Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Eleanor’s hands were busy stacking books on the shelves in her shop, but her mind was on Garrett.
It had been several days now, and she still hadn’t talked to him.
She knew that delaying wasn’t helping anything.
No, in fact, it was making everything worse, because now she wasn’t only embarrassed about her ‘too much too soon’ feelings, but she was also worried that he was getting angrier by the day and mortified that she was behaving so childishly.
Worst of all, she felt that she likely deserved any anger he wanted to toss in her direction.
She was not precisely at her best, after all.
And it wasn’t as though she’d been getting calmer as the days went on either. On the contrary, she had been sleeping extremely poorly, which meant she was only growing crankier as the days went on.
Crankier and more absentminded.
This point was made particularly clear to her when she jumped about a foot in the air when she heard her brother’s voice from behind her.
“Everything okay, there, Ellie? You’re slamming those books down pretty hard on the shelf there…”
Frustrated with her own surprise, Eleanor slammed down the next book even harder and whirled on her brother.
“You,” she said accusingly.
This was perhaps a touch dramatic, but she wasn’t feeling terribly reasonable.
Shane blinked.
“Um. Me?” He pointed at himself.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, you,” she snapped, feeling her temper get the better of her. “Why did you have to go and open your big trap to Garrett, huh?”
Shane looked understandably confused. But then he blinked, and his eyes went wide.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh no. Oh, Ellie, I am so sorry.”
This threatened to take the wind out of Eleanor’s sails, but she’d built up a big enough head of steam over the past few days that she managed to cling to her ire by her fingernails.
“Why did you have to say something?” she lamented, feeling herself grow closer to tears. “You said something, and now everything is spoiled.”
Shane looked genuinely alarmed as he put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward one of the comfortable chairs that she’d put around her store.
He gestured her into the seat, then knelt at her side in a mirror of the way she’d sat at his side when he was a very little boy and needed comforting after some small child disaster or other.
The thought made the tears start to fall, because Eleanor was a mess of feelings.
“Okay,” Shane said in a calm, reasonable voice that did not make Eleanor feel at all calm and reasonable. “Tell me what’s happening.”
The words fell out of Eleanor like a flood.
“You told Garrett that I want to marry him, and then he told me that you told him that I want to marry him, and then I ran away like a chicken, and now he’s going to leave me all because you have loose lips!”
There were a great number of ways in which her tirade was confusing, unfair, or confusingly unfair, but Shane seemed to take it all in stride.
“Okay,” he said, then paused. “Okay. So. Point one. I would like to reiterate that I’m sorry that I spilled your secret. I assumed that you guys had talked about it, but that was wrong of me. I really am very, very sorry.”
“I know,” she said… a touch sulkily, because it was hard to be immature when the other person was determined to be adult and cool about things.
“Point two,” her brother went on, still in that maddeningly level voice, “I don’t think that Garrett is upset about you feeling the way you feel, Ellie. He seemed… happy about it.” Shane paused. “And he’s not exactly a guy who wears his happiness on his sleeve, you know?”
Despite everything, Eleanor felt her lips twitch at that. That was putting things mildly.
“Which brings me to point three… or I suppose it’s really more of question one, not that it really matters how we want to count it. But what happened? He mentioned to you that I let it slip and then you… did you say ‘ran away like a chicken?’”
Any humor Eleanor might have felt vanished in a flash.
“Um, yes,” she admitted, and then confessed the whole ridiculous thing. And it did sound ridiculous when she was saying it out loud. Shane also looked like he was trying very hard not to find it ridiculous, as penance for being the unwitting catalyst for all this strife.
“I’m sorry,” he said when she gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I just can’t stop picturing you fleeing the grocery store like it’s on fire while Garrett stands there holding a fish.”
“It wasn’t a whole fish,” she protested. “It was wrapped in brown paper. It was totally normal.”
Shane tapped himself on the temple. “Not up here. Anyway, I agree with you that running away wasn’t your most suave move ever.
And dodging his calls is also less than ideal.
But I very strongly suspect that if you pick up your phone, or better yet, meet up with him, and talk about this like adults, that you’ll find that things get sorted out very quickly. ”
Eleanor wanted to believe that quite a bit. But she felt hesitant to do so.
“I don’t know…” she hedged. “We haven’t even been together a year. Is it nuts to be thinking about the future so quickly?”
“So, my boss in San Francisco is this guy named Ewan. He’s a bigwig in the company now, because he was an early adopter of tech way back when.
He’s in his mid-seventies now. And he and his wife met when they were nineteen years old, didn’t have a penny to their names.
They got married six weeks after they met.
” He shrugged a shoulder. “And you can say that they were swept up in the folly of youth or whatever, but they’ve also been married for something like fifty-seven years.
Extremely happily so, I might add. And while the tech guy in me feels beholden to point out that anecdotes aren’t the same as data, the romantic in me wants to say that sometimes, when you know, you just know. ”
For a moment, he got an even softer look on his face that made Eleanor wonder if Shane wasn’t thinking about knowing about someone in particular. He kept talking before she could inquire, however.
“And besides, I’m your brother. You know I think the world of you. So, if you ask me, if anyone can be that exceptional story, it’s you.” He shrugged again. “Besides, it’s completely obvious that guy is head over heels in love with you.”
“Well, we haven’t exactly used the ‘L word’ yet…”
Shane looked like he was about to faint.
“Goodness gracious,” he muttered to himself.
“I am just never going to talk again. If I never, ever talk again, I can’t put my foot in my mouth anymore.
” Then, he squared his shoulders. “You know what? I’m going to stand by it.
You two so obviously adore one another! So the next step is to just…
” He rapidly pressed his hands together as if he planned to physically shove Eleanor and Garrett into a room together. “Talk about it.”
Eleanor sighed and dabbed at her eyes again. This was good advice. She knew it was good advice. But…
“I’m just worried that if I talk to him about it, I’ll find out that he doesn’t feel the same way, and it will ruin the way things have been between us,” she confessed.
“I don’t think it’s likely, but I’ll admit that it’s possible,” her brother said, nodding sympathetically. “But that doesn’t mean that putting it off is a good idea. I mean, you’re clearly not having a good time. Don’t you think that knowing is better than this miserable not knowing?”
This was good advice again. How irksome to have a little brother grow up to be wise and kind.
Eleanor could remember when he tried to eat a spoonful of lemonade mix as a dare and found the sour taste so unpalatable that he’d stuck his whole head under the sink while his friends roared with laughter.
How had that goofy kid grown up to be such a wonderful, thoughtful person?
“It’s really annoying when you’re right,” she said begrudgingly.
He laughed and wrapped an arm around her neck.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m the worst, I know. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t had very much experience with long-term relationships. I could be telling you total nonsense right now.”
“Nah,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.
It wasn’t the most comfortable angle, but it was worth the crick she might get in her neck soon enough.
She really was very happy to have this time with her little brother.
She hadn’t even realized how much she’d missed him until he’d become an everyday presence in her life.
“It all sounds pretty good so far. What else have you got?”
Shane hummed thoughtfully. “Hmm. I hit ‘both people should have an idea of where their future is going’ and I got the ‘open communication’ bit in. So I think I’m tapped out.”
“Darn,” she said. “I was hoping you’d have something that would magically make me feel better.”
Her neck protested enough that she pulled back. She saw her brother giving her a fond look.
“I think talking to me isn’t going to cut it with that one, big sis. Talking to Garrett, however…” He trailed off suggestively.
“Double darn,” she said sourly, making him laugh.
Eleanor, it turned out, had a few more sniffles left in her, so she rooted into her pocket and came up with a rumpled but clean tissue. She wiped at her eyes, then her nose before sucking in a deep, steadying breath.
“You’re right,” she said. “I know you’re right. Thanks for talking me through my little meltdown there. You’re a good brother.”
He gave her a wink. “Anytime. It’s not like I don’t owe you for looking out for me a million times when I was growing up.”
“Hey, what are big sisters for?”
He arched a brow. “I could say the same to you. Now, why don’t you let me mind your shop for a little while so that you can go talk to that man of yours? I promise that you’ll feel better afterward.”
Eleanor nodded. It was time to be brave.
“Do you know what? I think I will do exactly that.”
She only hoped that it didn’t end with her heart broken into a million pieces…