Chapter Eighteen #2
“I’m not dragging her into something half-built,” I said. “I know what casual looks like with me. It’s jokes and late nights and dodging the truth until the truth leaves town.”
Riley wiped a nonexistent spot off the counter, eyes never leaving my face. “I’m going to ask a rude question.”
“You always do.”
“Are you actually ready to be in a steady relationship, or do you just like the idea of being the guy she chooses in a snowstorm?”
I flinched harder than I meant to. “Rude.”
“Effective,” she said. “Answer it.”
I stared at the coffee, watched the surface tremble when a bass line thumped through the floorboards.
Ready.
The word sat there like a dare.
I thought about last night in the booth with her shoulder brushing my arm, the way she tried not to grin at my dumbest jokes, Lydia and Callum across from us being infuriatingly together and perfect.
Thought about this morning at her door, hair wild, nightshirt barely containing chaos, the way she said leaving would be harder if I kept saying true things.
“I want it,” I said, honest as I knew how to be.
“Wanting is easy,” Riley said gently. “Ready is a different story.”
I laughed. “Since when are you the town therapist?”
“Since people started paying me in confessions instead of cash.” She pointed a stir stick at me like a gavel.
“Steady looks like texting when you’re tired.
It looks like leaving the bar at midnight and still choosing to listen instead of deflect.
It looks like fewer jokes when the jokes are just armor.
It looks like not flirting with peppermint martinis when you’re bored.
It looks like a plan that respects her life as much as you love yours. ”
I breathed out through my nose. “I don’t flirt with martinis when I’m bored.”
“No, you just drink them.” Riley blinked.
“Okay,” I said, grimacing. “Sometimes I flirt with martinis when I’m bored.”
“Yeah.” Riley softened, her voice dropping.
“Drew, you’re not a bad man. You’re a good man who learned a dozen ways to keep himself from feeling alone.
But if this is going to be steady, it can’t be six months of silence and one blizzard kiss and a mocha with plausible deniability. And that’s not on you.”
The words landed. Not like a slap but like a hand on the shoulder, turning me toward a better road.
“What if I mess it up?” I asked. It was the quietest thing I’d said all morning. “I’ve got the Stag. I’ve got responsibilities that eat nights and weekends. I’ve got… my own head to fight with. What if I promise consistency and deliver chaos?”
“Then you apologize, you learn, and you keep showing up,” she said. “You stop being the lovable tornado and start being a man with a calendar.”
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s hot, actually.” She grinned. “Functional is sexy.”
I snorted. “Tell that to the flannel.”
“Flannel’s welcome to stay. But so is a plan.” She started ticking off on her fingers. “One: do not ask her to stay today.”
My stomach punched upward. “Riley—”
“Two,” she barreled on, “do not make a grand gesture that fixes nothing. No sleigh rides. No flash mobs. No guitar on the riverbank unless you learned how to play in the last twelve hours, which you didn’t.”
“I can play three chords.”
“Exactly. Three: do make a small, specific proposal that respects the situation. Not forever. Not even next month. A pilot run.”
“A what now?”
“A test.” She spread her hands. “Thirty days. You both commit to trying. Scheduled calls. One visit each direction. No disappearing, no martyring, no kisses as punctuation for avoidance. If it’s awful, you both bow out. If it’s good, you figure out the next thirty.”
“That’s… practical.”
“Practical keeps people together after the snow melts.”
I rubbed my jaw. “She’ll say it’s naive.”
“She’ll say it’s honest,” Riley countered. “And if she doesn’t, you’ll be okay. Because you won’t have lied to yourself about what you want or what she can give.”
I stared past her to the window. The glass had fogged where the heater breathed on it, and someone had traced a heart in the condensation, then hastily smeared it out. The shape lingered anyway, ghosting softer, like it didn’t know how to stop being what it was.
“You ever get tired of being right?” I asked.
“Hourly,” she said. “It’s a heavy crown.”
We were quiet long enough for Mariah to flip to silence and some crackly Bing Crosby to replace her.
The shop felt like a snow globe. A couple in scarves argued affectionately at the pickup counter about whether to split a scone.
A kid in a puffer jacket pressed both palms and most of his face against the pastry case like he could teleport a cinnamon roll.
“I saw her at the door,” I said, the words coming slow now that they’d decided to exist. “Hair a mess. Nightshirt. Bare feet. Looked like a life I wanted to be in. And all I could think was if I kissed her, she’d pull away, and then she’d leave tonight, and I’d spend the next six months turning that moment over like a stone until it was sharp on every edge. ”
“Look at you,” Riley said softly. “Being careful with someone else’s morning.”
“I don’t want to be careful,” I admitted. “I want to be brave. But I don’t know where the line is between brave and selfish.”
Riley nodded like that was the only question that mattered. “Brave tells the truth and lets the other person decide. Selfish decides for them and calls it chivalry.”
I winced. “That feels specific.”
“It is,” she said brightly. “I’ve known you for too long.”
I looked down at my hands. The new ink on my forearm winked up—a compass. Keep your bearings. But what I put inside the ink reminded me of Melanie every single time I looked at it.
“Okay,” I said. “Pilot.”
“Say it like you mean it.”
“Thirty days,” I said, meeting her eyes. “Calls we put on the calendar and don’t cancel. I’ll go to Seattle once. She comes here once. We stop pretending geography is a personality trait.”
Riley’s smile broke wide and smug. “I’m going to throw in a bonus rule.”
“Of course you are.”
“No flirting with peppermint martinis.”
“Low blow.”
“High standard,” she said. “Also, tell your brother. If this is steady, let the people who love you hold you to your own word.”
I groaned. “He’ll never let me live it down.”
“He’s about to be a dad. He doesn’t have time to roast you properly. Use the window of opportunity.”
We both laughed, and some knot between my ribs loosened enough for breath to sit easier. I finished my coffee and pushed the mug back, fingers drumming a nervous rhythm.
“What if she says no?” I asked, because fear doesn’t evaporate just because logic showed up with a thermos.
“Then you give her another peppermint mocha and a hug at the edge of town,” Riley said. “You grieve like a grown-up, you don’t torch the bridge, and you keep your heart open. The world is full of seasons. If this isn’t yours together right now, it doesn’t mean it never was or never will be.”
“You practiced that?”
“Only in the mirror for fifteen years.”
I stood, slid a bill across the counter. She pushed it back with a look that said not today. I folded it into the tip jar anyway, because pride’s a dumb hill to die on and also because her muffins keep half the town civil.
At the door, she called after me. “Drew?”
“Yeah?”
“Be specific,” she said. “Don’t wander up there tonight with big eyes and bigger feelings. Give her a roadmap. The brave kind.”
“Copy that.”
“And wear a better jacket,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “You look like a guy who just got off Mt. Everest.”
I laughed and saluted her with two fingers. The bell gave me its little jingle blessing as I stepped back into the cold.
Main Street had shifted a shade brighter while I was inside.
The plows had left tidy berms, and I cut across toward the Stag, boots squeaking on packed snow, and pulled my phone out halfway there.
A blank message thread stared up, ours, two blue bubbles, three days apart, full of jokes that had kept us from saying anything real.
I typed: Can I see you later? Not to ask you to stay. To ask for thirty days.
I stared at it until the words blurred. But I deleted the second sentence and paused.
Riley’s voice chimed in my head. Be specific.
I typed again: Can I see you later? I want to ask you for 30 days: two calls a week that we don’t cancel, one visit each direction. No disappearing acts. If it’s terrible, we stop. If it’s good, we figure out the next 30. No hard sell. Just the truth.
I didn’t hit send.
Not yet.
The bar door loomed.
Duty.
Comfort.
Distraction.
Family.
I tucked the phone away like it was volatile and pushed inside.
The Stag was midmorning quiet, that lull between coffee crowd and lunch. The fire had kept the room gently warm. Someone had left a scarf on a hook with little silver bells stitched to the fringe; it chimed when the door swung shut behind me.
Callum looked up from a stack of invoices, eyebrow cocked. “You look like a man who either robbed a bank or contemplated feelings.”
“Can’t it be both?”
He grinned. “I’ll put on coffee.”
“I’ve already had two.”
I laughed and tossed my jacket at the hook. It missed. He didn’t tease me for once.
He watched me with that brotherly look that says the roast will come later.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I might be,” I said, surprised to hear it and more surprised to mostly mean it.
I moved behind the bar, wiped a clean counter because muscle memory demands ritual when the heart goes weird. Callum pretended not to watch me pretend. I pulled my phone back out under the register’s shadow.
The message waited, seemingly ordinary yet dangerous. A small, steady ask instead of a grand, doomed plea.
Riley had said brave tells the truth and lets the other person decide.
I hit send.
The whoosh was inaudible over the hum of the heater, but I felt it anyway
I set the phone face down and reached for the day’s prep list, hands grateful for something to do.
“Want me to handle the order from the bakery?” Callum asked. “Lydia’s on a tear about cheesecakes, our cook doesn’t want to budge on his own recipe.”
“I don’t get it.”
“She wants Graham cracker crust, and he wants crustless.”
I chuckled. “Must be nice.”
“It is.” He studied me for another second, a smile ghosting up. “You’re doing it, aren’t you?”
“Doing what?”
“Trying,” he said simply.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling the word lodge somewhere good. “I guess I am.”
Outside, the town went on being itself. Reckless River was bright and ordinary, festive and flawed. Inside, I grabbed a bowl, tipped sugar over red berries, and worked them until they shone.
If my phone buzzed, I didn’t jump. Not at first.
When it finally did, it rattled the wood just enough to feel like a heartbeat.
I didn’t look.
Not yet.
Steady, I told myself.
But I laughed, because Riley would’ve rolled her eyes at the drama.
I wiped my hands, picked up the phone, and let whatever came next arrive on its own terms.