Chapter 12 #2
By the time we arrived for dinner, both Joe and I were starving.
His stomach kept growling. If he was nervous, he didn’t show it.
In fact, despite how shy and quiet he seemed, he’d taken all the socializing today in stride.
He’d opened up to me in a way that I hadn’t known he was capable of, and in turn, I’d done the same for him.
I was trying to let go of the past.
Trying to let him in.
And so far…it seemed to be working. As anxious as I felt about what I’d opened up about, I did feel lighter.
Joe and I exited the vehicle and approached Mary’s pretty suburban abode. There was a bicycle in the driveway, pink and red, abandoned on its side. As well as a basket of chalk. A few half-deflated soccer balls. And pumpkins on the porch, left over from Halloween.
As I took Joe home with me—to my family—I couldn’t help but wonder if that saying about dogs was wrong. Maybe this pain in my chest would ease one day. Maybe an old dog could learn new tricks.
“So, Jason tells me you’re the one that bought the apple orchard at the edge of town,” Mary said, like the saint she was.
She’d been keeping up conversation at the table throughout the meal.
Including Joe in everything, asking him the questions I’d been dying to ask—and giving me knowing looks, like she was a mindreader and was doing it for my benefit.
Joe didn’t chat as much with her as he had with me in the car.
Which was…pretty dangerous for my ego.
“I did,” Joe said a moment later after liberally wiping his entire face with the cloth napkin Mary had given him. Cloth. Because she was bougie.
“How’re you liking it?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine and arching a brow while she waited. To her credit, she was as patient as I was. “That must be a lot of work.”
It took Joe a second to get his thoughts in order.
“It is,” he said, staring down at the smashed up orange yam on his plate and the giant hunk of turkey he’d been devouring. “I don’t mind. It was…my…dream.”
I perked up.
“Your dream?” I said, curious.
Joe peeked at me through his lashes, his indigo eyes startled. I’d been silent for at least ten minutes, letting Mary carry the conversation. No wonder he was surprised to hear from me.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I love that,” I enthused.
Joe flushed.
A twenty-eight-year-old with the dream of owning an apple orchard? I loved that so much. It fit him, and certainly explained why he’d move so far away from his home. Though…hmm. Actually. I was pretty damn sure Ohio had apple orchards.
So, why move all the way to Vermont?
Away from his family?
“How’s Belleville been treating you?” Mary asked, interrupting me with a sharp look. Her smile softened when she aimed it at Joe again. “That has to be hard, being so far away from home. Ohio, right?”
Bless you, Mary, you beautiful mind reader.
“Uh. Yeah. It is hard.” Joe scratched the back of his neck. “But there’s a lot of good parts. I like the trees. The work’s satisfying, too. I’m good with my hands.”
His earnestness was so goddamn endearing. I made a face. I must’ve, because Mary gave me her stop-being-a-shit look. I wasn’t being a shit. I was just…seriously falling for the blond-bird-man.
I learned a lot about Joe via Mary.
For example, while he enjoyed cherries and cherry pie, he really truly was an apple boy. Apple pie. Apple turnovers. Apple sauce. An adorable cliché if I’d ever seen one.
Joe also hated trains, apparently. With a burning passion. He said it had something to do with Columbus and how many times he’d gotten stopped by one while living close to the city. He also hated cities in general and could never picture living in one.
That I could relate to.
Joe ate more than a small army, but none of us pointed it out. In fact, at the beginning when he’d been shy, I’d been the one to lump more food on his plate. He’d given me an affronted but grateful look, and when no one commented, later felt brave enough to add seconds and thirds without worry.
It was fun seeing him interact with my family.
It felt right.
At the end of the night, Joe insisted on doing the dishes as, and I quote, “his way to contribute.” But that was only after Marybeth showed him her dog, Poncho, the decrepit chihuahua with his tongue permanently stuck out, and Joe turned into a massive puddle of goo.
He sat on the ground to murmur to Poncho and everything, stroking his ears, telling him what a good, handsome boy he was even though he had to be the ugliest (cutest) dog in the world. All patchy coated and scrawny enough a sneeze would send him to Narnia.
Joe’s dinner-plate-sized hands were back to gentle again.
Poncho, who was a renowned grump—seriously he’d bite anyone, I speak from experience—crawled into Joe’s lap to take a nap. And Joe had to carefully extricate him so that he could help because he felt it was the “right thing to do.”
I could hear Joe splashing around in the kitchen a few minutes later as I found Mary on the couch. She had a glass of wine in her hand, one foot tucked beneath her knee, reclining as Daniel struggled to get the video game console set up for us to play.
“So?” I said quietly, sitting beside her. “He’s cute, right?” I made sure to keep my words as quiet as possible lest Joe hear.
“He’s very cute,” she said immediately. She took a sip of her wine and twisted to look at me, lips pursed.
Her swallow felt deliberately slow, like she was taking her time to measure her words.
“You’re cute together,” she said softly.
“The way you look at him. It’s…different. I’ve never seen you like that.”
My cheeks burned, and I ducked my head—the same way Joe often did. Now I was mirroring him. Even when he wasn’t here. God, I really was down bad.
Madison had been right.
Joe made a sound in the kitchen, and I froze, realizing just how stupid talking about this so close to him had been.
Of course, that was when Mary decided to bring up the worst thing she possibly could.
“While I have you here, I have a question regarding the expansion for the Santa Fund.” Mary’s eyes gleamed the way they only did when she was thinking about work.
Her laptop was open to the left. My ears were ringing, so I barely caught what she was saying, terrified as I was that Joe would overhear.
That he’d put things together.
That he’d figure out I was his secret Santa.
I made a slicing motion in front of my neck to get her to stop talking. Mary blinked, surprised. Glancing behind me, I made sure Joe wasn’t around.
“Not right now,” I murmured. “Later.”
“Okay,” Mary said, arching a brow my way, though she shut her laptop like the angel she was so Joe wouldn’t see anything incriminating.
“I’m going to go help Joe with the dishes.”
“You do that,” Mary replied.
“If he lets me.”
She arched a brow at that, but her eyes were dancing with amusement. “Good luck? I think.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”