Chapter 21
Harper sashays up to me behind the bar, and at her exuberant smile, I realize I haven’t seen her since her abrupt departure from Jonny’s Pints and Pins.
“Harper!” I exclaim. “Where have you been?”
And then, in a moment that shocks even me, I pull her in for a hug.
“Why, hello! I missed you too,” she teases, squeezing me back.
We’re both scheduled to make drinks while Sonia works the register, so in between calling out names, Harper fills me in on her weekend.
“So yeah, Chicken is all better now, and I just have to start putting my hairbrush in a drawer.” Chicken is Harper’s cat, who repeatedly has trips to the vet after coughing up fist-sized hairballs.
Literal, Harper-colored hairballs. “But anyways, sorry about my behavior at Jonny’s.
I haven’t had a slip-up like that in over a year and—” She shakes her head with widened eyes, looking down at the milk she’s foaming.
“Slip-up? What do you mean by…” I trail off.
“Oh.” She shoots her eyebrows up at me. “Oh wow, sorry. I thought it was obvious. The drinking?” She searches my eyes for the meaning to land.
“Ah… yes, yes.” I overcompensate for my shock by being overly solemn, voice going low and eyebrows furrowing. She snorts a laugh.
“No, no. Don’t worry. It’s not like a serious alcohol problem. Well, maybe that’s what everyone with alcohol problems says, but I have this agreement with Declan that I can’t drink if I want to work here. Plus, the whole fake ID thing is pretty frowned upon, I guess.”
She continues pouring the cappuccino into a mug and then calls out “Ryan!” at the counter, like she didn’t just drop a ginormous piece of personal lore.
Her blithe demeanor gives me the confidence to ask: “And how did you and Declan come to that agreement?”
“Well, I was only drinking because it was an excuse to get out of the house. I grew up in foster homes, for context. But then, you know the Richardsons?” I nod.
She nods back and continues, “Yeah, so they adopted me when I was seventeen, and I still had the little drinking habit. And no one would hire me because of it. But Declan was opening this shop and told me he would give me a chance if I gave up the drinking. So, I agreed, and we shook hands.”
“And you’re how old now?”
“Almost nineteen,” she says, flashing me a grin.
“Wow.” I blow out a breath. “I did not know any of that.”
“I thought Declan would have told you.”
I blink too quickly and whip my head toward her.
“And why would you think that?”
“Because… he’s always yapping about you?”
“He’s always what?” I cry.
“Yapping,” she replies. “You know, like, ‘Blair this and Blair that’ nonstop.” She moves her hand like she’s controlling a puppet and tucks her chin to imitate his voice.
Her words feel like dry ice spreading through my chest, resistant hope warring with reason inside me. “I’m sure that’s not—”
“Oh my gosh.” She rolls her eyes. “You two are so annoying.” She throws a rag on the counter dramatically and turns to face me, hand on her hip.
“You know, on the day you came in for an interview, I recognized you from a photo that fell out of his wallet one time. It was you two on the football field back in the day, and he was wearing the whole shebang: big ole helmet and shoulder pads and he had his arm around you and it’s all cute and whatever.
Never had a clue that you were the girl he’d been yapping about to me all this time.
But when I saw his face after he interviewed you? ” She whistles. “Dead giveaway.”
Blood drains from my face.
“Oh no.” She snaps her fingers. “Hello? Blair? Blink for me. Come on, girl.”
“Hey, Blink is my nickname,” I say, hurtling back to the present.
“Yeah, well, I can definitely see why!”
“Sorry, I just—your words are very kind, but it’s not like that anymore between Declan and me. We’re cordial now, but…” I cut myself off, not wanting to expose the way yesterday ended between us.
“Cordial?” she tuts. “Is that what we’re calling infatuation these days?”
“Harper!” I chide, ducking at the rising sound of her voice.
“Listen,” she says, dipping her voice to a near whisper and sidling up beside me.
“I don’t know what makes you think he feels that way about you, but I know people who knew him from before the accident.
And they said it changed him. Overnight, all his hopes and dreams went poof.
” She snaps her fingers again. “And ever since, that boy has been so scared of letting himself want anything. Or anyone, I should add.”
She walks away and I’m left with vertigo trying to process her words.
I didn’t need to be fed more hope that Declan still felt the invisible string between us—that he was just too afraid to show it. I was feeding myself that particular brand of false hope by the boatload. I was choking on it.
It’s evening now, and Declan should walk through the doors at any second for overtime hours. Settling onto a stool at the half-finished bar, I open my laptop to the convenience stores’ master scheduling portal and double check that everyone has the correct shifts while I wait.
But even as I drag names across the screen, Harper’s earlier words press at my mind like a persistent migraine.
I still can’t reckon with how her words line up with his actions.
He wanted to try being friends. And I thought we were doing that pretty well, until we weren’t.
He invited me to his house, took me out for a meal, and then he closed off like we were coworkers having a strictly professional meeting.
The tiny golden bell above the door chimes as he steps inside, and he wastes no time ripping the crewneck he’s wearing over his head. It ruffles his hair, and he brushes a hand over it sloppily with a distracted look on his face.
“Hey, uh, I gotta get some stuff from the hardware store down the road really quick. I’ll be right back,” he says, hardly making eye contact with me.
“I’ll come with!” I say, not giving him a chance to respond as I shut my laptop and hop off the stool.
“Oh, it’s just some random nails and stuff, I don’t need—”
“It’s okay. I wanna learn.”
“About… building?”
“Yeah. I might need it. For the cottage,” I say in three staccato sentences.
He rolls his lips inward and stares at me like he’s waiting for me to break character. But I don’t, so he nods and then turns to head to his car. I silently follow him and climb in.
We don’t talk, but he turns up the song that was already playing—“How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees. I try to convince myself that it means something. And then I try to convince myself that it means nothing.
I sit on my hands and look out the window, avoiding the invisible wall of frisson I feel every time I sit this close to him.
“Alrighty,” he says, putting the car in park. “This will be a quick trip.”
He exits the car and power walks up to the tiny store named Bolts and Builds. I have to add a shuffle-hop to my stride to keep up with him.
We amble together in silence through a foray of buckets filled with screws and bolts. My eyes see but don’t process any of the information written on the tiny labels.
“We’re looking for screws an inch and a quarter long,” he says.
“Got it. Screws. Inch and a quarter.” I nod like I’m taking orders. “Oh! Found it!” I pick up a silver screw from a bucket.
He narrows his eyes and takes it from me to inspect. “This is a conical screw. We want flat heads.”
“Oh,” I say in vocal italics, drooping my head as I pluck it from his fingers and drop it back into the bucket. “Sorry. I thought the comical screw was flat.”
He doesn’t turn around, but I catch the tiny bounce in his shoulders, presumably from a silent chuckle. A zing of satisfaction shoots through me, quick and hot.
“Okay.” Declan slides a plastic package off a display. “These are the ones we want for the bar we’re building. See how the top is flat?”
I nod.
“It will sit flush with the wood. Which will make it look better. If I were to build the deck for your cottage’s backyard however, I would use these screws.” He takes another package off the shelf and holds it up to me.
“Oh,” I say in a small voice. “That’s very cool.”
It was, actually, very cool. But the casualness with which he referred to building me a deck for “my cottage” was making me dizzy.
I couldn’t remember the last time I envisioned New York City.
Or consulting. Or staying up late in a corporate office by myself.
I stopped having those fascinations ever since my mom broke down in the back of the convenience store.
Declan and I mosey up to the cash register, and as he pulls out his wallet to pay, I see the edge of a photo peeking up behind some cash.
My breathing catches as I try to study it without him noticing my bug-eyed stare at his wallet.
But he slides his credit card out and pays with a quick tap before returning the wallet to his back pocket.
Evidence of the maybe-photo disappearing with it.
Was that it? Was that the photo Harper claimed Declan had of us in his wallet?
I trail behind him to the car in a daze, replaying what Harper said about Declan’s reaction to seeing me again for the first time. I try my best to reconcile that image with the silent man now driving beside me. If cognitive dissonance was a movie, this would win most accurate depiction.
We get back to the coffee shop and I still haven’t settled from the jolt of hope that shot through me at the sight of the tiny picture’s edge, but I don’t need to, because Declan wants me to stain a table he built.
Our comfortable silence is easy to fall into again once the sound of his drill whirring starts and I have the paintbrush in my hand to distract me.