Twenty
Twenty
Here,” Jack says a short while later as he approaches the table—the one right beside the window. He hands Ellie a disposable coffee cup. “I wasn’t sure how you take things nowadays.” He smiles. It’s warm, kind, the man who wears it clearly more mature than the boy who once broke Ellie’s heart. “I went classic. One cream. A teensy sprinkle of sugar.”
Ellie accepts it and takes a sip, but it’s too sweet. “Thank you,” she says as he sits next to her, the two of them side by side beneath the trailing greenery.
Jack sips his coffee. He looks at Ellie over the rim of his cup. Other than in the hospital yesterday, she hasn’t seen him since the day they broke up on his couch, the image of him in his tattered twentysomething jeans and loose-fitting concert T-shirt branded into her memory. It feels like a surprise to see him now in a crisp white button-down tucked into a pair of nicely cut khaki pants, looking like the type of man who might appear in a Ralph Lauren ad. His face appears older now than it did all those years ago when they were a couple. Of course it does. Not even physicians can defy the laws of gravity or time. Still, sitting this close to him now, she sees he also looks somehow almost exactly the same. People change, and they don’t.
“I’m really sorry about earlier.” Jack sets down his beverage. “I don’t know what happened, honestly.” He lifts a hand, squeezes the back of his neck, his hair neatly trimmed. “I’m not sure if it was the glare or if my foot slipped or what.” His complexion flushes pink, giving away his embarrassment. “I just—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head, and ever so briefly closes his eyes. A fan of blond lashes brushes the tops of his cheeks. “Anyway,” he says, opening them again. “I’ll take care of it. Whatever it is that needs to be fixed.”
The accident is the least of her current concerns. Ellie can’t stop worrying about her parents, her own marriage, and all that she’s damaged. She’s nodding at Jack, but really, she’s looking around the coffee shop’s interior, which has begun to empty out. It’s coming up on dinnertime, not the most popular part of the day for a leisurely caffeine break. A few tables over, a group of high school girls sit together and work through some group project for a class. Beside them, a woman Ellie’s age sits alone and stares out at nothing, like her brain is both entirely empty and completely full. Much to Ellie’s disappointment, Jonah is not at any of the tables. Ellie knows this as fact. While Jack stood in line for their coffees—the one he’d insisted on treating her to as a form of apology for their crash—she scoped the whole place out, as if Jonah might have left a clue for Ellie to find. So far, she hasn’t seen or found a trace of him.
“So.” Jack crosses one of his slim legs over the other. He has a runner’s body, all lean and compact. Ellie recalls this detail about him now, his love for a certain class of sports: cycling, tennis, rowing, his specific brand of athleticism stamped with a mark of pedigree. “How are you feeling since I saw you last?”
“Oh. I—I’m fine,” she says, recalling her reaction when she first bumped into him again in the ER. “I was—um—just having a strange day.”
He nods. “And your mother? She’s okay, too, I assume?”
No, Ellie thinks. She’s not okay. Her entire life is broken because I broke it.
“She’s all right,” Ellie lies, wondering if Frank has wandered back to her house, or if he and Bunny have found a way to make amends.
Jack smiles. “Tell me about your life, Ellie. I’d love to hear about it.”
Ellie stretches her neck, retrains her eyes like a telescope lens, like maybe if she repositions her gaze or refocuses, the image she hopes to see will appear to her clearly. She sighs. “Which version of it?” she asks. With her eyes cast down on the table in defeat, she reaches for the metal caddy, pulls out a scrap of paper and a pen, and begins to absently doodle on it.
Jack lifts a brow, a corner of his mouth rising at the same time. “I guess whichever version you’d be willing to tell me.”
“Right.” Before she explains anything further, Ellie notes her book bag, plopped down on an empty chair beside her. Inside it, her ID—that simple, laminated rectangle that provides proof of her current identity—still sits inside her wallet. Where does she even begin? “Apparently, I own that place.” She points to the bookshop across the street.
“You do?” Jack questions. A pair of classic mirrored aviators hang from the neckline of his shirt. Ellie’s reflection looks back at her from the lenses. “How did I not know this?”
Ellie’s lips tug themselves into a straight line. “Sometimes, Jack,” she says, “it’s still a surprise to me.”
“I’ll have to stop in sometime now that I know,” he says. “To be honest, I don’t have the time to read as much as I used to, unfortunately. And, I’m sure you’ll hate me for this, but usually when I do, I order my books while half-asleep in my bed.”
“No offense taken,” Ellie informs him. In her real life, she’s often guilty of the same bibliophilic crime.
Jack nods. “Well, it’s nice to hear. I remember how much you loved to read.” He smiles at this casual memory. “Books are important. Stories are important.” He breathes in through his nose. “I see plenty of them unfold daily at the hospital.” He shrugs. “Some happy. Some sad.” Nearby, the same young male barista who helped Ellie earlier in the day waves a hand in their direction. “I’ll be right back,” Jack says and stands.
Through the glass, Ellie sees the lights inside the bookstore click off. Her two young employees, whose names she hasn’t yet had a chance to learn, exit and walk down the block. A beat later, Gabby steps out, her macramé bag slung over her shoulder, and locks the shop’s door.
“I figured after that little fender bender, we owed it to ourselves to enjoy something sweet.” Jack reapproaches the table, a small plate balanced in his hand. He sets it down in the space between them and reaches for a butter knife in the metal caddy. The yellow custard pours from the center of the pastry like a puddle when Jack slices through it. “Cream puff?” he offers.
Ellie can’t help but laugh as she thinks of her mother over the weekend, acting as if her divorced neighbor’s baked goods were poison. “No thanks,” she says.
Deep down, Jack is not, in fact, terrible. Ellie knew this back then and she senses it now, too. What he did to her all those years ago, well, it had more to do with the fact that he was young than anything else. People make all kinds of mistakes in their twenties. Bad wardrobe choices. Bad jobs. Bad drunken nights. Everyone is entitled to be youthful and foolish for a stretch of time, Ellie supposes now. It’s part of growing up, she guesses.
“How did I not know you live around here still?” she asks as he takes a bite of his favorite pastry. She tries not to gag at the sight of all that custard, remembering when he often kept a store-bought tray of similar desserts on his messy apartment countertop. “Have you been here, living in town, this whole time?”
Jack takes another bite. A drip of custard falls on his lip. He reaches for a napkin, dabs it away. “For the most part,” he explains. “I’ve bounced around a bit here and there, though mostly I’ve been a ghost in those hospital corridors all these years.” He smiles. “I like my work, though. It suits me, being there.”
Small towns can be strange places. Some days, it can feel like you’ve memorized every inch of a place, the name of every person on every street, and then on other days you realize those same streets are as big as a metropolis, full of a million secrets you never knew.
Ellie sips her too-sweet coffee. As she does, she can’t help it. She wants to know. Her eyes fall down toward his hand. His ring finger is bare, no trace of a circular tan line from years of repeated wear. “You’ve never been married,” she tries and thinks back to that day on his apartment couch. That whole morning and the night that had bled into it had been so terrible, but not only for the most obvious reasons: the fact that their relationship was over and that he’d been talking to someone new. It was the specific look in Jack’s eyes when he’d told Ellie about the other girl—what was her name?—and the way they’d sparkled with some hidden power source that never flickered to life when he looked at her.
“I thought you and, you know ...” Ellie waves a hand, an invitation for Jack to complete her thought, and then trails off.
“Kristin?” He smiles at the sound of her name. “Nah.” Lines as fine as hairs appear around Jack’s eyes, a curtain of sadness dropping down within them. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
“What happened?”
He pushes aside his dessert plate and leans back in his chair, his expression suggesting he isn’t sure if he should speak the thought that occupies his mind.
“It was a long time ago,” Ellie says with a laugh, knowing at least part of what he’s thinking. “I promise, I’ve healed from—well, whatever it was we went through.”
Jack chuckles at himself. “Right.” He licks his bottom lip, allowing a certain set of memories to pour back through him, like water into a pitcher. “It was nothing particularly unique, you know?” he explains. “After you and I rekindled things and got back together for those few months, she met someone, moved on.” He recrosses his legs. “Hard to blame her.” He grins. “Hard to blame you, either, for dumping me a few months later the second time around. I was kind of a—hmm—a not-so-grown-up-yet person back then.” He smiles. “I promise I’m not quite so terrible now, though.”
“So she got married?” Ellie asks. “Kristin? She found another life for herself?”
Jack nods. “She did,” he agrees, then lifts his brows, a hint that some other story lives beyond the surface of what he’s told her so far. “They divorced a few years ago, though.” He laughs, though it’s not one built around humor, but rather one that sounds more like an echo of regret. “I reached out to her a little while after, invited her to dinner. She was still living in Westchester at that point, up near where we both grew up.”
Ellie tilts her head as she listens to this more tender side of Jack. “How’d that go?”
“Nice, I thought,” he admits. “But apparently I was the only one who felt that way. Based on the story I’ve heard, she had such a horrible time with me that she took herself out for a drink here in town after dinner before she drove home.” He shakes his head. “She met someone else that evening. They’ve been together ever since.” He shrugs, as if to show he’s over this—whatever has happened through the years between him and Kristin. “It was always an issue of bad timing between us,” he concludes, a wistful look in his eyes. “Our lives—I don’t know. They never seemed to align, no matter how hard we tried.”
At the counter, the barista begins to wipe down the metal espresso machines. Another employee moves across the shop and flips a sign that hangs on the door so it reads Closed .
“What about you, Ellie?” Jack asks. “Have you ever been married?”
Ellie exhales a shuddery breath. She thumbs her bare finger, her pale-pink polish looking somehow sad beside it. “I, um—I don’t know how to answer that question, actually.” She lifts her hand, brushes a strand of hair away from her face. “It’s, well, it’s complicated.”
“I understand.” Jack sets his hands on the thighs of his khaki pants. “Based on my experiences, love often is.”
Through the window, Ellie sees the light in the spring sky starting to shift. The bright blue of the afternoon is becoming brushed with yellow and orange streaks. Another day in Ellie’s present life is preparing itself to end. She looks away, not wanting to think about this fact, and resumes doodling on her scrap sheet.
“Ellie, if I can be forward,” Jack says, “if your situation isn’t too complicated, well, it’s just that ... I’d very much like to take you out on a date sometime.” He smiles, the flushed color in his cheeks revealing his embarrassment. “A proper one,” he explains and then looks over both his shoulders at their current setting. “Dinner, maybe. That is, if you’re not—”
“Wait!” a familiar voice shouts out, interrupting Jack’s thought. The shop door swings wide open, despite the flipped-over sign on the glass. “I only want a tea! You don’t even have to brew it for me! My ride ditched me! I need it for my walk!”
“Gabby?” Ellie looks up.
“Oh, there you are,” Gabby casually states. She adjusts her bag strap before the full details of the current scene she’s stepped into occur to her. “Wait.” She pivots her head from left to right, like an anxious child who’s nervous to cross the street. Her many necklaces swing along with her body. “Are you—is this?” she stammers right before she starts to laugh. “I—I definitely need a second.” She blinks once, twice, shakes her head in disbelief. “What have I missed in the last few hours?”
Jack and Gabby briefly reintroduce themselves to one another. Before they get too deep into anything, his phone rings inside his pocket.
“Excuse me.” He glances at the screen. “It’s my mother,” he explains, already pressing the device against his ear. He holds up one finger— I’ll be right back —and moves to the far end of the shop, his back turned to them as he takes the call.
“Man, talk about a weird week, huh?” Gabby whistles loudly to showcase her amusement with things. “The scuba diver. A car crash.” She points to the opposite end of the shop. “Running into that old flame, who for the record is quite handsome!” She’s shaking her head, her wild hair dancing around her face. “Wouldn’t blame you if you decided to drink something a bit stronger than coffee.” She lowers her voice by a notch. “Especially with him.”
Ellie doesn’t offer up a response. Her focus is back on the window and a new sight that has presented itself beyond the glass. Jonah and another woman. They walk together up the sidewalk, their bodies close. Before Ellie can even process what’s happening, she watches as the woman—pretty in a predictable way—blond hair, petite frame—turns and places a soft kiss on Jonah’s cheek. A moment later, the coffee shop door opens again. She steps inside.
“Pardon me,” she says, already walking up to the counter, even though it’s clear things inside here are winding down for the day. “Any chance I can get two quick regular old coffees to go?” Her voice sounds as sweet as Ellie’s too-sugary beverage. “We have a long night ahead of us with about a million things to do.” The woman points to Jonah, who waits for her beyond the glass. The barista, ready to get out of this place for the day, looks at her through his most bored expression. He couldn’t care less about whatever it is she’s going to say. “It’s—well—” She stops herself, too bubbled over with excitement, like a bottle of good champagne. The woman glances over each shoulder, as if to see if anyone around her is listening. She bites her strawberry-pink lips. “It’s just—we’re getting married this weekend!”
All of Ellie’s blood rushes from her head down into her feet. Suddenly, she’s glad Jack is still standing in the back of the coffee shop, that he’s nearby, as she feels rather certain she will pass out or that her heart will simply stop beating inside her chest.
“Ellie? Yoo-hoo! Earth to Ellie! Did you hear me?” Gabby asks, though Ellie hardly registers her question. “I said I’m going to walk. I don’t want to third-wheel whatever it is that you’ve got going on here,” she adds and, like a misplaced hitchhiker, points her thumb toward the back, where Jack is still on the phone. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Tomorrow. The word vibrates through Ellie like a song she cannot shake. Who even knows what that day will bring?
“Ohhh-kay, then,” Gabby says. “So ... byyye!”
Ellie doesn’t turn around to watch Gabby as she exits. Her focus is still on this stranger who’s about to ruin everything. The woman thanks the barista, walks away from the counter, and then, like Gabby, steps back outside. She hands Jonah a coffee and kisses his cheek.
Before they disappear, Jonah strains his neck in the direction of the bookshop, as if trying to steal a glance through the windows. He speaks to the woman— Wait here —and moves to the store entrance. His hand touches the door, but the rest of his body stops. He dramatically shakes his head, second-guessing something, then turns back. In the process, their eyes meet through the glass: Jonah, out there, and Ellie, in here.
The world stops spinning for a breath.
Jonah, his expression newly conflicted, looks back and forth between them—his current fiancée, and the woman he doesn’t realize once was in some other life. For the briefest of seconds, he closes his eyes—a broken compass stuck between two directions—before he ultimately pivots, takes the woman’s hand, and leaves.
“I’m sorry about that,” Jack says a minute later, rejoining Ellie at the table. Her focus is still outside the window, even though Jonah is gone. “What did I miss?”
Everything, Ellie thinks. “Nothing,” she actually says.
Jack nods and takes his seat as he slides his phone back into his pocket. He follows Ellie’s gaze and looks out the window, even though no one is there.
“Why did you say what you said before about love?” Ellie asks Jack. The barista, officially done with his shift for the evening, clicks off the lights. “About your experiences? And about it being complicated?”
Jack exhales heavily. “Love can be funny, you know? It’s like a book about a happy couple, the whole focus exclusively set on them. You rarely get to hear about all the other characters involved—not their full backstories, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Love stories are never about only two people,” he explains. “There’s always some hopeful fool off on the sidelines—just waiting and watching—who ends up getting burned in the end.” Jack looks down at the table, this topic suddenly feeling too personal perhaps. “At least, based on my encounters.”
“Unfortunately,” Ellie says, her thoughts turning back to the church altar and their vow. The one she and Jonah once made together. The one, she now understands, he is days away from making with someone else. “I can relate to that.” Finally, she looks away from the empty sidewalk—Jonah’s choice hurting her in new ways with each passing second. But this hurt, it does more than wound her. It fuels her. “So, when were you thinking?”
Jack brushes some crumbs up into a napkin. “About what?”
“About our dinner,” she states and offers her best smile.
“Oh.” Jack’s back straightens. “Oh, um, great.” His cheeks flush again, though for a different reason this time. “I—uh—anytime that’s good for you, Ellie. I’m not on shift at the hospital tomorrow.” His eyes sparkle with something. “Any chance you’re free?”
Ellie looks back through the window again, just to see. But no one is there. “Tomorrow?”
“Sure. Unless that doesn’t work for you, in which case we can—”
“No, no. Tomorrow’s great,” she says. “I’ll be at my shop, so you can meet me there early, take a look around beforehand.”
“I’d love that.”
“Perfect.” She turns away from the glass, meets Jack’s attractive face. “Consider it a date.”