Chapter Twelve #2
“And I have a bar,” I said. “And a brother who just found out he’s,” The word stuck for a second, surprised me anew, “gonna be a dad. A town that knows me, for better or worse. The river. The… everything.”
She swallowed, nodding. We were both looking at the edges of our lives like they were maps we didn’t know how to overlay.
“I hate it,” she admitted, a small laugh breaking. “I hate that this,” she drew a messy circle in the air between us, “has to be a puzzle.”
“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I offered. It was the best I had. “We can eat. We can talk about anything else. We can let the storm do what storms do and worry tomorrow.”
She breathed out, some of the tension leaving her shoulders, but then a slap of wind with ice pellets hit the glass. The lights flickered.
“See?” I said. “Power’s holding.”
“For now,” she said, and there was the line. The invisible one. For now.
We picked at the pasta. We talked about the chili throwdown, about the squirrel with a death wish, about the way Lydia had practically radiated joy all afternoon. I made a joke about Uncle Drew teaching a future niece or nephew to cheat at Go Fish; she smiled into her glass.
But the easy laughter didn’t come back, not fully. I could feel her drifting, the way she did when she started building walls out of practicalities. I couldn’t blame her. I’d done the same with jokes and flannel and late nights behind a bar.
I topped off her wine again and left mine alone. Hiding behind alcohol felt like cheating at this point.
“Mel,” I said finally. “Tell me the truth. If there were no miles. No jobs. No,” I gestured at the snow-blind window, “weather. Would you still be trying to convince yourself the kiss was a mistake?”
Her answer was fast and quiet. “No.”
It punched through me, clean and brutal. I don’t know what I did to deserve the truth, but I wasn’t going to let her regret it.
“Okay,” I said, exhaling. “Okay.”
She watched me, wary and hopeful in the same breath. “What do we do with that?”
I smiled softly, feeling helpless. “I think we be stupid for once.”
She laughed, and the sound wobbled. “That’s your plan?”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
Her eyes searched mine. I let her. I wanted her to find all of it there—the need, sure, but also the steadiness.
The part of me that could be more than a good time and a bad idea.
The man who’d shovel a driveway at five in the morning and learn how to make pancakes shaped like hearts because it made her laugh.
But then she looked away, and I saw it land again: the life waiting back in Seattle like an alarm clock.
“Drew,” she said, the apology already threaded into my name.
“Yeah,” I said, and somehow I was already standing. Not to make a point. To make it easier on both of us. “Thanks for the meal, Melanie.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“Dinner was great.”
“Don’t do that,” she said, voice too calm to be anything but panic-adjacent. “Don’t just…leave.”
I reached for my jacket off the back of the chair, slid an arm in, then the other. My hands were steady. My heart was not. “I’m not punishing you. I’m… respecting the map you keep pointing at.”
“That’s not what I want,” she said, but a beat later in a smaller voice, “I don’t know what I want.”
I nodded. “That’s okay.”
“It doesn’t feel okay.”
“I know.”
She stood too then, as if height could close the distance words had opened. The room smelled like cooling garlic, wine, and candle wax, like something finished and something waiting. She took a step toward me, stopped, chewed her lower lip—the one that had been on mine an hour ago.
“Drew,” she said again.
“Mel,” I answered. I tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear because I didn’t trust myself not to. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Really. You don’t.”
“That sounds reasonable,” she said, a little bitter. “I hate reasonable.”
“Me too,” I said, and meant it.
We stood there on the seam between two worlds, theirs and ours, ours and hers, and I knew if I stayed, I’d kiss her again, and the decision would get buried under heat and hunger and the way she said my name when she forgot to be careful.
We’d wind up in bed together because that was what we did. We didn’t plan. We didn’t discuss the future.
So I picked up my keys. The little jingle sounded like finality.
“Text me when the storm calms,” I said. “I’ll make sure you’ve got a ride if you need one.”
She swallowed. “Okay.”
I reached the door and looked back, letting myself have it—one last picture. Her in those ridiculous Santa pajamas, the twinkle lights making constellations in her hair, the half-empty wineglasses and a bowl of spaghetti gone lukewarm, the future crowding the room like a guest we hadn’t invited.
“Night, Mel.”
“Night, Drew.”
The air outside bit colder than the room. The building creaked the way old buildings do in storms, and the stair treads complained under my boots. I didn’t look back again. I didn’t trust what would happen if I did.
Outside, the snow came down thick and deliberate. I stood for a second under the eave, breath pluming, listening to the river move under its skin of ice. Two different worlds, same water, always finding a way through.
Reckless River.
“Two different worlds,” I said to the night, and the night didn’t argue.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and stepped into the drift, letting the wind take the heat from my face. Somewhere above me, in a warm square of light, she was probably staring at the door like I was a knock she wished she didn’t have to answer again.
And me…I walked toward the truck, memorizing the way the snow filled my footprints as fast as I made them.