The duration of our romance was as long as it took to walk back from the park to rejoin Dad and Grandma Jo and Aunt Esha on the parade front lines. Then we morphed back to being just Finley and Arthur. Schoolmates, like him and Bronwyn. And even that had an expiration date, though thus far I was the only one who knew that rather important factoid.

Well, and Ayisha. Kinda. Speaking of . . .

Val Limekiller was late. Again. However, this time I was happy about it because that meant Ayisha was staying later to cover Val’s morning shift and thus overlapping with mine, which also meant we could finally have that talk I wasn’t initially sure I wanted but now really, really did. I wasn’t sure how to get the ball rolling or where it might end. I thought maybe Ayisha would bring it up, but she didn’t.

Instead, she looked preoccupied all morning.

I spent most of the breakfast/brunch subtly attempting to get her attention as we served the guests, to no avail. There were three factors working against me.

One: Mr. and Mrs. Yablonski were not satisfied with their pre-ordered food substitutions and made a bit of a stink about it, which led me to . . .

Two: An interaction with a cranky (even by her standards) Mrs. Buzzard, who let me know in no uncertain terms that not having the proper pans to make her meals threw off her entire preparation mojo, which was why she had forgotten about the Yablonskis’ apple-walnut-pancakes request.

And three: Ayisha ignored me. Though I suppose it was more like she had other things on her mind and failed to let her eye be caught.

Which meant I was going to have to be more assertive.

I had an iffy relationship with assertive.

Sometimes, I had no problem with it.

Like last night with Dad when I asked him about his feelings for Aunt Esha. Boom! On the walk home I noticed he took great pains to keep Grandma Jo between him and Arthur’s aunt. He’d zipped off to his cottage instead of joining Grandma Jo and Aunt Esha (minus Dr. Raymond, who was also absent because Mayor Slaughter had cracked his tooth opening a bottle of beer and required emergency surgery in the early a.m.) for post-parade wine by the firepit in the courtyard.

But sometimes assertive was harder.

Like trying to talk to someone I was fairly certain regarded me as barely tolerable about pressing issues that could affect the direction of the rest of my life. Maybe I should have chosen someone else to confide in, but there just wasn’t anyone else.

Which probably said a lot about my need to expand my interpersonal horizons.

Ayisha and I managed a brief exchange in the kitchen when I brought in dirty dishes and she was making an extra pot of coffee from the drip maker.