Chapter Two Emily
Chapter Two
Emily
And by grab coffee, I actually mean sit in the coffee shop at my favorite little corner table and work on my romance manuscript, trying to block out all thoughts of Jack and his canceled wedding that has no bearing on my life. Absolutely none.
It’s my Saturday tradition to go write for a few hours at the coffee shop, and today will be no different. (Fun fact: The coffee shop has recently been renovated and rebranded in hopes of bringing in more customers, and they have uncomfortably as well as ignorantly renamed it: the Hot Bean. And for those who do not enjoy coffee, they’ve started selling organic juice. It’s been a trial unlike any other to hold a straight face while listening to the older citizens of our town go on and on about how they can’t go a single day without that new Hot Bean juice.)
On my way through the town square (which is actually laid out like a lowercase t ) I walk under the familiar blue-and-white awning of the Pie Shop and can’t resist the pull to go in. I know Noah will be there because he always works Saturdays. He’s the only other person I’ve ever known who enjoys patterns and routines as much as I do.
The bell above the door rings as I step inside and I immediately smile at the sight of Phil (of Phil’s Hardware Store) running his mouth, monopolizing the coveted window seat per usual. He has a rapt audience today. At least five town members are standing around his table, sipping their coffees and holding a box of pie. However, Phil and Todd (partners in business and life) are sharing their traditional slice of chocolate pie.
“Something really juicy must have happened to hold everyone’s attention like that,” I tell my brother, Noah, as I approach the counter.
His blond head is bowed, flannel-clad forearms resting on the countertop studying a ledger. His only acknowledgment of me is a grunt as he continues tallying the numbers in his bookkeeping (of course Noah would still use a physical book instead of software) and then finally responds with, “They’ve been going on about someone new moving to town. I don’t know, I’ve been trying to tune them out so I can focus on these damn numbers that keep coming out wrong.”
I’ve never been very good at letting my siblings work through their distress on their own, which is why I take a minute to study the lines of numbers. “You’re off on this one.”
His forehead creases as his eyes slide to where my cherry-red fingernail is pinpointing a line. “ Dammit. How did you see that so quickly? I’ve been trying to figure out where it’s not adding up all morning.”
“That’s because Mom and Dad gave you all the beard hair and saved the smarts for me.” I grin at him, and he rolls his eyes. I gently close his bookkeeping journal and slide it across the weathered, generations-old countertop, and then up under my arm. “I’ll finish it for you.”
His eyes, almost the exact same shade of green as mine, hold both hesitation and relief. “You don’t have to do that, Em. It’s your summer break now.”
“Which means I have all the time in the world to help out. And I’d hate for you to run my favorite pie shop into the ground with your shitty bookkeeping,” I tell him with a tilted smile that he grins at in return. He knows better than to argue with me when my mind is set on something.
Noah stands to his full height—only a few inches taller than me—and leans back to stretch like he’s been hunched over staring at this book for hours. “Take a free pie, then,” he tells me, nodding toward the case.
“As if I wasn’t already planning to. Do you have any Vanilla Bourbon Apple?”
“I do—but those are for people who give me money in exchange for pie. What I meant was, take a rhubarb pie because those are reserved for sisters who help with things I never even asked for help with in the first place.” His eyes crinkle in the corners just like Annie’s do.
Looking at Noah is like looking at the original blueprint for each of us four Walker siblings. We are all a slight variation of him—but I tend to favor him the most. Golden blond hair. Tallish. Generally wary of people until they prove worthy of our trust. The difference surfaces when we open our mouths. Noah is more prone to grunting and silence. I’m all too happy to voice my opinions. In fact, I have to hold back ninety-eight percent of the time, and that two percent can still be too much for people.
“Where’s your wife? She’ll give me good free pie.”
“She’s on a videoconference call all morning with her label,” he says casually, like that doesn’t mean what we both know it means. Amelia is the worldwide pop sensation otherwise known as Rae Rose. She and my brother met by sheer luck when Amelia’s car broke down in his front yard three years ago. She stayed with him for a while to hide out from her fame and one thing led to another, and now they’re married. She didn’t tour her last album because she wanted some time to enjoy her new marriage and focus on putting down roots in Rome. It also gave her time to work on a new album, which she tells me is her favorite one yet. I imagine this call with her label is the one where they are begging her to go on tour for it.
A tour would mean at least a year where she and Noah won’t see each other much. They were only dating during her last one, and Noah didn’t get to visit a lot because he didn’t want to be away too much from our grandma, who had been living with Alzheimer’s. We all shared a rotating care schedule for checking in and visiting with her at the nursing home, and Noah rarely wanted to miss a single visit.
Although…she’s gone now.
There’s nothing left here holding him to the town.
My heart does that thing where it hurts, and hurts, and hurts and I can’t stop it. The feeling scares me. I’ve been outrunning it ever since Grandma died and all four of us siblings were standing in the church’s gymnasium after the funeral, shoveling various casseroles that none of us would take a single bite of onto our plates. We were all prepared for her death in theory, but when it really comes down to losing your last parental figure, it turns out there’s really no such thing as preparation.
I think that was the first day things started changing for us. I’ve always been able to fix everything for them—a Band-Aid on a skinned knee, a pep talk after a breakup, late-night study sessions before a big test—but now they don’t lean on me like they used to. They don’t need me. Noah was so broken after losing Grandma, but he had Amelia to turn to. And Annie had Will, and Madison had culinary school and her life in New York to focus on. It was clear that grief was swallowing us all, but whereas we used to all huddle together in hard times, this time everyone turned in different directions.
And that was when I started my romance novel. It was basically a desperate attempt to distract myself from that hurt clawing its way through my heart. Everything was changing, no one needed me, and I needed…to just be okay. I’ve always loved reading, and writing seemed like the most incredible thing in the world. So for the first time, I let myself get lost every night in a completely made-up world. A world set in the Regency era where a kilt-wearing Highlander and a virginal youngest daughter of a duke fall in love and escape the pain of reality in each other’s arms.
What started as a silly idea quickly became important to me. Meaningful. It felt like stepping into my skin for the first time. There’s this unexplainable buzzing joy in my head while typing and plotting and even just daydreaming about my story. It’s the one place I have full, bright, and unwavering control. I had no idea what I had been missing out on all my life. And now I’m nearing the end of this story that no one around me knows exists and I’m not sure what to do with it. Delete it? Print it out and burn it in a fire? Those feel like the only two options since I think I might die before letting anyone else read it.
“Does she want to do the tour?” I bring myself to ask Noah in a level, casual tone even though my urge is to bite out something like But you won’t go with her, right? Because this is what I’ve gotten great at these days. Pretending I’m okay with everything.
He shrugs a shoulder. “She hasn’t made up her mind yet. I told her I’ll support her no matter her decision.”
“And we’ll support you.” I use my hands to smooth a stack of paper napkins into a perfect square beside the register. “You know that, right? If Amelia wants to go and you want to visit her…we’ll make sure the pie shop runs smoothly while you’re gone. Just like last time.”
This technically may be his pie shop after inheriting it from our grandma several years ago when the first signs of Alzheimer’s started presenting themselves, but it also belongs to all of us in the sense that we all grew up in here. Grandma always had a soft spot for Noah, though, and he had one for her. They shared a bond that the rest of us didn’t feel as strongly. Not for any real reason other than it’s just how some people gravitate more to certain people in this life than others. After my parents passed, Noah needed my grandma, and the girls needed me.
Needed being the key word.
A few minutes later, with the pie shop’s ledger in my tote bag and a great idea in mind for how to finish the last chapter of my novel, I’m in front of the coffee shop. It’ll be so good to focus on—
Wait. Is that…?
My stomach bottoms out. Because right there in the town’s communal parking lot beside the coffee shop is an all too familiar blacked-out Land Rover. It’s parked directly beside my red-and-white ’85 Ford pickup truck in a move that couldn’t be anything besides intentional. The sleek SUV stands out like a sore thumb among the other rust buckets. Or like a snooty thumb—reigning supreme over all the other trucks and trying to assert dominance. This is the SUV of my nemesis. My nemesis who apparently isn’t married.
What the hell is Jack Bennett doing back in Rome, Kentucky?
Ignoring the weird flock of butterflies storming my stomach, I fling open the doors of the coffee shop like Aragorn entering the great hall in that one Lord of the Rings movie. I don’t have to even look around to find Jack. There he is, sitting at my favorite corner table with a streak of sunlight slashing over his chiseled face as if he’s the hero instead of the villain.
He’s wearing a vintage-looking shirt. Notice I said vintage- looking. Because it isn’t actually vintage. Jack would never thrift a piece of clothing. Everything he owns is new and expensive—and most likely custom made. (Which is wild to me considering his teacher salary matches mine.)
Take for instance the shirt he’s wearing. I’m sure if I were to look it up online, I’d find that it easily retails for over a hundred dollars. It’s a camp collar button-up with thick sage-and-cream stripes that run vertically down what looks like butter-soft material. On his lower half is an impeccable pair of mustard-colored trousers, rolled once, maybe twice at the hem, and casual brown boots. The only contradiction to his luxury style is the tacky, colorful, plastic-candy beaded necklace he’s wearing. He owns a handful of them in different forms. Oh, and he has several tattoos. But they’re all cute sticker-style designs of things like a smiley face, a cartoony Polaroid of an adorable worm with glasses popping out of an apple, a swirly ice cream cone, a tiger in a cardigan with a thought bubble that says rawr …you name an adorable design, and he hasit.
This is Jack’s hook. His style is whimsical yet so charming, and dapper, and well done. It’s part of his tactic to win people over immediately with colors and textures and designs that the average man wouldn’t normally be caught dead in. Not me, though. I don’t fall for his fashion facade. Or his nice hair that is neither blond nor brown but lives in an undefinable middle that changes without rhyme or reason. It is, however, classically, and predictably mussed. His bone structure is one that most people would consider exceptionally nice and sometimes he has scruff on his face and sometimes he doesn’t. I don’t keep close enough tabs to know for certain if there’s a pattern to it or not. But today, he’s clean-shaven.
Across from him sits not his fiancée but his leather laptop bag. One light brown, rustic boot is propped up on the foot of the table leg and his attention is focused on his laptop open in front of him like he’s someone important. He’s not. He’s a seat stealer, that’s what he is.
As if Jack can feel the cold wind blowing off my heart, his eyes rise to where I’m fuming in the doorway. It’s now I remember I look like a… what did she call me? …a wet goat. I can see my bangs curling up oddly around my brows, and the rest of my hair is a damp mass pressing down like a muggy bog on my shoulders.
He lifts a taunting eyebrow as if to say Do you need something?
Oh, that damn expression. I’ve had to see it since Jackson and I attended the same private college just outside Rome, Kentucky. We got off on the wrong foot immediately. As the story goes, it was our first day, and I was already running late after waking up to a flat tire. I was hurrying to English Composition 101, and when I turned the corner, I was barreled into by Jack, who had been looking down at his phone while practically jogging with a coffee. The lid popped off and the drink drenched my shirt.
Jack had the audacity to try and spin the moment into some kind of meet-cute, flashing his charming smile and offering to take me out for a coffee after class to make up for it. But (A) I was fresh out of a breakup that had destroyed me and left me with zero desire to interact with anyone in possession of a penis, and (B) showing up late to class and with a huge coffee stain was what my nightmares were made of. I remember saying something to him along the lines of You think hitting on me is an appropriate apology for dumping coffee all over me?
As it turned out, we were headed to the same class. We stumbled inside and both made a beeline for the last available seat near the front, and we fought over it. The bickering match started in a heated whisper (where he said he would offer the seat to me but wouldn’t want to risk me thinking he was hitting on me) and escalated to a crescendo that disrupted the entire class, earning us both a glare from the professor and a sharp retort about how this was college, and if we were going to act like children, we should return to high school. I was humiliated.
The absolute worst of it, though, is that Jack immediately smiled at the professor, apologized, and then cracked a joke about how we had heard that the lectures were so incredible we were willing to fight to get a good seat. The professor ate it up hook, line, and sinker. He waved us off, then told Jack to take the seat and pointed to one in the back for me.
The rest is history.
Jack and I competed our way through college, and since we were after the same degree, we had frustratingly similar course schedules. Everywhere I turned, Jack seemed to be there with a smile and self-deprecating jokes that earned him the love of everyone in the room. Even when I got a job at the smoothie shop by campus, I walked in on my first day only to find Jack already behind the counter wearing the Go Bananas hat. He got the manager job a few weeks later because the customers loved him, whereas I got complaints for being too rude when they’d ask me to remake a smoothie (that was made perfectly the first time but really they were just gaming the system for a free smoothie).
Everything became an opportunity to beat the other person, from jobs, to grades, to friend groups—everything all the way down to parking spaces. Anyone unlucky enough to share the same air as us had to endure our constant bickering and power grabs. The last straw for me was when Jack managed to get placed at Rome Elementary for his student teaching. I had been begging to be placed in my hometown public school but was instead sent to a private school a few towns over. I know he somehow managed to snag it just to spite me. Because admittedly Jack is better at one thing than me: getting people to like him.
And after graduation, I thought I was finally free of Jackson when he took a teaching job in his hometown of Evansville, Indiana, while I got my dream job at Rome Elementary like I had always planned. That is, until three years ago when Bart apparently remembered him from his student teaching days and reached out to him because he was in desperate need of another second-grade teacher. Jack transferred from the private school in Evansville where he had been working to Rome Elementary—accepting the position in the same grade as me without realizing I ended up teaching here. It’s like we’re cursed to walk adjacent in this life no matter how much we despise each other.
And today, he’s in my damn seat.
The worst part, though? I seem to be the slightest bit…relieved to see him.
His smirk edges up as I walk with sure strides to my table.
“Good morning, Emily,” says Jackson with an extra special glint in his eerie, golden-brown eyes that tells me he does not, in fact, wish a good morning for me. He wishes a stain on my favorite jeans. A letter informing me of jury duty. A downpour when I don’t have an umbrella.
His fiancée must have stayed with him for so long because he’s attractive, right? Because yes, the man is admittedly very, very good-looking. I’m not even going to say the predictable thing and claim it’s annoying. Frankly, giving me something nice to look at while he frustrates the snot out of me is the least he can do.
But there’s something new about him today: Jack is wearing glasses. Circular brass frames that I wish I could say looked dorky on him. Instead, they’re giving Clark Kent a run for his money. His cunning eyes lock with mine from behind those lenses and he dares me to make fun of them. I’d never take such low-hanging fruit. Instead, I cut right to the point.
“Why are you here, Jackson?” I glance over his table, note his open laptop, a hardback journal of some sort, and then of course the supple leather laptop bag taking up space in the otherwise empty seat.
“I’m here for coffee, because that’s generally what a person is after when they go to a coffee shop,” he says, sinking into that infuriating trademark grin of his. It’s nearly impossible to describe it accurately. It’s more of a tilt of his mouth than a real smile. It’s the look of a man who is full of secrets and mischief but will never let you in on them because he enjoys watching you squirm more. It’s the grin he gave me when he won Teacher of the Year over me two years in a row.
“You know what I mean. Why are you back here in Rome? Aren’t you supposed to be off gallivanting down the aisle at your wedding right now?”
“I’ve never gallivanted in my life. And there is no wedding.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why?”
His expression never changes. “Because I’m six four. I’d look like a giraffe charging across the plains if I gallivanted.”
I breathe in deeply through my nose. “I could murder you right now.”
“But then we couldn’t keep pretending I don’t know that you already know that I called off the wedding.” His eyes never stray. “Your hair is about to drip on my laptop.”
I’m surprised he so easily confirmed that he called off the wedding. Normally if I want information from him, I have to strategically pry it from him as if I’m a skilled interrogator. The fact that he just laid it out on the table like that is throwing me.
I straighten and cross my arms, deciding to see how much info I can get while he’s in a chatty mood. “Are you two rescheduling the ceremony?”
“No.”
“Are you and Zoe still together?”
A pause. His eyes dip to the ends of my hair and back up. “No.”
No. There it is. Confirmed. Jackson Bennett is no longer in a relationship. I don’t know what to do with this information. Not that it has anything to do with me.
“Hm. So you and Zoe are over, and you’ve come back to Kentucky to steal my table?”
He tips his head, eyes sparkling. “I didn’t see a sign before I sat down, but it does appear that way.”
No, no, no. Aside from all the messy feelings I’m having at the moment, it’s completely unacceptable for him to be screwing up my routine like this. But this is what he always does. What he lives for: pulling the rug out from under me and delighting in the chaos.
Still…one thing is eating at me more than the rest. One ridiculous thing I can’t let go of. One thing staring me right in the face that I need answers to. “Jack…why are you wearing glasses?”
He’s momentarily caught off guard, then smiles in the right corner of his mouth. “So I can see your jealous scowl more clearly.”
It would be so much fun to kick him.
Enough is enough. The lid of my Treasure Chest of Doom rattles. Growls. Begs to be freed.
He can tell and his eyes glitter with anticipation.
Aha! Maybe this is the source of these conflicting feelings over his return…maybe I’m not relieved to see him. I’m just relieved to have my sparring partner back. Because, like it or not, Jackson is my equal match in every way. He’s the one person in this entire world who doesn’t shrink from the sharpest words I could throw. He catches them between his fingers and lobs them right back.
The heavy weight of striving for perfection falls away when he gets near. It’s the only reprieve I ever get from it.
“ This is my table, Jackson. Ask anyone in town and they’ll tell you. I come here nearly every Saturday to sit at this little table and sip my little coffee and type on my little laptop and enjoy my little day. So if you think I’m going to be sympathetic to the fact that you’re recently heartbroken and forgo my favorite table because of it, then you’re wrong.”
Jackson doesn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t, and I’m not.” When he sees my confusion he expounds, adjusting in his seat to somehow look even more comfortable and unfazed. “I don’t expect your sympathy and I’m not heartbroken.” His gaze drops to follow the water droplet from my hair as it splats against the table, an inch from his laptop. He looks at me again, but I feel his attention flitting across my bare face and soggy hair. “Seems like I should be, but I’m not—which tells me calling off the wedding and ending the relationship was the right choice.” There’s so much more here he’s not saying. “So now I have all the time in the world to come sit at the coffee shop you talked up so often at school.” He gestures lazily to something behind me. “There’s a table over there you can sit at.”
He opens his laptop once again, effectively dismissing me.
And there it goes: The hinges on my Treasure Chest of Doom fly off. He twists and burrows under my skin until I have no choice but to let those word-spears fly. Maybe it’s because some vicious part of me recognizes the vicious part of him—even if the rest of the world is too enamored with his charm to see it in him too. We’ve perfected and fine-tuned our hatred into an art form.
I snap the lid of his laptop shut so fast that he barely has time to remove his fingers before they’re guillotined. “I won’t be banished to the Arctic Circle in my own town.” I tip forward and point behind me. “There’s a vent directly above that table and the air never stops cranking. To sit at that table is to accept hypothermia. Plus I need an outlet, and this is the only table near one.”
He shrugs—that grin nearly giving way to a dimple under his smug satisfaction. “Well then, Emily, I guess you’re out of options and have to go home.”
“You’ve been here long enough— you go home.”
“I only got here a minute before you.”
“And that’s plenty of time to inflict your presence on the world.” It was meant to cut but he’s clamping his lips together trying not to laugh. “This would have been my table right now if Shirley and the entire salon hadn’t been gossiping about your breakup.”
He sits back in his seat, loosely crossing his arms. “Ah—so you did already hear the news.”
“Yes, and I’ll have you know that I shut down all talk of you since you weren’t around to defend yourself, not that you deserve the respect.”
His lips curl almost cynically. “You have my undying gratitude.”
“So you’ll move?”
“No. You have my undying gratitude from this seat here in the corner while you freeze to death over there under the air vent.”
I grind my teeth. “Get your obnoxious ass out of my seat, Jackson. I mean it.”
There’s a moment of silence as he slowly unfolds himself from the table, but it’s evident by his smile that he’s not getting up to move. No, he takes one easy-breezy single step closer—hands dropping into his mustard pockets. His amber eyes are full of ruthless amusement when they lock with mine, standing closer than we’ve ever stood in the history of our feud. An unfamiliar tingle runs up my legs and settles somewhere in my thighs. “Emily Walker. You might be able to steamroll everyone else around here into submission. But not me. Never me. If you want something from me, you’ll have to ask politely.”
What I wouldn’t give for a steamroller at this very minute to flatten his ass to the floor. But I’d remove his glasses first, because for reasons beyond my mortal knowledge, I like them.
“Why? So you can bask in my politeness and then turn me down anyway? Forget it.”
“It’s scary how well you understand me sometimes.” His eyes crinkle. “Your only option now is to leave, sit in the morgue over there, or…” Or? I’ve never heard an or come out of his mouth. “You can get your little coffee and sit in that little seat across from me.”
“Sit…with you?” My eyebrows are touching my hairline.
“Yes.”
“At the same table?”
“It would be difficult to achieve sitting together from a different table.”
I breathe in, staring at him for a beat. I really am out of options. (And that’s what I’m going to remind myself tonight when I replay this moment over and over again in my mind.)
“All right,” I say, breaking the number one rule of battle and turning my back on my enemy so I can move his bag to the floor beside the chair. My canvas tote bag takes its place. “When I come back, I’m going to sit right here. With you. We will share this table, but we’re not going to say a word to each other. I will work on my laptop, and you will work on yours, and as far as we’re both concerned the other does not exist. Understand?”
He tilts his head, and I again get the feeling he’s examining me. Searching for some private answer. “I didn’t think it was possible, but somehow you’re even meaner before coffee.”
It’s this little comment that has me hanging back after we’ve both ordered and tipping the barista fifteen bucks to make Jack’s coffee decaf.