More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel by Staci Stallings Read Free Book Online

talk didn’t help, but she felt better for having given it. At least all of her would no longer be fishing in the pond called “ridiculous.”
     
    Jake had never been to the coffee shop on a Saturday, but his steps took him there just the same. The bright sunshine should have been warm and welcoming; however, he was much too nervous to notice. He checked his outfit such that it was in the reflection on the window. Black jeans. Not new but no obvious holes. Gray T-shirt under a short-sleeved beige unbuttoned button down with tiny red lines that made a nice grid of squares. The shoes were a problem, but they were the only ones he owned. Black clunky things that he’d bought at the second hand store for five bucks. Thankfully only he knew about the small hole underneath the toe.
    Steeling his breath and nerves, he yanked the door open, and hated how much he liked those bells. “Stay cool, Jake. Just stay cool.”
    A quick scan of the establishment told him she wasn’t on the floor or at the counter, but then again, sometimes she wasn’t. Sometimes she came in later than he got there. Maybe she was in the back, or maybe she had already been in and had left. Anxiety slithered over him as he headed over to his corner in the back. For the first time ever he almost didn’t sit there. What if he did and she didn’t see him?
    That was being completely ridiculous of course, so he slid onto the chair holding onto cool with both sweaty palms. This was going to work. It had to though he had no clue how to make it. He opened his laptop, and reality crashed in on him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t long since used to all of the red lines, but they did things to his spirit that he would never get used to.
    Quickly he read back over the previous two paragraphs. With a sigh, he realized it was worse even than he had thought. Jasmine was fighting the flames in the hotel, but it was much more like he was reading it than living it with her, through her, and that annoyed him. Why was it so clear in his head and so very, very fuzzy when he got it onto the ether?
    “Can I get you something, baby?”
    Jake’s gaze jerked up to the waitress, and he recognized her from before. She was brash, dark all over, and she had a way about her that unnerved him. “Oh. Uh. Just… coffee. Black. That’s all.”
    “Coffee. Black. Got it. Be right back.”
    “Thanks.” He pulled his gaze back to the cursor that blinked at him. Off. On. Off. On. What comes next? What word captures Jasmine’s fear without saying she was afraid? He searched, typed in one word, didn’t like that, and erased it. He was still thinking when she came back.
    She set the cup on the table and poured him some of the black pick-me-up. “Can I get you something else?”
    Somewhere between reality and fantasy Jake looked past her into the soft yellow light of the room. “You here by yourself tonight?”
    The waitress, Mia or Mai, he couldn’t quite tell looked behind her. “Oh, Heather is supposed to be in later.”
    Jake picked up the cup and took a sip. “Heather, huh? Liz isn’t coming in?” He saw but tried not to the look that crossed the waitress’s face. It held interest and a question.
    “Oh. No. Liz is off on Saturdays.”
    He nodded as his heart fell. “Of course. Can’t work all the time, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    Wanting out of the humiliating conversation, he put his gaze on his computer and tapped a button to get the shapes that now reminded him so much of her to stop sliding across his screen.
    “Well, I’d better let you get back to it,” she said with something of a nod that he returned.
    “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.”
     
    The cell phone next to Liz’s computer vibrated to life, and she grabbed it up and clicked it on without bothering to see who it was. “Hell-o.”
    “Liz-bet.” Mia’s breathless greeting sat Liz upright.
    “Mi, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing. Listen. I can’t talk long, but I thought you should know Mystery