Chapter 2
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I said one day at the beginning of August. Joe had been avoiding me like the plague since I brought up the vineyard contract.
I’d given him time to cool down. And now—maybe, I could convince him to listen.
I’d barely seen him all month—which was a difficult feat to pull off considering how small Belleville was, where I worked, and the fact that he had to eat.
He grunted, slammed his TV dinners onto the conveyor belt, and crossed his arms. The machine whirred, groceries moving almost comically slowly in my direction. I wished I could say I planned that, just to prolong this conversation, but it was simply technology being a dick to me, like it often was.
Beneath the counter, I made a hand signal.
A gaggle of twelve-year-old girls left the bread aisle where I’d had them stationed and stormed toward the front door. Like the tiny professionals they were, they set up their homemade cookie stand in record time, effectively barricading Joe’s exit.
Joe’s eyes darted over to them, his brow knitting with confusion.
“Kids,” I called, just for show. “You’re blocking the entrance—”
“Sorry, Mr. Harker,” Olivia said, just like we’d rehearsed. She had one canine tooth that was shorter than the other, and freckles across the bridge of her nose. Of the group, she was by far the best actor, which was why she had been chosen for the very important role of spokesperson.
“We’ll move over,” Olivia added. Then, as slowly as physically possible, the girls began to pack up. Buying me time.
“Kids,” I sighed conversationally. “Gotta love them. While you’re here, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I—” I started, turning toward him.
He was gone.
I frowned, twisting to see him approaching the cluster of little girls like the big lumbering bear that he was. Oh god. I genuinely had no idea what to expect. Was he going to tell them off? Offer to help?
My plan had gone awry.
I didn’t know if they were going to get “grouchy Joe” or “baby bird Joe”.
“How much’re you selling these for?” he asked, voice so quiet I could barely hear it even though I’d crept behind him for damage control. I paused, eyebrows shooting up. The girls glanced between each other, then at me over his shoulder, then back at him.
“Five bucks,” one said, scooting a plastic-covered sheet of pumpkin cookies toward him. Joe nodded and fished a five-dollar bill out of his back pocket. He passed it to Olivia, who looked down at it with a frankly wicked grin. She handed him his plate of cookies.
Like the traitors they were, the twelve-year-olds began to pack up even quicker.
Quick enough that Joe was able to wiggle past them out the front door.
I sighed, half tempted to chase after him, though at that point, I figured it was a lost cause. I’d have to try again another day.
The squirming in my chest expanded tenfold. Finding out Joe was great with kids was not good for my mental health. And I just…god. He was a really nice guy, wasn’t he?
He obviously was.
Gentle, kind.
So, why wouldn’t he let me in? What was it about me that was so…confusing to him?
“I’m taking this,” I told Olivia, snagging a tray of cookies. “For emotional support.” The girls giggled. “Tell your Scout leader her kiddos are all sell-outs.” They chittered some more. I slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table, muttering all the way back to my register.
By the time they came through my line, spending the twenty I’d given them on a plethora of snacks, I’d forgiven their treachery.
I wasn’t any closer to a solution, and that…well.
That stung even more than Joe’s rapid departures did.
I simply couldn’t accept that he didn’t want to talk to me. That he could dislike me so much, he sabotaged himself. That he could be so kind, so good, and yet…be uncomfortable around me.
Why?
I was a lover, not a fighter. I knew better than to chase things that weren’t meant to be. I accepted people as they were. Or…I tried. So what was it about Joe that made me so…so… God.
He was different.
I couldn’t let this go, and I didn’t know why.
Maybe what I lacked was information.
Over the course of the next month, I gathered a few tidbits of intel from Joe. Like…the fact that he was from Ohio originally.
That’d been hard won.
“Iowa, Montana, Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland—” I listed off as he set his TV dinners down. They whirred toward me slowly. He sighed, brow furrowed.
“What?”
“I’m just guessing where you’re from,” I told him. “Maine, Georgia, Arkansas, Nebraska, California, Idaho, Washington—”
“Ohio,” Joe said, just to get me to stop.
“Columbus?” I perked up. “Or Cleveland?” He huffed in annoyance.
“No.”
“What about—”
“You’re not going to know the name of where I’m from,” Joe informed me. “It’s barely on the map.” Ah. A small town then. That made…a weird amount of sense.
Just another thing we had in common. Choosing to live in small towns.
The next time I saw Joe, I learned his age.
“Thirty-five.”
“What?” Joe blinked at me. This time, when he set his food down on the conveyor belt, he didn’t do it quite as angrily.
“Thirty-three. Twenty-nine. Twenty-six. Twenty-two.”
“What are you doing this time?” he lamented.
“Thirty-nine,” I said as I finished scanning his items.
He figured it out soon enough.
“I’m not thirty-nine,” Joe glared at me. “Do I look thirty-nine?”
“No.”
“Then why did you guess it?” Once more, he was staring at me like he didn’t understand me.
I grinned. His nostrils flared. He jabbed his card at me, and I swiped it through the machine. Joe grabbed his bags and stormed toward the door. I conceded defeat for now—at least, until he paused, right as the door opened.
“Twenty-eight,” he confessed, shoulders up by his ears again. And then he was gone.
That was about all I learned about Joe directly from him. Which left me breaking my self-imposed rules and hunting for knowledge elsewhere. Hunting for reasons he was refusing my advice, even though it had only been given to help him.
I’d tried to convince the farm laborer who worked with Joe on his orchard—a grizzled older man named Patrick, with white hair and enough wrinkles to form an army—to give me more information, but he’d refused.
Apparently, Joe had been less than pleased when he realized the only reason I’d known about his apple orchard was because of Patrick.
Patrick liked to believe he was separate from Belleville’s rumor mill.
In reality, he was the chattiest Cathy there was—at least, when his guard was down. He had a group chat with all the other farmers, and they had their own ecosystem of drama.
“You’re gonna get me in trouble again,” he chided me with a laugh as I tried to convince him to tell me what Joe was like when he wasn’t prickly as all hell.
Patrick’s basket of peaches moved gradually down the belt toward us.
“Come on,” I whined. “Please? I just—”
“He’s as closed-lipped with me as he is with you,” Patrick informed me. “Boy’s got it in his head, maybe, that he’s gotta do everything on his own.”
I sighed. I’d gathered that much. It wasn’t like it was new information, but at least I now knew I wasn’t the only person Joe had his guard up around.
“I just want to help him,” I told him. “It’s been months since he moved in. The previous farmer had contracts with local businesses. What’s he going to do with his harvest if he’s not going to sell it? I get being prideful, but this is going to hurt him.”
“I know.” Patrick pulled out his wallet. “He knows. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to listen.” He paid, and I packed up his fruit for him as neatly as I could.
“It’s good advice!”
“It is,” Patrick nodded. “But he’s stubborn as a mule.”
I was pushing again, like I’d told myself I wouldn’t.
Uneasy at the thought that Joe was going to struggle out of a twisted sense of pride.
There was this weird feeling in my goddamn bones that told me if I could…if I could get Joe to look at me. To…to let me in, it would— God.
I didn’t even know what it would be.
Didn’t have a name for the feeling thoughts of him inspired. I thought about him all the time. Thought about him when I shouldn't. Couldn’t shake the idea that I needed him in my life. That he needed me too.
Call it childhood trauma, but I just…
“Fine,” I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I won’t bring it up again.”
“Probably a good plan,” Patrick said. “He’ll come around. He’s clever. He’ll figure it out on his own.”
A week later, when Mr. Peterson, the owner of the vineyard, was in shopping, he informed me that he’d signed a contract with Joe.
I’d been at the bookstore for hours before my shift even started, helping Leanne restock because her part-timer had quit unexpectedly.
I was exhausted.
But…I perked right back up at the mention of my favorite mystery.
Maybe Joe didn’t hate me enough to completely ignore my advice?
I couldn’t help but feel proud of him then, positively beaming at Mr. Peterson as I nodded along.
Baxter had already signed a contract with Joe—which I found out when I was over at the bakery buying my comfort loaf of pumpkin bread before returning to my too quiet, too empty house after a long day of meddling.
Apparently, Joe was Baxter’s cousin.
Which…I mean, I probably should’ve guessed—because of the hair. They shared the same shade of honey blond. The kind of golden you hardly saw out in the wild, it was so rare.
The fact that Joe had been at the bakery, too, meant…he was working his way through the list I’d given him. Or not? I didn’t want to assume he was specifically targeting all the people I’d told him about.
That’d be presumptuous.
A secret part of me could only hope that meant the grocery store was next on his list.
My wishes kind of came true the next day when Joe came by, a basket full of apples in his arms, and his eyebrows so low his eyes were shadows.