Chapter 34
“I can tell you one thing.”
Mimi stood at Zander’s side on the front porch, surveying the festival spread before them.
Her eyes gleamed as she watched people milling from tent to tent.
Behind them, through the open doors of the house, Zander could hear RJ finishing up his third demo of the day, walking people through his crust construction.
It wasn’t the culinary tent Zander had imagined, but somehow having people gathered around his kitchen table, sampling honey as RJ cooked for them, was better than anything Zander could have dreamed up.
“Your grandfather,” Mimi continued, smiling out at the festival, “would have hated this.”
Zander waited for the sting that came with any mention of his papou but found himself smiling instead. Because Mimi was absolutely right.
“Can you imagine?” he said. “All these people tramping around? Parking on his grass? Making a mess of his kitchen?”
Mimi howled a laugh. “I reckon he would have run ’em all off with a broom in his hand.”
Zander raised a fist in the air, bellowing: “Go do something useful with yourselves!”
Beside him, Penny’s grandmother sighed and shook her head.
“My first winter here, I swear I thought I’d made the worst mistake of my life.
I looked around and thought everything was dead and I was just about doomed.
Then spring finally came inching along. Sprouts started coming up in the garden and the greenhouse.
Leaves began poking out in the orchard. Everywhere you looked, it was that new green of springtime, bright and chipper. ”
She patted Zander’s back and turned to him with a smile. “I know it’s the last thing you expected, but you’re like the new green around here, Zander. For this house and I think for Penny, too. For her sake, I hope she realizes that and doesn’t let you walk out of her life.”
“Thank you, Mimi.” He swallowed hard, catching a look back at the house, then at the festival below. “I hope so, too.”
Zander’s heart stalled as Quinn approached.
She’d been busy all morning helping out and blowing bubbles, and Mallory had been managing hockey players while RJ cooked, so he hadn’t been able to talk to either of them about their conversation with Winter.
When Zander left to find Penny the night before, he’d given them the okay to float the idea of a move to Sullivan’s Glen, trusting them to handle it delicately enough to gauge Winter’s feelings about it without pressuring him to give any specific answer.
He knew Mal would have waited for Zander to get past the chaos of the canceled and reinstated Honey Festival, but now that the seed of this move had been planted, he was eager to see if it might really come to something.
He also wanted to talk to Penny about it. But they’d been so damn busy.
Quinn approached with a smile, wiping her dark bangs off her forehead. “Hey, loser! Look at this damn thing we pulled off!” She exchanged cheek kisses with Mimi, faux-whispering in her ear, “Even though Zander couldn’t do his one job.”
“Okay, you know what?” Zander harrumphed. “I challenge anyone in this county to tell Penny Becker what to do. Seriously, keeping her out all morning was an impossible task.”
Mimi laughed. “You have my sympathies, honey. I would never have dared volunteer for that job.” She patted his back again, then headed down the porch with a glint in her eye. “I do believe it’s time to boss around some more hockey players.”
Zander waited until they had a sliver of privacy. “How’d it go with Winter last night?”
Quinn’s eyebrows rose along with her smile. “Someone is invested in this outcome now, is he?”
“I’m not invested, I just—” He sighed. He was definitely invested. “I don’t want to be invested if Winter’s against it.”
Quinn squeezed his shoulder. “I get it. I don’t mean to fuck with you. Not too much, anyway. So we started by asking Winter what he thought about leaving Boston. He asked what we meant, and we said, ‘You know, would you be interested in living anywhere else? Maybe with some more space?’ ”
“And what did he say?”
“He said, ‘What, like here?’ ”
The little candle of hope Zander had been nursing since the day before sparked to life. “No shit.”
“No shit. So Mal said, ‘Would you want that?’ and he shrugged and said, ‘That’d be cool, I guess.’ ”
“That’d be cool, I guess?” Zander repeated in disbelief. “That’s enthusiastic for him lately.”
“Yeah, it is.” Quinn looked at Zander seriously. “He said he likes the kids he met here, and that spending time with Mal’s parents isn’t as boring as he thought it would be and is sometimes fun. And he likes the trees and space. He also said he likes getting to hang out with Penny.”
Quinn watched him as it settled between them. “Zander, this could actually be a thing that could happen.”
“And you would want that?” With everything happening at once, Zander and Quinn hadn’t been able to talk about any of this one-on-one.
He couldn’t deny that his heart was now 100 percent on board with this, but only if Quinn’s was, too.
“You would seriously move here? Because you know if you don’t want to, Mallory would never—”
“I know. She wouldn’t pressure me at all.
Believe me, Z, she and I had this conversation about a thousand times before we came to you.
” Quinn shrugged and looked around, her shoulders visibly relaxing as she scanned the festival and the trees beyond.
“Maybe it’s a pre-midlife crisis. Like cis dudes get sports cars and I get the urge to move to a small town and learn how to play hockey and spend evenings playing board games with my loving but uptight in-laws.
Whatever it is, I like it here. I think it could be home. ”
Zander tsked and shook his head, his body warm all over. “I’m going to have to hug you now, and it’s going to be big and smushy and you won’t be able to get away.”
She winced. “But you hugged me yesterday!”
“That was an engagement hug. This is a—” He wrapped her up and pulled her to his chest. “This is a thank-you hug. Thank you for being the pain in my ass I’ve always needed.”
Quinn squeezed him back, then allowed him a few more seconds before pulling away. “You’ll talk to Penny?”
“I’ll talk to Penny.”
“And you’ll let yourself believe she could want you, long-term?”
He nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m so sorry to interrupt.” A voice appeared from Zander’s side. “I asked who was in charge, and someone pointed me your way.”
Zander did a double take, looking around. A tall, thin white man in a floral button-down was standing close, holding hands with a shorter man with darker skin and a crisp polo.
“They told you I was in charge?”
“Um, Z.” Quinn nudged him. “You kind of are.”
He rubbed a hand through his hair. “I mean, I guess. My, uh, partner and I.”
He meant partner as in the festival, but using that word to describe Penny was… really something.
“Oh, super.” The man smiled big. “I’ll cut to the chase.
What are your rental rates, and do you have availability in October?
And yes, this October. Our wedding venue a county over had an unfortunate fire incident and now we’re scrambling to find a new location.
We’re planning a small ceremony, but right now we’re facing having to do it in our apartment in the city because nothing else is available. ”
“Rental rate?” Zander shook his head. “I’m not following.”
“For your event space.” The man swept an arm in front of them. “It’s beautiful here, and we just love the cottagecore vibe. Amir and I think it would be absolutely perfect.”
Zander followed the man’s gaze to the transformed lawn, covered in tables and tents.
“Oh,” he stuttered. “Um, well, it’s not really—”
“Tell you what,” Quinn interrupted with a charming smile. “Can you leave your contact information so Zander can look at the schedule? Then he can send you some quotes.”
“That’d be great.” The man pulled out a smooth leather wallet, then a business card that declared him Dennis McFadden, financial analyst. “I understand this is very late notice, so of course we’d pay a premium if you can pull it off.
We’d also be looking for a caterer, someone who could arrange an intimate but elegant meal for our guests.
And a wedding cake. Something delicious. ”
Zander blinked, giving a quick glance back to his kitchen. “I think I could find you someone for that.”
“Amazing.” Dennis beamed. “I look forward to hearing from you.”
“Yeah.” Zander rubbed the back of his neck. “Great. Okay.”
As the men walked away, Quinn slapped his arm. “Oh. My! God! Destiny much? The universe is at work here, Zander!”
“Wow.” Zander chuckled, his body full of shaky nerves. “That was interesting timing for sure. I don’t know about the universe stuff—”
But then he caught sight of something across the field, coming from the trail to Penny’s place. Someone dressed in white from head to toe. Someone moving fast.
Zander Bouras didn’t believe in the power of the universe.
If anything, he’d felt a victim of the randomness of it all, the pain of being a pinball bounced around by forces outside his control.
But now, watching a fully suited Penny Becker stride through the grass, whipping off her gloves and dropping them to the ground, he considered the powers of his universe.
The powers of transformation and hard work, of fighting to give himself a chance even in the years when he seemed to be the only one to do so.
Of forgiveness for the people who’d tried to raise him through their own wounds.
And for himself, who’d wasted precious years of his life hating everything because he didn’t see another way.
And he considered love. The kind that built families and communities, that bound them together through service and laughter and grief and honesty.