Chapter 12
12
Maggie had had the most amazing day. Admittedly, she’d been hyperventilating with nerves when she’d walked into Cup of Joe, and that had only gotten worse when she’d seen the other attendees—they were all about two decades younger than her, and impossibly hip and cool. She’d felt middle-aged and boring before she’d even walked in the door.
And yet… once the course had started, and she’d learned how to make espresso and foam milk and do latte art, she’d started to both relax and energize. It had been so long since she’d stretched her brain in any significant way, and the creative element reminded her that she used to love art, about a million years ago.
Her first job out of college had been an elementary school art teacher, part-time and poorly paid, but she’d loved it. She’d had to stop when school budget cuts had eliminated the position, and she’d ended up drifting into soulless marketing work for a big corporation, which was how she’d met Matt. But she’d always looked back fondly on those two years getting messy with paint and glue. She was glad to re-spark that part of herself, and so unexpectedly.
By seven o’clock that evening, when she was pulling into Starr’s Fall, she was still buzzing from the day, although the creep of anxiety about her son had taken the edge off her excitement, if only slightly. She hadn’t left him for this long—fourteen hours—since before Matt’s death. She’d had a brief text from Zach telling her all was well, and typically nothing from Ben, but she felt that flicker of fear all the same. She wondered if it would ever go away. Some things, she supposed, scarred you for life, and that’s just how it was. You had to learn to live with the scars, not try to erase them.
As she stepped out of the car, the cold air felt like a slap in the face. It was almost March, but the only sign of spring was a few chilled-looking crocuses next to the sidewalk, their bright heads huddled together as if that would keep them warm.
The café was dark, but Maggie could see lights on upstairs, and her heart lightened. She realized just how much she was looking forward to seeing Ben—and Zach. As she came up the stairs to the apartment above, she heard voices—Ben and Zach, talking animatedly about something, using a lot of slang she didn’t understand.
“ Bruh ,” her son said, with the emphasis of complete conviction. “That one is such a bullet sponge. But I was totally cheesing and it became, like, the most epic boss rush.”
“Awesome,” came Zach’s reply, a lazy murmur that made Maggie want to shiver. He had a very nice voice.
“Hey, I’m home,” she sang out as she opened the door, sounding like something out of an episode of Leave it to Beaver . “How was your day, guys?”
“How was yours?” Zach countered with a smile. He was standing by the sink, a dishrag draped over one shoulder. Ben was at the table, spreading tomato sauce over a pizza base. The scene was so unexpectedly homey that for a second Maggie just wanted to stand there and savor it—the warm lighting, the music, some kind of mellow jazz, on the speakers, her son looking happy and Zach seeming relaxed and comfortable.
“My day was great,” Maggie said. “I now know how to make a heart in the foam of your latte. Or a fern, if you’d prefer.”
“You had to spend eight hours learning that?” Ben demanded as he started sprinkling cheese.
“And a few other things besides,” Maggie replied lightly. “I am proud to say I am no longer afraid of that big, shiny espresso machine downstairs.”
“Good thing,” Zach answered with a chuckle, “but to be fair that thing does look like a beast.”
“Yeah.” She smiled back at him, enjoying the warmth in his expression as his gaze rested on her, the way it made her tingle. “So tell me about your day.”
Zach glanced at Ben, waiting for him to speak. “It was pretty chill,” her son said at last. “We finished the bookshelves, and I got all my work done.”
“That’s great.” She turned to Zach. “Sounds like a good day.”
“Yeah.” Zach nodded. “Pretty chill.”
They both smiled at her, and Maggie smiled back. Even with everything seeming so relaxed, it was hard to let go of that hard clench of anxiety in her stomach that remained from having left Ben for an entire day. She glanced between him and Zach, as if testing the truth of their replies. Had it really been a chill day? She felt something unspoken in the air, but maybe it was just bro bonding.
Another beat passed and Maggie had to conclude that she was, as she so often was, being paranoid.
“So,” she remarked as she nodded toward the pizza base Ben had been liberally spreading with sauce and sprinkling with cheese. “You’re making pizzas?”
“Yep,” Zach confirmed. “I’m trying to get Ben to move out of his comfort zone of pineapple and black olive, because frankly that’s just so gross. We’ve got pepperoni, chorizo, as well as some peppers and broccoli to cover all our food groups.”
“Good luck with that,” Maggie answered on a laugh. “Ben has always been a creature of habit.”
“You know I actually like pineapple and black olive,” Ben told them. “Well,” he amended, “I’ve learned to like it.”
“And that is not something I’m going to do,” Zach replied as he started slicing a stick of chorizo.
“Maybe you should go out of your comfort zone of extra spicy,” Maggie challenged.
Zach slid her a laughing look. “The question is, why would I do that?”
“Just to show you can?” Maggie replied, trying not to let the teasing glint in his blue-green eyes affect her as much as it was and pleasurably failing.
“I’m perfectly confident in my capabilities in that area,” Zach assured her as he scattered the sliced chorizo over his pizza. “But your pizza is a blank slate—please don’t tell me you secretly like pineapple and black olive too because I won’t believe you.”
“I’ll take the broccoli and pepper, then. I actually like vegetables, and I have the sense they won’t get eaten otherwise.”
“You are probably right there.” Zach grinned at her, and Maggie laughed before catching Ben watching the two of them with an alert and eager sort of look on his face that made her mentally screech the brakes. Did her son want her and Zach to get together? She’d assumed that even the faintest whiff of romance would horrify Ben, but what if it was the opposite?
What if Ben got his hopes up that Zach might be in their lives forever, when, she had to face it, he most probably wouldn’t be? Zach would marry the love of his life that he did or did not find on Tinder, have a bunch of beautiful blond kids, and convert a barn into a gorgeous house where he’d brew his own beer and set up his own carpentry and craft store. Or something like that.
He was so young , she realized afresh, with his whole life ahead of him. Of course he was going to do those things, or any number of other things. Maybe he was in a bit of a tricky transition stage at the moment, what with the store and his sister and the way he seemed to both love and resent Starr’s Fall… but he’d figure it out. And when he did, he’d move on from their bedraggled little family. Understandably.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly as those realizations trickled through her. She’d been getting way too close to him, when she knew any romance that might have blossomed eventually couldn’t possibly last. And she could deal with that, she hoped, because she was an adult… but she could not—and would not—mess with her son’s emotions any more than they had been already.
“Sure, I’ll make a pizza,” she said briskly, and Zach gave her a thoughtful frown—somehow he seemed attuned to her moods and how they just abruptly changed—before handing her a baking tray with a pizza base on it.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
He rested his hip against the counter, watching her as she focused absolutely all of her attention on spreading the sauce, sprinkling the cheese. She sensed he wanted to say something, but he kept himself from it and she was glad as she finished making the pizza.
Once Zach had put them all in the oven and they’d both tidied all the ingredients away, he gave her a slow, considering look, the kind that made Maggie think he was going to say whatever he’d wanted to before after all.
“We’ve got ten minutes until they’re done,” he told her. “Why don’t you show off your new skills and make me an espresso?”
“What, now?” Maggie looked at him, startled.
“No time like the present.”
“Yes, but…”
“Don’t make excuses, Mom,” Ben chimed in, sounding excited. “Go show off your mad skillz.”
“Oh, please.” She shook her head, laughing, but then under Ben and Zach’s challenging gazes, she gave a little shrug and said, “Fine. It might take a few minutes to fire up the machine, but… okay. One espresso coming up.”
“I want to see how it’s done,” Zach told her as he started following her to the stairs.
“Ben?” Maggie called back. “You coming?”
Her son shook his head. “I’m good. I don’t even like coffee.” He settled into the seat in front of the computer, while Maggie hesitated. She really hoped Ben was not trying to give her and Zach some sort of alone time .
“I’ll let you know how this goes,” she muttered under her breath as she headed downstairs. She could feel the heat of Zach’s body as he followed behind her, and a not-unpleasant prickle of awareness ran through her. She really reacted to this man, but maybe any red-blooded woman did.
Downstairs, the café was shrouded in darkness and Maggie flipped on the lights before heading over to the shelves to inspect the finished product.
“Wow,” she said, heartfelt. “Zach, these look amazing.” He’d finished the carvings on each joint and they were both intricate and whimsical, adding a classy yet fun vibe to the whole place.
Zach came to stand behind her. “Thanks,” he said. “I really enjoyed working on them. I’ve always liked woodworking, but I didn’t realize how much until I started a bigger project.”
“And the wood is beautiful, too.” She ran her hand over the burnished oak, the light catching the gleam of gold in its grain.
“Reclaimed from some old wardrobes we had in the barn. My parents collected antiques, but not the valuable kind. They’ve just been gathering dust for years. Decades, even, so I thought I might as well put them to use.”
“Very good use,” she replied, and turned around, drawing her breath in sharply as she realized how close he was. Close enough that when she stumbled a little, he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.
“Easy there.” His voice was a lazy murmur, his breath tickling her hair. Maggie’s heart rate soared as she breathed in his woody scent and, by some superhuman effort, managed to take a step back.
“Sorry,” she mumbled as she headed back to the kitchen. She shook her head as if to clear it, determined to get back on track. “I think you might have higher expectations of my abilities than is reasonable,” she called over her shoulder as she turned on the espresso machine and it began to hum as it preheated. “Considering I have literally one day of training.”
“I have faith in you,” Zach replied as he came to stand in the doorway of the kitchen area, watching her start up the machine. Maggie felt both self-conscious and proud as she familiarized herself with the gleaming beast of Zach’s description. Espresso machines were intimidating at the best of times, especially industrialized-sized ones made for a coffee shop, and her hyper-awareness of Zach wasn’t helping her nerves, by any means.
“First I have to grind the beans,” she told him as she opened a bag of fresh coffee beans and poured some into the built-in grinder. Zach had taken a few steps into the kitchen and she was very conscious of him standing so close that his shoulder was nearly brushing hers. “Thank you for looking after Ben today,” she continued, raising her voice over the sound of the grinder. “I really appreciate it.”
“It was fun.” Zach hesitated, and she had the sense that he was about to say something else. She slid him a sideways glance, curious and a little apprehensive, but he just smiled. Maggie flipped the switch on the grinder, and the kitchen was plunged into a sudden, expectant silence.
“Well, I still appreciate it,” she said, a little too loudly, as she poured the ground coffee into the portafilter and tamped it down. She turned to face him, something in her jolting at the sleepy yet intent look on his face, lids half-lowered, lips slowly curving. He took a step toward her, and her heart felt as if it had flung itself against her chest. “We—we’ll need to wait a few minutes for the water to heat up,” she said, sounding even louder. A blush was already rising to her cheeks which made her feel like some giggly teenager, and yet Zach had looked… he’d looked as if he’d almost been about to kiss her. Surely not. And yet… she knew how much she would like it if he did.
“Mmm—maybe you should check on the pizzas,” Maggie stuttered.
“Okay…” Zach gave her a bemused look, as if he suspected she was suggesting such a thing simply because she was unsettled by his closeness, as well as by the fact that they were alone, and that would indeed be the truth. Maggie gave him what she hoped was a breezy smile as he headed upstairs, and her breath came out in a relieved gust.
What was going on with her? With them ? Not that there even was a them… although when he’d been standing so close to her, it had almost felt like there was. Was she wildly delusional, thinking for so much as a nanosecond that he was going to kiss her? He might have said he liked her, and asked her out on a date, and touched her cheek… but it still felt so hard to believe that he was doing anything but amusing himself. Biding his time till something better came along, maybe.
She needed, Maggie thought, to give herself a hard mental shake. She’d already decided she wasn’t ready for romance, and certainly not with a thirty-one-year-old semi-reformed player, and she wasn’t interested in anything casual, so…
You don’t swipe right for the love of your life.
Maggie closed her eyes. If Zach Miller was really looking for the love of his life, it surely wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t let it be, because she wasn’t ready and he was too young and then there was Ben…
So many reasons to be sensible about this.
“Pizzas are just about done. I turned the oven down.”
Maggie let out a little sound of surprise as Zach strolled into the kitchen. He raised his eyebrows as he came closer. “Are you okay? You seem very jumpy.”
“I’m fine,” Maggie said quickly. “Just nervous about making that espresso, that’s all.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s it.” Zach’s voice came out in a low, lazy murmur that twined around Maggie’s senses. She focused on the espresso machine—inserting the portafilter and slipping an espresso shot glass underneath. She pushed the button to brew it while Zach took a step closer. And then another one.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. It was all she could think to say, because every sense and nerve was twanging on high alert.
Zach stilled. “Don’t what?”
Maggie let out a shaky laugh as she felt a blush rise to her cheeks. “I don’t even know. Show me those bedroom eyes. Stand so close to me that I can smell you?—”
Zach laughed softly. “That’s kind of worrying. Do I really smell?”
“You smell good ,” Maggie admitted hopelessly. “Too good.” She couldn’t believe she’d said so much, and yet right then honesty felt like the only way to preserve her sanity… and keep Zach at a distance.
Which was what she wanted, right?
“So you are tempted,” Zach murmured, and Maggie let out a long, shaky sigh.
“Every woman in Starr’s Fall is tempted, as far as I can see.”
“Don’t,” Zach quietly, “make this about anyone else. This is about you and me.”
You and me . Was there such a thing?
“The espresso is ready.” She reached for the espresso glass and thrust it at Zach. He caught her hand in his, taking the shot glass from her nerveless fingers and setting it down on the counter while he still kept hold of her hand. When she dared to look up at him, she saw that same sleepy and intent look on his face. His lips were parted, his lids at half-mast, his eyes glinting. He was so darned good-looking, and he really was, Maggie thought with a thrill of wonder, going to kiss her.
And then he did.
He dipped his head slowly, taking his time, giving her every opportunity to pull away which she probably should have, yet somehow she couldn’t. And when she didn’t, he brushed his lips across hers just once, then twice, like a hello , and then a how are you .
And Maggie answered by parting her lips, letting her head fall back. Saying with her body what was cartwheeling through her mind. I was pretty good, but I just got a whole lot better.
Zach deepened the kiss. Maggie’s head spun. At some point, her arms came around his shoulders, palms sliding over his biceps as a sigh escaped her and he laughed softly—and then kissed her again. Their hips bumped. Heat flared. And they were still kissing.
It felt so good—like coming home and zooming up to outer space all at once. She felt safe, but she also felt wildly excited, and the heady mix of both emotions sent everything in her swirling with both need and joy. Her hands roamed down his back as he pulled her closer. They were still kissing.
“Mom…” Ben’s voice floated down the stairs. Maggie sprang away from Zach like a scalded cat, wiping her mouth while he looked at her bemusedly, his face flushed, his hair ruffled. “I think the pizzas are ready,” Ben called.
“Coming.” Maggie’s voice sounded strangled. She couldn’t even look at Zach, not until she’d gone over what had just happened and made some sense of it. Figured out why he’d kissed her, what it meant, and just how much she’d embarrassed herself.
“Maggie…” Zach began, but she couldn’t listen.
“The pizzas,” she gasped out, and ran up the stairs.