Twelve #2
This was the thing about Harper that London couldn’t account for: she could be quiet in a way that didn’t feel like waiting.
That didn’t feel like pressure. Harper’s brand of quiet read like she had no particular investment in what came next.
London had always suspected it was a performance, but she’d never been able to confirm it.
Surely there was more going on beneath the surface than the tip of the iceberg let on.
“Warmer?” London asked.
“Getting there.”
Below, someone near the fireplace knocked over a glass of wine and the guitarist lurched sideways to protect his amp. The room didn’t even notice.
Harper almost smiled. Almost.
“Harper?”
“Mm?”
“About earlier.” London stopped. Butterflies. “On the roof.”
Harper turned from the crowd and looked at her. Her expression was neutral in the way it used to be—unreadable—though London noticed now the faint lines around her eyes. Time had given Harper a gravity she'd always had internally but never worn on her face. It suited her.
“You don’t have to,” Harper said.
“I think I do,” London said, wrapping her hands tighter around the mug. “I just don’t know what to say.”
“We really don’t need to—”
“I just—” London shook her head. “I’m not sure that was fair of me.”
Harper’s eyes stayed on her, searching. “Fair to who?”
London didn’t answer right away. Below them, the guitarist had recovered and slipped back into his rendition of All I Want for Christmas is You. The room was steady with noise.
“To you,” London said finally. “To me. To what we’re—to whatever this is.”
“Right.” Harper took another sip. “So, what is it?”
The question sat between them. London felt the pull to qualify. To hedge. To find the version of the answer that would keep her heart safe.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I think,” Harper said, “what you mean is you wanted it in the moment and now you’re trying to decide what story to tell yourself about it.”
The butterflies in London’s chest took flight.
“That’s not—”
“Lon.” Harper leaned forward and lowered her voice. “You kissed me. I didn’t pull you into that alley. I didn’t drag you onto the roof.” She paused just as the guitarist hit a wrong note. “You did it last night, too.”
“I know.”
All of it was true and none of it helped her figure out what was happening in her chest—the thing that had been happening since Harper showed up with her truck and her tools and her infuriating patience and started making the inn look like something worth saving.
"I'm confused," she said finally. "That's the honest answer. I'm confused by whatever’s been happening. Between us. Since you came back.”
Harper didn’t move. Didn’t try to fill the silence London left for her.
“I thought I knew what this was,” London continued.
“You help me fix the inn, we sign the papers, we move on. Clean. Simple.” She watched the cinnamon stick in her wine lose its way as the volume decreased.
“And then, you’re just—here. Every day. And I want you to be. And it doesn’t feel clean or simple.”
“What does it feel like?”
Harper—who didn’t do emotions—was directing them straight into a freight train of emotions. This was progress.
But was it good?
London couldn’t bear to hold her gaze. “Like something I want and don’t trust myself to have. And I kissed you anyway. Which wasn’t fair. To either of us. I don’t want us to end up back where we were.”
Harper’s expression moved from neutral to not neutral in an instant. The furrowed brow, the biting at the corner of her lip.
“This isn’t about a kiss, is it?”
“Harper—”
"No." Harper set her mug down. Not hard. Just final. "You just said you don't want to end up back where we were. Where do you think that was, exactly?"
London stared toward the guitar player, now singing Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. She could say it. She could say it now—I think you cheated on me and left town. I think you blew up or marriage. And I don’t understand why I still want you.
She could say those things.
The guitarist launched into the second verse.
Or not.
“Because from where I stood, I didn't get a vote on where we ended up. You decided. You decided what happened, you decided what it meant, and then you were just—gone.” She said it evenly, which was somehow worse than if she'd raised her voice.
"And now you're sitting here telling me you don't want to repeat that, like it's something that happened to both of us. "
"That's not what I meant—"
"Then what did you mean?"
London didn't have an answer. Or she had too many and none of them were right.
Harper watched her for a moment, waiting. Then, her eyes settled into a decision and she stood, pushing the chair back with authority.
“Please sit,” London said. “Harper. Please. I’m sorry. Let’s talk about it.”
Harper rested her hands on the back of the stool but didn’t sit. Her jaw was set. Eyes steady.
“You didn’t want to talk about it a year ago,” she said. “That’s when it mattered. It doesn’t matter now.”
The noise of the tasting room rushed around them. Glasses clinking. Feet stomping up the stairs.
“I waited months,” Harper continued. “Months. Thinking you’d eventually call. Or text. Or show up and ask me what happened. And. You didn’t.”
Harper pushed the chair back under the table. “So no, I don’t really see the point in talking about it now. Here.”
“Can we just—” London couldn’t find the words to erase her mistakes. To right the ship, which she had run aground herself.
“The shame is—I was starting to think you’d changed.” Harper picked up her mug, seemed to reconsider, and set it back down. “Don’t worry. We made a deal. I’ll finish your precious house.”
She turned for the stairs. “We’re painting wainscoting tomorrow. Wear clothes you don’t mind ruining.”
Harper was down the stairs and gone into the crowd, and London was left with two half-empty mugs of mulled wine and unresolved emotions in her chest. She could have apologized.
Then and there. Apologized, asked what happened.
Address it with the maturity offered by time apart and try in earnest to repair the damage.
Instead, she watched the cinnamon stick settle in her mug and berated herself. Harper’s words were a bee sting to her skin, swollen and throbbing. I was starting to think you’d changed. Now, here she sat, doing the thing she always did. Waiting for someone else to fix what she'd broken.