Chapter 20
Anne
Kelsey nodded at the phone vibrating on the kitchen counter. “Yours?”
“Oh, yeah, right. Thanks.” I grabbed my phone. (Now fully charged, thank you, Joe.) “It’s probably just…”
Chris. My breath stuttered.
Let me buy you brunch. OPH 11?
I stared at his message, memories unspooling in my brain. Because that had been our thing, golden Sunday mornings spent entwined in bed, followed by walks to the Original Pancake House for giant cinnamon-apple pancakes. Once upon a time…
Another bubble popped on the screen.
Chris: You came all this way IOU
“Everything all right?” Kelsey asked.
“What? Oh. Fine,” I said.
IOU. Owed me what? What was he offering now that the weekend’s scheduled events were over? Now that it was just the two of us? Pancakes? An apology? An explanation? Closure?
What did I owe him after goodbye?
The back door opened. Joe, returning from securing the lumber on the truck. “All set?”
“Just finishing our coffee,” Kelsey said.
I looked up from my phone. “Erm. What time are we leaving?”
“Whenever you’re ready. The last ferry’s at four. We need to be at the dock by three to get everything loaded.”
I nodded, grateful to be spared making a decision. Or a mistake.
His brow lifted. “Is that a problem? Was there something you needed to do?”
“Nope. It’s nothing.” The last thing I needed was another half-hearted gesture from my ex-boyfriend demonstrating his willingness—his lack of willingness—to fit me into his life. “Just a ‘U up’ from Chris.”
He and Kelsey exchanged glances.
Heat rushed up my face and stung the back of my eyes. Getting on the road now, I typed to Chris. Sorry.
Sorry I didn’t warn you I was coming.
Sorry things didn’t work out.
Sorry you don’t love me the way I thought you did.
Why was I apologizing?
Another text bubble appeared from Chris. I’ll call u
Maybe he would, I thought, stuffing my phone in my pocket.
And maybe he was breadcrumbing, leaving just enough of a trail for my heart to follow.
Kelsey hugged me as we said goodbye. “Come back soon. Both of you.”
As if we were a couple. I glanced at Joe.
“Thanks for having us,” Joe said, wrestling me for my bag. Not that it was much of a contest.
“Told you my friends liked you,” he said as he carried it down the back stairs to the alley.
I smiled. “Well, if they can put up with you, they’ll tolerate anybody.”
But no matter how welcoming Joe’s friends were, I couldn’t let their kindness blind me to the facts. I’d done that with Chris, pretending that his friends were mine, that I fit into his life. Carried away by hope and imagination, I’d spun my feelings into a future that didn’t exist.
Joe had been hung up on his ex for the past two years. I couldn’t compete with that. Even if I wanted to.
Last night we’d shared a bed. We had way more room in the truck.
But wrapped in our private bubble, I was conscious of the jut of his thigh as he pressed on the gas, the flex of his hands on the wheel, his smell.
I’d spent years deliberately not noticing him, and now he filled my senses.
I blamed the kiss. Or the remnants of my puppy crush or some rebound reaction to seeing Chris again or the fact that I’d now gone months without sex.
I fiddled with my phone, searching for music to fill the silence. No more anthems to runaway dreams, no more songs about escaping your small-town past. What I needed was a breakup playlist. I needed Taylor Swift.
“We are never ever ever getting back together…” belted from the speakers.
I checked my messages again.
Joe glanced over from the driver’s seat. “You all right?”
“Fine.” I forced myself to put my phone away, to still my jiggling leg. “I got a text from Hailey. She wants to have a tea party when I get back.”
“I appreciate you spending time with her.”
“That’s kind of my job description, spending time with teenagers. Besides, Hailey’s great.”
“When she’s not being a pain in my ass.” But he was smiling as he said it. “The past couple years have been kind of rough.”
“We teachers call that adolescence.”
His mouth quirked. “Maybe you could talk to her.”
“She mentioned she was seeing a therapist.” Not quite a question.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his beard with the back of one hand. I thought he was going to add something, to explain, but all he said was “She looks up to you.”
I flushed with pleasure at the compliment. “And she worships you. Have you tried talking to her?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“At that age, they mostly just need someone to listen. You’re good at that.”
His jaw set. “You can relate to her, you said.”
Holy heck. He actually paid attention when I talked. I wasn’t used to that.
I grinned. “Because I’m a hot mess.”
“That’s not how I’d put it.”
How would you put it? I was dying to ask. Fishing for compliments. Or angling for another rejection. “I’m not sure how good I am at giving guidance. Since I have no clue where I’m going.”
“Anywhere you want.”
I made a face. “I used to think so. I had all these big dreams of teaching in Tahiti or hiking the Appalachian Trail or moving to Colorado to be a tattoo artist. It’s not that I mind starting over,” I explained earnestly. “But I feel like I’m going backward.”
“That’s Mackinac,” Joe said.
“I kind of love that. The history, I mean—the fort and the fur trade and the horse-drawn carriages. I used to imagine I lived back then. Daanis and I would camp in the woods and pretend we were explorers or animals or tree spirits until it got too dark to see. But…Well, life isn’t a Hallmark movie, is it?
Where the burned-out big-city heroine returns to her small town and falls for the bearded guy in a flannel shirt.
Oh, fudge.” My hands flew to my face. “I did not just say that.”
Because he was that guy.
Joe’s brows rose. “Pretty sure you did.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean…I like beards,” I babbled.
“As long as they don’t look like woolly scarves.
It’s just…It’s a stereotype, right? Which is fine in romance novels, but in the real world, you have to wonder, what if Mr. Small Town Guy is really some incel living in his parents’ basement and making questionable political choices? ”
“You have a problem with guys who live with their parents.”
Shit. I closed my eyes. Worse and worse. “Erm, no. That would be hypocritical. Since I recently moved in with my mother.”
“So you’re questioning my political choices.”
The way he said it, low and teasing, tingled up my spine. “I might be.” I raised my chin. “Unless you don’t discuss politics.”
“We can talk about whatever you want. But you should know up front, I don’t worry about labels.
I care about people. Is something good or bad for my mom?
Does it hurt the guys who work for me? Will it help my little sister?
Anything else—where somebody’s from or who they love or what they do in their private life—that’s none of my damn business. ”
I turned in my seat. “You’re a liberal.”
A corner of his mouth indented. “That’s a label.”
“I like labels. And liberals.”
“So it’s only flannel shirts you don’t like.”
Was he flirting? Or making fun of me?
I peeked. Under the beard, he was smiling. “I actually don’t have anything against flannel shirts.”
His eyes glinted with amusement. “Sure.”
I thought of telling him about the flannel shirt I pulled out sometimes for comfort and then decided to let it go. I’d exposed enough. “My point is, I had my whole life sort of planned. Away from Mackinac. And now there’s this bend in the road.”
“You’ll be fine.”
The words raised echoes of a starlit night long ago. “So you said. Before. That night…The summer before I went away to school.”
“It’s different now,” he said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I confessed.
“Like, I’ll either lose my job and be living with my mom until I’m forty-five, or I go back to Chicago and I’m alone with my books and a cat and a bunch of dying plants.
” The words tripped over one another. “Not that I would hate that. I like books. And cats. But what if I never find the One? I could die alone and never have sex again.”
“Not happening,” Joe said firmly.
“Is that an offer?”
He laughed. The jerk. “When I said this was different, I meant you’re not the same person who left six years ago. You’ve learned things. Done things. You’re not going to lose all that knowledge and experience just because you move home.”
“Oh.” I was silent, digesting that. “Thanks.”
He met my gaze, that little smile touching his mouth. The connection tingled from my collarbone to my knees. “Anytime.”
And then he didn’t talk to me for a week.
—
“I talked to my mom,” Hailey announced, her face shining with excitement. “She’s going to help us with the food for the tea party.”
“That’s wonderful.” I grinned at my mother, folding fudge on a marble slab. “Imagine that. Mother-daughter bonding over baking.”
Mom’s lips twitched. “I don’t hear you asking to make fudge.”
“Because the last time I tried, I burned the whole batch.”
“You were fifteen. Guess you’ve learned something since then. I can let you have some fudge,” Mom said to Hailey. “If you want.”
“That would be great! We’re making layer cake, pound cake, two kinds of pie, and three kinds of cookies and scones.”
“How many people are coming to this party?” Mom asked.
“I’ll come,” Zoe said from behind the register. “If I’m invited.”
“It’s your party,” I said to Hailey.
“Of course you can come! You’re invited, too, Mrs. G.”
“Can I bring Beverly?” Zoe asked. “She loves Anne of Green Gables.”
Hailey’s forehead crinkled. “Mrs. Powell?”
“Hey, teachers are people, too,” I said. And Mrs. Powell was the one who had put Anne’s book in my father’s hands all those years ago. It would be good to catch up.
“Sure, okay. You can bring a date, too, if you want,” Hailey said generously to me.
My mind flitted to Joe. Not that we were dating. We weren’t having sex. He’d barely even spoken to me since we got back.
“Ask Daanis,” Mom said.