Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Winnie entered Nuts and Bolts, Garrett looked up from where he was frowning down at one of those yellow legal pads over at the counter.
“Oh, hey, Winnie,” he said in his usual, gruff manner. “How’re you doing today?”
She smiled at him. Something about Garrett’s usual gruffness had always made her find it easier to get along with him, at least in a passive, surface sort of way.
She suspected that it was because he didn’t try to hide his true self behind good cheer.
It made her trust that he was really feeling what he seemed to be feeling.
For example, right now, he looked like he really didn’t want to be drawn away from his task.
“I’m good,” she said.
“Need help with anything?”
She totally, absolutely, one hundred percent did. But Garrett had already helped her plenty when he’d offered to drop off the battered cornhole boards at her house, and he was clearly in the middle of something, so she waved him off.
“I’ve got it,” she said. The look of relief in his expression was unmistakable.
“Okay, great,” he said. This part was convincing. Less convincing was when he added, “Feel free to let me know if you need anything.”
“Of course,” she said, hoping she was simultaneously conveying that she would do everything in her power to avoid needing him.
She thought he got what she was saying. There was some sort of ‘rapport of the socially awkward’ between them, or something like that.
She felt good about this good deed for about two whole minutes, which was the amount of time it took to realize that she had no idea what she needed to repair the activity she’d gotten from Miriam.
She needed… screws? Screws seemed right.
But there were… a lot of screws here.
Winnie was a smart woman. She was capable! She could figure this out.
She was still in the middle of the figuring when she heard the door to the hardware shop open. Then, she heard Shane’s voice.
“Garrett, hey. Ellie sent me over here with a lunch for you. She was going to bring it herself, but then she got a bunch of customers come in, so I’m serving as errand boy.”
Winnie couldn’t see him from where she was standing, but she could picture him, somehow. She could just imagine the crooked little smile he wore when he was being silly, like when he had given her those increasingly outlandish ideas for fundraisers.
She didn’t so much decide to poke her head out of the aisle as she found her feet deciding for her. She leaned out from the beguiling aisle of infinite screws with a grin and a wave.
“Shane, hi.”
He turned, and his smile grew from the crooked silly one that was just as she had imagined it to a full-on beam.
“Winnie!” he exclaimed. “Hey! What are you doing here?”
The instant Shane stepped away from the front counter, Garrett ducked his head back toward his work, as if he could, by sheer force of will, stop them from trying to bother him again.
Shane saw this too, and shot Winnie a wink.
Winnie felt a thrill of happiness. That was twice she’d felt this moment of understanding with someone. Twice in a single morning!
Maybe her ‘project remake Winnie Burnett’ was working after all.
“I am… struggling,” she admitted with a wince, waving Shane over. “So, I got my hands on these old cornhole boards, and they’re part of my in-progress idea about making a fundraiser that’s—”
“A fundraiser?” he interjected slyly. She nudged him and he laughed. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
“You’re cheesy,” she said, “but you are not wrong.”
“It’s a gift,” he said with a chuckle. “But that sounds really fun. What do you need?”
“Well, that’s the problem. I don’t know. I think I need…” The last shreds of her confidence in the ‘figure it out’ plan vanished in a puff. “Screws?”
He gave her a very strange look. It took her a moment to figure it out.
“Are you trying not to laugh at me?” she demanded.
“No?” he said in a very unconvincing tone. “Okay, yeah. But let’s see if I can help. What do you need to get done?”
“I need to fix it!” she said with forced brightness.
He didn’t bother with trying to hide his laugh this time.
“Okay, okay, how about this: why don’t I come over later and see what you’re working with. That way you don’t just…” He glanced down at her hands. “Buy seven different random screws and hope for the best.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” he said. “It will give me something to do other than just get in Eleanor’s way all day. Besides, it sounds like a fun project.”
There was a warm feeling growing inside her, and as much as she tried to tell herself that it was just because she was excited to build another link to a member of the community, she knew it was more than that.
She liked hanging out with Shane. He was charming, kind… and not terrible to look at either.
But she didn’t feel ready to let any of those thoughts trickle in. After all, Shane wasn’t a member of the community, at least not a permanent one. His visit might be open-ended, but it was just a visit.
Besides, things were not sufficiently settled with Eleanor for Winnie to add in a complication of having feelings for her brother.
Not that Winnie had any such feelings. Nope. No way. No how.
But that didn’t mean she should say no to overtures of friendship, certainly.
“That would be really nice,” she said. “I would be glad to have company. And if you happened to have ideas about how to fix cornhole boards, I’m sure I could let you take a shot at it.”
“I appreciate that,” he said, smiling. “I mean, you’ve obviously got it totally under control.”
“Obviously,” Winnie agreed, secretly thrilled with herself. She was joking around! And he was smiling and laughing with her!
They made plans for Shane to come by later that evening then left the hardware store, leaving Garrett behind them, visibly relieved to see the back of them, even if neither of them had ultimately made a purchase.
“I’ll see you tonight?” Shane asked as he climbed into a car that Winnie recognized as belonging to Eleanor.
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Winnie said.
As she drove away, she reflected on how true this was. She really was looking forward to seeing him… maybe more than she should have been.
But that was a problem for another day. Today, she was just going to enjoy herself and see where that optimism led her.
“Hey, do you mind if I borrow…”
Shane trailed off when his sister gave no sign that she heard him, instead continued standing at the sink, humming happily, and running her sponge around a dish that looked like it had been clean a good while ago.
“Eleanor?” he continued in a singsong tone. She jolted, nearly dropping the slippery plate.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, only stopping herself from pressing a hand to her chest when she spotted the sponge. “I—how long have you been standing there?”
“Only for a few seconds,” he said, grinning. “But would you have believed me if I said I’d been here way longer?”
She pulled a face. “Yes,” she admitted. “I absolutely would have. I’m not proud.”
“Nah,” he said. “That was happy humming. I can tell. You should be absolutely proud of whatever it is that’s got you singing like a songbird.”
It was an invitation to talk, and his sister recognized it as such, getting a dreamy look on her face.
“It’s just Garrett,” she said happily.
“Did you guys have a big date or something?”
She shook her head, but she looked even happier for it.
“No, it’s not even that. It’s just… I guess it’s just that the regular stuff is so nice, you know?
The day-to-day stuff. Like, we don’t have to be doing anything fancy to have a really, really nice time.
He just makes normal stuff better. The other night, we just watched a movie, some old action flick from the ‘90s. It was on TV, and we didn’t even catch it from the beginning, but it was just so… ” She sighed. “So nice.”
There was a pause while Eleanor looked at nothing, but then she refocused on her extremely amused brother. She blushed bright red.
“Sorry. I’m gushing.”
Shane gave her a fond headshake. “Don’t apologize,” he told her. “I’m happy you’re so happy. You deserve it.”
She smiled, accepting his encouragement.
“It’s just starting to be something I can see for the long run,” she said.
“I know Garrett and I are just getting started, but the normal stuff… that’s what builds a relationship that can last. It’s not all candlelit dinners and getting dressed up.
It’s also Tuesday morning, when you’re late for work, and you can’t find the lid to your coffee mug. Garrett makes that stuff better too.”
She was getting all misty-eyed, but these were clearly happy tears.
Again though, she shook her head, like she was shaking out the cobwebs.
“Sorry again. Did you come down here for something specific?”
“Oh! Yes,” he said. He’d gotten distracted himself. “I wanted to know if you would mind if I borrowed your car again tonight.”
“Yeah, go right ahead,” she said easily. “I’m just going to hang out here, getting some chores done and being sappy.”
He chuckled. “Sounds like a great evening. I’ll be back, probably not too late.”
“See you!”
It was only when he got outside that he realized that he hadn’t mentioned to Eleanor where he was going. It wasn’t totally intentional, this omission, but once he realized it, he wasn’t totally sorry for it.
He didn’t think there was any real bad feeling between Winnie and Eleanor, not from what he’d seen.
But he also didn’t want to get in the middle of things either.
This was probably an impulse left over from childhood.
He’d intervened in a spat between Eleanor and their neighbor Wendy once, many, many years ago.
He’d thought that he could help them get over an argument over…
a misplaced lip gloss? He didn’t precisely remember, now, but it had been something that seemed very important to teenage girls and very unimportant to him as a slightly younger boy.