8. Tess #2
She gasps. “Creepy? My smile is not creepy! My smile is charming as fuck.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me. I have to clutch my stomach I’m laughing so hard.
“Not whatever you’ve been doing tonight,” I wheeze. “It’s haunting, Jacinthe.”
“Haunting?” she barks. “I bring you cakes and beer and you call me haunting ?”
She cocks her head and grumbles a string of Québécois swear words so long and elaborate I notice the people in the booth behind her glance over with their eyebrows raised.
I shake my head, still chuckling. “See now, this is the Jacinthe Gauthier I was expecting to get to know tonight.”
“Gauthier-Laframboise,” she quips.
“Huh?”
“That’s my full last name. Gauthier-Laframboise.”
I narrow my eyes. “Doesn’t that mean the…strawberry? Your full last name is Gauthier The Strawberry?”
I thought I was done laughing, but I begin cracking up all over again. This pint-sized hurricane who looks ready to shoot lightning bolts at me with her bare hands is named after a berry.
“Why is that funny?” she barks. “Also it’s raspberry , not strawberry.”
I place a hand on my chest. “Oh, my mistake. Raspberry is much more dignified.”
“It is ,” she asserts. “It’s a very well-known and respected surname in the province of Québec, which you wouldn’t know about because you stink of Ontario.”
I let out a shocked peal of laughter. I’m sure more people must be staring at us now, but I can’t stop.
“I stink of Ontario?” I screech.
She sucks in a breath like she’s about to double-down on her declaration, but at the last second, she clamps her jaw shut.
“Shit,” she mutters. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m trying to make you like me.”
I point a finger at her, a satisfied grin tugging at my mouth. “Aha! You admit it. You are buttering me up.”
She scowls.”No, I’m just trying to…to… Okay, yeah, I was buttering you up.”
She sighs, her shoulders drooping. She takes a conciliatory gulp of her pint and then stares down into the amber liquid.
“Does it make you feel better to know it was totally not working?” I ask.
She snaps her gaze up to glower at me. “No.”
Then she seems to think better of the glowering and sighs again.
“Sorry,” she blurts. “Look, I really do feel bad that I made you think I hate you. I don’t. It would be crazy to hate you after, like, a week of knowing you, and besides, I actually think you’re…cool. Very cool, and a good person.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You think I’m a good person after a week of knowing me?”
“Yeah,” she says, with way more conviction than I was expecting. “I mean, you do good things. You helped my mom. You were very patient with all our horses, even the ones who are assholes about getting shoed. Also, you seem like you’re a really good mom to Shel.”
Her words shoot straight into my chest, pricking a target I didn’t know was there.
“Oh,” I murmur. “Um, thank you.”
“Plus, you’re a woman farrier,” she adds, “and a lesbian, which means you’ve probably been through a lot of shit to get where you are, so yeah, I think that’s pretty cool, and I’m sorry I didn’t give you a good impression.”
I fight the urge to reach up and rub my sternum, where it still feels like she’s pierced straight to the heart of me.
“Wow,” I say after blinking at her a couple times. “Um, thanks.”
She leans forward over the table, her expression hardening. She jabs a finger at my face.
“But don’t you dare ever laugh at my last name again, Ontarian. D’accord ?”
I almost gulp.
“ D’accord ,” I assure her.
She extends her hand for a shake. Her hands are a little rough, knuckles criss-crossed with a couple miscellaneous scrapes and her palms calloused from working on the farm. The hardened skin brushes against my own thick calluses, formed by years of handling heavy farrier tools.
I’ve never been with someone with hands like mine, and for one wild moment, all I can think about is what it would feel like to have her run her fingertips up the side of my body, let her palms span the breadth of my ribcage, her nails digging in just enough to bite.
“What’s your last name?”
Her voice sounds like it’s coming from far away, like I’ve slipped deep underwater. She releases my hand, and the loss of contact forces me back to the surface again.
“Huh?”
“Your last name,” she repeats. “I don’t even know it yet.”
“Tully.”
“Tess Tully,” she says, like she’s trying the sound out.
Like she’s giving it a taste.
My throat goes dry.
“Yep,” I say, somehow managing not to wheeze. “That’s me.”
The chaos of the crowd is still raging around us, patrons swarming in and out of the seats and the bar swamped with a constant demand for more drinks. Laughter, chatter, and the occasional shout or cheer fills the air, all of it layered over the backing track of classic rock on the speakers.
For a moment, I can’t hear any of it.
For one impossible and extremely inconvenient moment, there’s just her.
That’s all it is, though: a moment.
That’s all I can let myself have. I’m not here to flirt with Jacinthe Gauthier-Laframboise. I’m not here to flirt with any woman.
I’m here to find a place for me and my daughter to live. Nothing else is allowed to come first.
“So,” I say, “we’re supposed to be getting to know each other, right? To see if this lease will work out?”
Jacinthe nods. “ Ouais , I think that was the plan for tonight.”
“So tell me about you.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “What do you want to know?”
I shrug. “What should I know? Got any bad habits? Dark secrets? Murderous ex-girlfriends who might show up at the property in the dead of night?”
She chuckles, and I can’t tell if I’m reading too much into things or if there really is a bitter note to the sound.
“ Ben non , I don’t think you have to worry about that. I haven’t had a girlfriend for a long time.”
I slouch against the back of the booth and take another sip of my beer. I’ve only got a few dregs of the amber liquid left.
“Oh?” I ask when she doesn’t elaborate.
She purses her lips and shifts her jaw around while she works out what to say.
“Life has been…busy,” she explains. “You know, with the farm and my mom and now the inn. I don’t really have time for it.”
Story of my life.
“I get that,” I tell her, a knot of sympathy tightening in my chest. “I’ve only tried seriously dating once since Shel was born.”
It was a disaster, of course. Claire and I only dated for about six months, but it was enough to convince me there isn’t room for parenting and a serious relationship in my life—not if I want to keep everyone happy.
Jacinthe tries her best to hide her shock, but I can still tell her eyebrows are fighting not to creep up her forehead again.
“Shel’s ten, right?” she says in a carefully neutral tone.
I still read the implication, and I can’t help laughing at her failed attempt at subtlety.
“Yeah,” I answer, “so for me, it’s been a really long time since I had a girlfriend.”
Jacinthe nods and hides whatever her reaction might be by taking a large sip of beer. A couple seconds tick by in silence, the din of the bar rushing in to fill the quiet between us.
Jacinthe does that shifting thing with her jaw again, which I’m starting to realize is her ‘thinking face.’
It’s cute.
No. No, it’s not cute.
I give myself a mental shake.
I’m here to accomplish a goal, and the fact that Jacinthe has no place for dating in her life actually makes that goal much easier. It’s a lot simpler to write off my attraction to her when it’s clear romance is as far off the table for her as it is for me.
Jacinthe is still struggling to spit out whatever it is she wants to say.
“Did you…” she tries before lapsing into silence for another couple seconds. “I mean, um, was, uh…”
She clears her throat, and I recognize the usual signs enough to know where this is headed.
“You want to know about Shel’s dad, right?”
Jacinthe’s face goes pale.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she says in a rush. “I mean, I’d never—like, that’s totally your business.”
I chuckle even as I feel a warm rush of appreciation. Most people are a lot less respectful with their curiosity.
“It’s okay. I get that all this”—I gesture at the Butches R’ Us ensemble I have on tonight—“and being a single mom tends to make people curious.”
Jacinthe shakes her head.
“It’s your business,” she says, her tone firm enough to make me believe she’d drop the subject forever if that’s what I wanted.
For some reason, that just makes me want to tell her everything.
“It’s not that interesting,” I explain. “I was still figuring out my sexuality when I started university. I’d messed around with a few girls in high school, but then I met Baron, and we just?—”
I pause when Jacinthe makes a choking noise.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her eyes bulging, “but…Baron?”
She looks so aghast I end up snorting.
“Yeah.”
“Like, that means like a lord , right?” she asks. “You really had a thing with a dude named Baron ?”
Something about her wrinkled nose and the thinly veiled disdain in her voice makes the story of the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through seem like a hilarious anecdote in a way it never has before.
I really did get accidentally pregnant at twenty-one with a dude named Baron.
I burst out laughing.
“Well, I didn’t name him that,” I shoot back. “His parents were really pretentious, okay?”
Jacinthe shakes her head. “ Calice . They must have been.”
“Honestly, he was pretty pretentious too,” I admit.
Jacinthe makes a show out of rolling her eyes, like she expected no less.
I crack up all over again. I’ve spent a whole decade dealing with condescending sympathy and verbal tip-toeing around the subject, but I’ve never gotten to laugh about Baron.
I don’t think I even realized I wanted to.