CHAPTER 39
Harper
“So, what do you think, are you going to stay?” Janie asks me as we near our Airbnb. I look up and down the beach, glowing orange in the dusk light. Two big palm trees sway right by the steps up to the little hut and seagulls fly overhead.
“Still not sure,” I admit.
“Well, you’ve got a night to think on it, I guess.” She says. She’s leaving tomorrow while the Clark jet is in Southern California for some other reason. She’ll catch a ride back east and meet up with Benedict before they head on a business trip to Argentina.
“I do love it,” I sigh as we climb the steps.
“You could have a little one bedroom place just like this, right on the water,” she says.
I scoff, “I’m sure the rent would eat my dinner each month.”
“Lunch, eat your lunch,” she says, “And you could get a job at a nearby bakery or restaurant.”
“Hm,” I say. We’ve spent much of our trip planning the trip itself, plotting routes and then seeing every single famous California thing we could.
I’ve been praying and journaling. Having a best friend who enjoys the silence is helpful for self-reflection.
This is the first we’ve talked about real life out loud, though.
I guess it’s time for me to start making some decisions.
Janie turns to me after we enter the condo and get the door shut, “You’ve always loved cooking, since we were little. But cooking doesn’t mean owning and running a failing shop in a dying town.”
“Not dying anymore,” I correct her.
“Thanks to—”
“Don’t,” I say.
Janie walks to me and puts a hand on my arm, “Still? It’s been almost two weeks,” she says, as if I need the reminder.
Every man in a button up shirt reminds me of him.
Every time I feel a pang of anxiety when I think of home, of Dad, I wish Aiden were still next door, looking after everyone like he does.
I miss his morning check ins, though I don’t miss the register.
Or being so tired I could hardly stand. But his questions, his advice.
His texts, his excuses to stop by and see me.
As we’ve traveled, I wondered if he’d been to the spots we hit, what he thought of them. I wonder where he is right now and what he’s doing, who he’s negotiating with and over what. Is he doing his normal evening workout? Having dinner? With who? With women?
“Harp?” Janie breaks into my thoughts. “Maybe the fact that you still can’t talk about it means we really should talk about it, hm? C’mon, I’m leaving tomorrow.”
I deadpan back to her, “Talking, your favorite.”
“Hey now, don’t use that old excuse on me. We read in blissful silence earlier for four hours. I’m ready,” she makes a point of stretching. “Let’s do this.”
I laugh as I cross from the doorway to the kitchen and grab us water bottles.
She sits on the sofa right off the kitchen, since this is a studio condo.
I wanted the real experience of living here rather than the hotel suite her husband could’ve gotten us.
I hand her one of the waters and ask, “What’s there to say?
It’s textbook Harper. He came, he courted, I swooned, he left. Rinse and freaking repeat.”
“Yes, but idiot one snuck out with his golf clubs in the middle of the night and idiot two left you with a giant dog. Aiden told me, when he was looking very sad, by the way, you told him to go.”
“That didn’t mean he had to listen. If there’s one thing we know about Aiden it’s what? He does what he wants. He says what he means. If he wanted to stay, he would have. If he wanted me to go with him, he would’ve asked!”
“Fair point,” she says before taking a swig.
“What else did he tell you?” I finally get brave enough to ask.
She hitches one shoulder, “That you told him to go and take Stuart with him and that he’d better do just that.” I squeeze my eyes shut because it’s nothing. He basically said nothing, then fled. “That’s what, like, ten words? Why don’t you tell me what he said to you.”
“Ughhhhh” I say, throwing my face in my hands. “It’s so embarrassing, Janie. I asked him to choose me.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. We talked about it, how his parents never chose him, they always chose the better offer. Like didn’t go to his polo games, graduation.” I throw my hands down. “Janie. At one point they didn’t call him for over 400 days!”
“Okay, disturbing, but I feel we’re getting off topic. Back to exactly what he said to you?”
“Yeah, right. So, after his big grand announcement I said, ‘Tell me this means that you’re staying and you choose me.’ And,” my voice cracks. I was doing so well. I finish, “And he told me to choose myself.”
“Wow,” she says grabbing a bag of pretzels off the sofa table behind my head.
“Yip,” I say. She doesn’t correct me. I don’t bother correcting myself. “Pathetic. I’m pathetic.”
“No,” she scolds me. She opens the pretzel bag and offers it to me, I take a few, then she says, “It’s never pathetic to be authentic and vulnerable. That takes guts. Go on, what’d he say after that?”
“He said all this stuff about me not knowing what I truly want, where I want to be. That I don’t really want to be in Juniper Falls.”
“So then why didn’t he ask you to go with him?”
I point at her, “Exactly! He pushed back on that too. He asked if I really wanted to just up and move away from Juniper Falls with him right then and there, which obviously I wasn’t ready for. It was like he was forcing a break up.”
“Were you together?”
I shrug, “Not really? I mean I was still freaking married. Still raising a man’s dogchild left behind, still stuck at the bakery. So I tried to resist him, I really did.”
“But the grumpy bull in a china shop thing does it for you, huh?”
I slump back on the couch, “It does, it really does.”
“So you’re in love with him?”
I throw an arm over my face, “I thought so! But, what if I was just so grateful to have someone helping, someone paying attention to me again?”
“Lewis wasn’t that long ago, babe.”
“True. Lewis felt like a rebound. Aiden didn’t. I fought my feelings for him right from the start but when I finally just gave in and let myself be with him…it was amazing. I already miss him so much.”
She goes on, “How does he feel about you?”
I sit right back up, “He never said! I mean, he said sweet things, and he did sweet things, beyond the gifts, he did a lot of thoughtful, caring things. But we never talked about a future and when it came down to it, when I flat out asked him to choose me and stay, he left.”
“Well,” she holds up a pretzel. “You didn’t do that though. You asked him if he was choosing you. You didn’t say how you felt or ask for what you wanted, did you?”
I open my mouth, then shut it. Because no, I guess I didn’t.
“And, not to side with Bridgerton because I barely like him, like, at all, but could it be you don’t actually know how you feel or what you want?”
I glare at her. She throws her hands in the air and chomps another pretzel.
“Right now, I want to plan my next step.”
“Okay, changing gears, Roger that. Want to pull up apartments in this area? Or you want to look in San Diego instead?”
“No apartment, not yet. I want to just…roam.”
“Roam?”
“Yeah, there’s a Beach Boys residency in Vegas, I want to see it.”
She snorts, “Of course you do! I can’t believe that wasn’t our first stop before Cali.”
“I considered it.”
Janie nods, “Okay, Vegas, then what?”
“I’d like to see some of the Deep South, Savannah, maybe.” I say out loud for maybe the first time. She frowns. “It’s not random, the South is where our general love for butter, sugar, and flour, originated. There are so many cute bakeries, and there are beaches down there too.”
Her eyebrows shoot up but then she stands and gets her laptop, “I love it, let’s make a spreadsheet. Where else?”
“Deep South includes Florida. Maybe the Keys? They seem like my vibe.”
“True, not surfing but definitely eating and wearing palm trees on your clothes.”
I laugh, “Sounds perfect.”
We talk through a few more of my ideas until she asks, “So you do love the beach?”
“I do, but this particular coast is just…really far. Two or three flights every time I want to see my Dad? And don’t say there’s the jet because there isn’t the jet, there’s your father-in-law’s jet and I’m not using it. Even if I did, it’s still at least a five hour flight.”
“Alright. The California girl has decided California is too far away?”
“I think so,” I nod, “Yes.”
She starts typing, “Good. That’s good. Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want out of life right now but it can be just as helpful to think about what you don’t want. Sorry California,” she says to the open back patio door, “You’re out!”
We keep working through her spreadsheet for an hour, read side by side in silence, and are too tired to carry on once we hit 9PM.
It’s really been a lovely evening.
I’ll be sad to be alone when she leaves but also…energized. This felt like a vacation but tomorrow, renting a car and driving to Vegas...it feels like starting a journey. Will it lead me back to Juniper Falls? To the bakery?
I kick myself as I’m falling asleep because of course my heart wonders…will the trek somehow lead me back to Aiden? Give me a chance to tell him what I want? I hope so, I do.
But I’d better figure out what that is first.