Read Lost and Found for Free Online

you?”
    “Point. I guess it doesn’t work on you. Maybe you’re impervious to niceness.”
    “I am,” he said but stepped into the kitchen nook, which was really just a tiny dinner table with two chairs shoved in a corner.
    “Maybe that’s because you haven’t had my crisp.” I opened the freezer and found it stacked neatly in the back, and I pulled it out, preheated my oven, and rested it on the counter. “Do you want a meal before dessert?”
    “I’m a dessert first kind of guy. Seriously, why are you being so nice to me?” He lifted an eyebrow and stared down at me as I leaned against the kitchen counter.
    I busied myself with straightening the folds of my skirt, so I wouldn’t lean into him or do something else embarrassing and hard to explain. “I don’t know, honestly. I guess because you make me nervous, and my response when I’m nervous is to be nice. And bake.” It’s the only reason people like me , I didn’t say. I was a people pleaser to the core.
    He shook his head. We were silent for a long, aw kward minute until he cleared his throat and said, “You know, you remind me of a friend.”
    “Oh? Thank you.”
    “How do you know that’s a compliment?” he asked.
    “I suppose I don’t. Is she, like, an Ayn Rand fan?”
    “No. She’s very sweet. She’s lovely.” His voice was full of love, and I bit back the jealousy that unexpectedly bubbled up.
    “Yeah,” he said, blinking like he was just waking up. “Anyway, what I was going to tell you is that you remind me of my friend, and I don’t think I deserve any crisp for treating you like I have.” He held out his hand. “I’m sorry I threw my phone and then thought you were wooing me with baked goods and called you ugly and dumb.”
    I took his hand and shook it. “You’ve apologized a million times. It’s fine. And I promise I will ne ver, ever try to woo you. Not even with baked goods.”
    He frowned. “Okay. Fair enough.” He held onto my hand, even though I’d started to pull my arm away. Then he squeezed it briefly before dropping it. “I forgot. I have something at my apartment for you.” Oliver jogged out of my apartment and reappeared a minute later with a fluted white ceramic pie plate, with a hand-painted lowercase “d” in the center.
    “Here,” he said, shoving it toward me without grace.
    “This is for me?”
    He shrugged. “There was a lady at the Farmers’ Ma rket near the hospital selling them, and I thought of you.”
    “You thought of me?” I said, my voice still raw with disbelief.
    “I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his head and then said, “Anyway, I have to go. Do stuff.” 
    I grinned. “Well, thank you. I love it. Stay.”
    His Adam’s apple jumped up and down with his swallow. “Gotta go.”
    “You really can stay for some crisp.”
    “Maybe another time, Delaney.” And with that he was gone.
    I hugged the pie plate to my chest, ignoring the anxiety spreading wide across my ribs. My phone rang again.
    I put down the pie plate and smiled. Maybe this was a sign. I was wrong about Oliver. Maybe I was wrong about men in general. Maybe this was the universe telling me to not turn into Emily. She was one-of-a-kind, but so was I, even if my kind was “doormat.”
    And then I picked up my phone. “Hi Cliff.”

Three
Oliver
    I shuffled through the circulars and bills in my mai lbox when a heavy white envelope fell onto the toe of my shoe. I knew before I even picked it up that it was their wedding invitation. I pulled out my phone.
    “Oliver.”
    I grit my teeth. “Mother.”
    “I told you I wasn’t coming to the wedding. You told me you didn’t care.”
    “I know. You’ve told me many, many times,” my mother said in her charming New England accent that hadn’t abated from living in the Midwest, or, as Mother termed it, “surviving the Midwest.”
    “Why did I get an invitation?” I said.
    “Did you ever bother to tell your brother?” I clenched my jaw, gripping