about to get a tabloid-worthy scoop. “Okay, Micky Dolenz was one of the Monkees, but who was Sajid Khan?”
    I shrugged. “He rode an elephant on a TV show called Maya with the guy who played Dennis the Menace. I was madly in love with him. I was probably only five or six, but my mother helped me write him a fan letter, and he sent me a signed postcard of himself. And the elephant. I lived off the high for an entire year.”
    Belinda picked up her wineglass and suddenly froze. “Don’t look,” she said without moving her lips, “but he’s coming over.”
    I looked. “Sajid Khan?”
    It was the drummer. He walked almost to our table, made eye contact, ran a hand through his straight, stringy hair, and then kept going in the direction of the men’s room.
    “Ohmigod,” Belinda said. “The drummer totally likes you.”
    I rolled my eyes.
    “Holy déjàvu,” Belinda said. “It’s like we just flashed back to high school. Or maybe we just time-traveled to a John Hughes movie. Sixteen Candles. The Breakfast Club. Making It in Marshbury .”
    I rolled my eyes again.
    When the drummer came back from the men’s room, he stopped at our table.
    “Hey, Herman,” I said.
    He ran a hand through his hair and smiled. “Do you really think I look like him?”
    It would take me the next decade to learn that when people show you their true colors, color yourself convinced the first time.
    When he asked me out, I said yes.
    “Would you keep it down?” I said. “I barely even hit you.”
    Mitchell was lying on his back. His eyes were closed and he was holding one thigh and rolling back and forth. “Oww,” he kept saying. “Oww, wow, wow, wow, oww.” It was almost like one of Tag’s group chants.
    I wondered if I could get away with leaving, or if, in this crazy, crazy world, tapping the man who’d completely wasted the most marketable years of your life on the leg with a golf cart that barely did fifteen miles an hour and not hanging around could possibly be considered a hit-and-run.
    He interrupted his chanting to whisper, “Call. An. Ambulance.”
    “Oh, puh-lease. You call an ambulance.”
    “I can’t believe you hit me,” he said. I’d almost forgotten how whiny his voice was.
    “You should be thanking me for missing your hands,” I said. “At least you’ll live to drum again.”
    Mitchell groaned. He mumbled something about the pedals.
    When I didn’t say anything, he went back to his chanting.
    “Listen,” I said. “I barely slept last night. I’m going to get going now.”
    He opened his eyes. “You’re just going to leave me?”
    “What a coincidence,” I said. “I was about to say the exact same thing to you.”
    I found his cell phone in his car and threw it at him so he could call his pregnant bride-to-be. It was the best I could do.
    I took off before I had to listen to his phone call. I didn’t even want Mitchell, at least I was pretty sure I didn’t, but it still stung. More than stung. In fact, it felt a little bit like a golf cart had hit me, too, right in the gut. A few tears escaped, and I blinked them away as I drove. By the time I pulled up to my front steps, a sheep shed had never looked so good.
    Tag’s architect and his team had indeed done an incredible job on it. They’d kept most of the shed’s original rough interior barn board, which made it feel warm and cozy and also meant that I could hammer a nail in a wall pretty much anywhere without making a mess. The kitchen was just the right size for someone who didn’t cook, and it was open to a cute little dining nook and a mini–great roombeyond. The guest bath even had a pocket door to save space. They’d tucked a narrow staircase up against the wall when you first walked in, which you had to climb hand over hand like a ladder. The second-story addition created a surprisingly big