Chapter 6 #3
I'd come over here, I realized, the way you went to the one person who could read you.
I'd been going to Sam since I was sixteen.
Aunt Jenna had set up a ride-along she'd thought was about getting me out of the house.
Sam had figured out by the second hour what I was actually there for.
He'd let me sit in the passenger seat without asking me anything I didn't have an answer to.
At the end of the shift, he'd told me to come back whenever I wanted. I'd been coming back ever since.
He was the man who had taught me what a man was for.
He turned his head and looked at me.
"You already know what you're going to do."
I was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe."
"You do." He took another sip. "You didn't come over here to ask me what to do. You came over here to say it out loud so it'd be real."
I didn't argue.
"Help her."
"Cap."
"Help her. You can figure out the rest once you're standing in it. You don't have to have it all worked out before you walk through the door. Nobody does."
I was quiet for a long time.
There was a question I hadn't asked myself that I was about to ask out loud. I didn't want to. I asked it anyway because Sam was the one person I could ask it to.
"What if I can't walk away when it's over?"
He was quiet for a beat.
"Then you don't walk away." He looked at me. "But, Cole. You've been standing at this fence for forty minutes. You're already in. You just haven't said yes out loud yet."
I looked at the ground. Then at the yard. Then at nothing.
"Yeah."
He'd given me what I came for. Eight minutes. Now he was going to let me go figure out the rest.
I pushed off the fence. Rolled my shoulders. Took a long pull off the beer like I was finally tasting it.
"Thanks, Sam."
"Don't thank me. Go think about it."
I nodded once. Walked across the yard. Said goodbye to Jamie on the patio. Patted Ben on the head on my way past. Ben let out the loud laugh he always did, and Sean's daughter laughed at him, and the two of them were back to whatever they'd been doing before I got there.
I went out through the side gate.
The bell jingled when I came through the bakery door.
Tessa was at the counter with a couple ahead of me. She glanced up when the bell went, her eyes stopping on mine for a half-second longer than they needed to. Then she went back to bagging what she was bagging.
I didn't know why I'd come. I'd just felt like I had to see her.
Why I needed to see her, I didn't have an answer for.
The bakery was warm. I'd come in from the cold, and the warmth surrounded me already.
I grabbed a loaf of bread from the basket closest to me because I needed an excuse for being there.
The loaf was heavier than I'd expected. I held it in one hand and wasn't sure what to do with the other one.
"Thank you, Tessa!"
"Happy Thanksgiving!"
The bell went on the way out. The couple was gone. It was her and me in the shop.
She looked up.
"Hi."
"Hey."
I walked over. The walk took longer than it should have. By the time I was at the counter, I had no idea what I was going to do with my face.
I set the loaf down. Pushed it across.
"How are you?"
"Better. Thank you."
She smiled at me. The smile did something to me I wasn't going to think about right then. She turned and started wrapping the bread.
"Any plans for Thanksgiving?"
I didn't know why I was asking.
"Oh—Mrs. Thompson's planning the spread. Benjie's out picking up what we'll need this week. Noah went with him."
"That's nice."
I'd said that's nice. I wasn't a that's nice man. I cleared my throat.
I handed her my card. She took it. Our fingers almost touched.
She turned to the reader. I had a long second to not look at her, and didn't manage it. Her face in profile was—different. Something was different about it. I couldn't put my finger on what. The light was the same. Her hair was the same. Something else.
She handed the card back. Slid the loaf in a paper bag across the counter. Smiled at me again, and that was when it hit me.
"I'm sorry. Weren't your eyes a different color?"
She blinked. The color came up in her cheeks.
"They were. They are. I—I wear colored contacts. They dried out yesterday, and I haven't put new ones in yet. I wear the colored ones because they're easier to put on than clear—you can see them when you're putting them in. And I don't love my natural color anyway."
I looked at her. Took in the explanation. Then my eyes landed on the glasses.
"But you wear glasses."
"Sorry?"
"If you're wearing contacts, why the glasses?"
"Oh. These aren't real. They're just glass. I wear them so flour doesn't get in my eyes when I'm working. See—"
She lifted them off her face and held them out toward me, tilting them so I'd see that the lenses were plain.
But I wasn't looking at the glasses.
I was looking at her eyes.
They were green. Not a soft green. The clear, specific kind, the kind that didn't blur into anything else.
"I don't see why you don't love them."
The words were out before I'd registered I was going to say them. I heard them land in the warm air of the bakery, in my voice but lower than I'd meant.
Her cheeks went pink.
"Thank you."
For a long moment, I just looked at her. I couldn't have said anything if I'd tried.
The bell went. Someone walked in. I heard the door, but didn't turn for it.
"Happy Thanksgiving," was all I could get myself to say.
"You, too."
I picked up the bag. Turned around. Walked out the door.
The cold hit me when I came out. The bag was warm in my hand.
I walked to the truck.
I didn't know what had just happened to me.
I knew what had happened, technically. I'd walked into a bakery to buy a loaf of bread I didn't need. I'd looked at a woman across a counter. I'd said something I hadn't given myself permission to say. She'd thanked me for it.
That was the technical version.
The other version was that something in me had moved without asking.
I got to the truck. Got in. Set the bag on the passenger seat. Shut the door.
I didn't start the engine.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel.
The smile was still in my head. The green eyes were still in my head. I was trying to hold both, and trying to figure out what to do with what they were doing to me, and I couldn't do either.
Underneath it was something else. A pull I couldn't name. The green hadn't just been green. The green had been familiar.
I'd seen those eyes before. On someone.
Who asked you? Who gave you the right?
I heard her voice before I remembered her name.
You just don't get it.
You ruined my life.
I hate you.
Natalie.
Those green eyes were Natalie's.