Chapter 34
Joss
One time early in our relationship, Brian forced me to end my friendship with a college friend. He told me he’d overheard Josh saying inappropriate things about me. Brian was also a lot older than me or any boyfriend I’d had before him and insisted we do things in the bedroom that made me uncomfortable. He said it wasn’t because I didn’t like them, I was just inexperienced. I needed to grow up.
When I did inventory of the medication in his practice, the numbers were always off, but he had a reason every time.
Brian always blamed the patients when I asked about whether they needed sedation because the insurance companies were forever denying claims. He said teenage girls were babies who couldn’t handle a little pain.
I’m cautious with Gabe, but I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. I fully trusted Brian and spent many years blaming myself for not recognizing all those little incidents for what they were, but I was young and naive. I am now less young and less naive.
Every time Gabe takes my hand, I feel this peace settle over me like I made the right decision. I think we’re going to make it.
Gabe squeezes my hand to get my attention. “What’s got your eye there?”
I look from the wall of fabric in front of me and the swatches of the baby fabric. He’s been glued to my side all afternoon. At lunch, he even insisted on sitting next to me at a booth that was absolutely not big enough to sit three people on one side. And no, I’m not claiming the baby took up an entire seat; Gabe takes up two. It was sweet, though. If I tried to pull away from him, I have no doubt he’d say that in his walking brace, he needs to lean on me for support.
I have a feeling he’s going to be running that line through March.
I slide the swatches over the line of fabrics the designer matched the custom prints to so it’d be easier for me to pair everything up. I keep pushing my hand to the yellows and greens; my hand keeps springing back to the pinks and purples. I know I’m blushing because we’ve spent the last week committing to gender-neutral colors when I say, “I know what we agreed on, but don’t these prints match so much better to the pinks?”
Gabe chuckles and leans down to kiss the top of my head. “You can say it. Now that you know we’re having a girl, you want to do girl stuff.”
“I’m not this shallow!”
“Well then, I’m that shallow. I found out two hours ago that I’m going to have a girl, and I’m so dang shallow that I demand all the pink. Every pink. Pink everywhere.” He reaches behind himself, taps the shoulder of the lady shopping the notions rack, and says, “We’re having a girl. Just found out. We were going to do the gender-neutral stuff, but now that I know it’s a girl, I want girl colors. Which pink should we go with?”
The poor lady, whom I don’t recognize, so she’s either a quilt tourist or a new customer who’s probably never coming back, looks at the fabrics I’m debating between. “Oh, that print is absolutely precious with those little raccoons! I’ve never seen it before. Is it sold here, too?”
“I had it custom made,” Gabe boasts. “Got sixty yards of it.”
The lady recoils at that. A valid response. It’s an unholy amount of fabric for most. Not that most quilters I know aren’t sitting on that much fabric, but you don’t just say something like that.
“Oh, hi, he means he bought me a bolt of each. And . . . I own the shop, so it’s not actually crazy.”
“That makes sense.” The lady nods and points to a blender pink with tiny swirls and hearts on it. “That matches really nicely, I think. Your shop’s amazing, by the way. I just moved here from Salem. I wasn’t expecting anything like this when I was told the best shop in Wilmington is all the way up in Camden.”
I blush and sink into Gabe at the praise. I know people recommend my shop, but I don’t hear it that much, and the recent string of vandalism had me worried people were getting run off again. But there hasn’t been an incident in a month and a half, since that day Keira came by, so maybe things are getting better.
Am I suspicious that Keira really was behind all the incidents? Yes. But as long as they’re not happening anymore, I truly don’t care.
“She’s got the seventh-biggest online quilt shop in the U.S.,” Gabe boasts, having heard that a dozen times by now probably.
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Well done.” She looks ready to step out of the conversation, but then she eyes us up more scrupulously, her gaze bouncing between us. “You two look familiar.”
“She’s famous,” Gabe tells her.
“So are you,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but you’re quilt famous. This is Joss Page right here.”
“Oh lord, I do know you,” the lady laughs. “I’ve got a couple of your FPP patterns. Do you teach at all?”
“She teaches so much!” Gabe says loudly enough that everyone in the shop looks at us.
From the back hallway, one of the storage rooms we let our regular customers into for stuff like batting remnants and leftover packaging, Rachel pops her head out. “Gabe?” she says, surprised.
“You’re one of the Juggernauts,” the newcomer says as I hold up mine and Gabe’s hands to Rachel. I’m not angry with her about blabbing to the rest of the quilters about how Gabe and I had broken up, not angrier than I have a right to be because I get that it was hot gossip and we are public figures. Still, I want to make it clear right now that Gabe and I are together, working things out, and it’s not anyone’s business what’s happened behind the scenes.
I swear I see Rachel scowl like she’s upset about this, but then she lights up and shoots us a big thumbs-up.
Gabe grunts. “I know this is going to be a weird thing to say, but I don’t think Rachel’s going to be making me cookies anymore.”
“Nobody’s making you cookies anymore.”
“Because I’m not on the team next year?”
I slug his arm. We don’t need negativity today. “Because you’re mine. So I’m the only one who should be making you cookies, and I don’t know if you deserve my cookies.”
He spins me to face him in a quick, weightless swirl, his giant hands taking mine and pulling them behind my back so I have nowhere to go except against him. Right where I want to be. “Ahh, and that’s just about the kindest thing you could have ever said to me because I have it on good authority that you haven’t yet met a cookie dough that you didn’t burn to a cinder in the oven.”
“That’s me!” Barb pipes up from behind the cutting counter. “I warned him!”
Grinning, Gabe tugs down on my hands, forcing me to bend back and tilt my head up for a kiss that’s highly inappropriate in front of my customers and employees. And once I’m breathless, he whispers in my ear, “I have a secret for you. I make the best snickerdoodles you’ve ever had.”
“Why don’t we test out that ramp, see if we can get you up to my place so I can try some of your snickerdoodles?”
Whether he takes that to mean rummage through my cupboards for the ancient bag of flour to bake cookies or just experiment with sex positions that don’t mess with his knees, I’m good.