Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Georgie
“You are so preoccupied,” Liv says the next morning as we both fight off yawns on the drive from the farm to the factory. “Didn’t Logan text you last night?”
“He did,” I say, turning down a quiet country road. There’s been a nip in the air all week, and my weather app says this is expected to be the coolest September in a decade. Bless whatever strong high-pressure system is pressing down from Canada.
“And?” Liv prompts, pulling my attention back.
“He didn’t seem to know anything more than he did yesterday morning.”
“But you guys talked, right?”
My throat feels tight and sticky. “Yeah. He sounded tired. Or maybe he’s not that into me,” I say with a resigned smile.
Liv stares at me, her dark gray eyes unblinking. Then a laugh bursts from her. “Right. Logan isn’t that into you. Like Alma isn’t into planning her granddaughter’s quinceanera or winding up Marlowe.”
“Come on,” I say, flicking on my blinker. “He has much better things to worry about than me.”
“Gotcha,” Liv says.
My face flies to hers. “So you agree with me?”
“No. I know self-protection when I see it. I get it, girl. Protect away.”
We’re steadily working through our line of customers in the factory lot when Marlowe calls me.
“Morning,” I say, putting the finishing touches on yet another It’s Bean Real.
“Good morning, sweetie,” Marlowe says, and my chest warms to hear the term of endearment. “Your father and I got back from Columbia last night and thought we’d stop by today to see how things are going. What’s your schedule like for the day?”
“Oh, great,” I say, backing out of the sight of customers. I can’t help people when I’m trying to grapple with the idea of my parents wanting to stop by and see me. “We just finished at the farm lot, so we’ll be at the factory until three.”
“Do you have another shift at the farm after?”
I’m about to offer to create one when Olivia snaps and gives me a look that says bite your tongue.
I bite it.
“No,” I say, forcing myself not to back down. “Just this.”
“Oh, great,” she says. “We’ll come by after the lunch rush, then. We spent last night looking over the numbers—it’s doing even better than I projected. We’re proud of you, sweetie.”
Proud?
I have to clear my throat to talk. “Thanks, Marlowe. That means a lot to me,” I say, deliberately not looking at Liv.
I hear my dad’s voice in the background on the phone. “Be sure to ask her to look at our numbers before we get there.”
“Right,” Marlowe says. “Your father and I put together some preliminary numbers for the trucks. Because you’re so familiar with the operations, we thought we’d give you the chance to look them over. Can you have your thoughts ready by one when we arrive?”
The emotion lodged in my throat plummets to my stomach, where it dissolves in the roiling acid.
“Sure,” I say. “I have customers, so I need to run.”
“Of course. We’ll see you soon.”
The call ends, and I drop my phone into my pocket and adjust my hat.
“What was that?” Liv asks.
“My stepmom and dad gave me a homework assignment.”
“So that’s why she was being nice,” Liv says. “Classic manipulator. They give you scraps and convince you it’s a meal.”
I open my mouth to defend Marlowe, but the words turn to ash on my tongue.
She’s not a bad person. I’ve seen her be kind. She loves Nicolette and Lulabelle and my dad with her whole heart.
At one point, I think she even tried to love me.
But in Marlowe’s math, her emotional pie only has so many slices, and one for me is one she can’t give to anyone else.
So yeah, I get scraps.
I just don’t think I can keep pretending they’re a meal anymore.
***
By late morning, I’m busy and tired and frustrated. Usually Logan and I have traded a hundred texts already by this hour.
Today I have none.
I’m too resigned to argue with myself that he’s a busy athlete adjusting to a new team or that he’s catching up with family for the first time in months.
I know Logan cares about me. He’s a good man, and he’s not stringing me along.
But I’m a twenty-five year-old barista from Mullet Ridge, South Carolinam who takes night classes and needs a fainting couch on dates, for heaven’s sake. I love books and I love making people smile.
Yippee.
Logan, on the other hand, is the stuff of dreams—so tall and handsome women stare at him when he walks by and swoon over him when his name even comes up in conversation. Bookish and athletic. Funny and emotionally deep. Understanding, kind, and probably a great kisser, not that I’ll ever find out.
He won’t mean to forget me.
And I won’t blame him for it.
Years ago, when Alma’s family first moved to South Carolina, I met Alma’s abuela, a ninety-year-old woman who spoke almost no English but who was vibrant and full of life and opinions. Through Alma, she told my mom and me the story of the first time she tried chocolate in her poor village.
“It was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Alma translated, and my mom and I both gasped at each other.
“How could you say that?” I asked. “Chocolate is the best food in the world!”
Alma asked this of her abuela, and a moment later, the old woman smiled and gave a short answer, which Alma translated.
“That was the problem,” Alma said. “After knowing something so wonderful was in the world, how could I ever go back?”
I think of this now, as I make drink after drink for customers, as I watch them sigh over such a simple pleasure, curling into their drink as if the seventy-degree high for the day is somehow a full chill.
The weeks I’ve had with Logan are so wonderful, I don’t know how I’ll ever go back.
No matter how hard I tried to keep my heart from throwing itself at him, it didn’t listen.
“Tough news about your boyfriend,” my next customer says.
“Beg your pardon?” I ask, although my cheeks are flushing stupidly. Did Logan announce he was breaking up with me online, or something? Were we even technically dating?
“What’s an”—he looks down at his phone—“extensor digitorum strain, anyway?”
I can’t be relieved he’s not talking about us, because what he’s talking about is even worse. Logan’s injury.
“What does it say?” I ask, leaning down for him to show me his phone. He angles it toward me, and I read “Fischer twin on the IL, no news on how long he’ll be out.” And then beneath that are the barest of details, including only his injury: an extensor digitorum strain.
“So what’s the story?” my regular asks.
“You’re looking at it,” I say simply.
Logan is injured and he didn’t think to tell me.
And this is why hope is for suckers.
“So what’ll it be today?” I ask.
“Surprise me,” he says.
My shoulders almost slump. I don’t want to surprise him.
I want to pull up my phone and call Logan.
I want to see if he’s texted me, see if I matter enough for him to let me know what’s really going on in his life.
And barring any of that, I want to read everything I can about his injury and make sure he’ll be okay to go on.
I’m a pit stop on his journey.
Baseball is the journey.
A minute later, I’m handling my regular a seasonal caramel-and-pecan-flavored light roast, and he gives me a five-dollar tip for “guessing right.”
There are no customers for a minute, so I turn and start busying myself with cleaning the steam wand when Liv’s hand closes around my elbow.
“Hey, are you all right?” she asks softly.
“Of course. He doesn’t owe me an explanation. There are a hundred people more important he needs to talk to after finding out something like this.”
“No, there aren’t,” she says. “He should have told you. And he better have a really good reason for not doing it.”
The back of my eyes throb, and I shake my head. I will not cry.
I never expected to be his top priority, but I thought I was on the list.
I hate how much I wanted to be on Logan’s list. And I hate how worried I am for him, even though I wasn’t.
“You know what sucks?” I tell Liv, my lips pulling to the side. “As much as I want him to want me, I want him to be happy even more.”
Her frown is instantaneous, and she pulls me into a hug. “I’m sorry, Georgie.”
“Thanks, Liv.”
I pull out my phone and scroll back through last night’s texts, looking for something I missed.
But there’s nothing to miss. He asked about my day.
He told me he was tired and sore and waiting for more information.
No possibility of injury, no mention of what might or might not happen. No letting me in …
Do I say something? Tell him I know and ask him how he’s doing?
I almost snort at the thought. That’s something another woman gets to do, not me. A woman who knows she deserves the whole story.
Not a woman who was only waiting to be forgotten.