Round Thirty-Seven
MAGGIE
“So you’re just giving up?” Brienne slaps a plate of freshly made bread on the counter by my elbow.
“Seriously, Maggie? You’re gonna swoop on through, re-meet these people and make them fall in love with you.
” She plops a bowl of soup down with the bread.
“Because you’re adorable, by the way! You’re telling me you’d go through all the trouble of making new friends and setting me up with a cop who is clearly in love with someone else—”
I scoff.
“And still,” she presses. “After all that, you would let your mom’s bitterness screw you over? That’s weak!”
“She’s right.” Devina hunches forward at the counter, one leg folded over the other, and runs the tip of her finger around the lip of her mug. “That’s weak. Your mother’s opinion shouldn’t count. You know it, we know it.”
“My mother’s opinion is no less valid just because she delivers it with a cold sneer.” I crush my thumbs against my closed eyelids. “When facts are facts…”
“Facts, my ass,” Brienne growls. “Success takes time! I used to sleep on the floor in the kitchen of this diner, because businesses rarely turn a profit in their first couple of years, and I couldn’t afford to keep paying the rent on my apartment and run this place.
So I packed my crap up, put everything I didn’t need into storage, then I splurged on an inflatable mattress and spent two years opening and closing this place on my own. ”
“Probably shouldn’t admit that,” Devina teases. “Sleeping on the kitchen floor is probably a health violation.”
“Oh, shut up, Number Three!”
“Don’t call me Number Three!” she laughs. “That’s rude.”
“I’ll always be Billy’s first Magnolia Sava date,” Brienne preens, inspecting her nails as I drop my hands and blink the dots from my eyes. “He’s such a sweetheart, too.”
“Ugh.” I let my head hang between my shoulders, my elbows on the counter while, for now, my customers happily enjoy the dishes I slung. “He’s probably gonna fall in love with Luciana. She’s beautiful and funny and smart. And she told me they’ve met up since their first failed date.”
“She told you that?” Brienne digs a hand into her apron pocket and comes out again with her phone. “That’s not very girl-code of her, is it?”
“And that’s another thing!” I throw my hands in the air.
“He’s always texting someone. And whoever he’s talking to makes him smile, so even if it’s not Luciana, it’s someone.
Maybe that’s why he let me leave the hospital.
” Tears thicken in my throat, forcing a croak into my voice.
“Maybe that’s why he sat on his porch and said nothing about my yard sale.
Maybe that’s why Jeremy doesn’t even come to the boundary garden very much anymore. ”
“Maybe he’s too freakin’ scared to because you left the hospital that day Jeremy got hurt.”
“He didn’t stop me!”
“He was busy dealing with his child,” Brienne counters. “And since we’re going, you hosted a yard sale right there in front of him. Which sends a certain message, don’t you think?”
“I’m not moving,” I whimper. “I needed to sell my grandmother’s excess things. I’ve got a mortgage to pay, and my business income isn’t cutting it.”
“And don’t forget how you had Stuart over three nights in a row the other week,” she adds.
Stunned, I narrow my eyes. “What?”
“What?”
“How did you know about Stuart?”
“You told me.” Panicked, she spins on her heels and snatches up the coffee pot to keep her hands busy. “You mentioned it a bunch of times.”
“Uh… no. I didn’t.” I glance down at a trying-too-hard-to-be-invisible Devina and glare as she flips her phone over. “What’s going on?”
“What?” She hunches over her coffee and takes a frantic sip. “Nothing’s going on.”
“I didn’t mention Stuart!” I swing my gaze back to Brienne. “I was humiliated, so I didn’t tell anyone. How the hell could you possibly know about him? In fact, how could you know his name, and how many nights he came to my home?”
“Pretty sure you told us,” Devina mumbles, shrugging. “Let’s talk about your mom again.”
“Absolutely not.” I choose our shyest, sweetest link—not Brienne—and glare at the side of her face. “Spill, sister. Now.”
“Don’t you dare spill!” Brienne crosses the diner at a near sprint. She grabs on to Devina’s stool and spins her around, then poking two fingers back at herself in that ‘I’m watching you’ way, she snarls, “No! Stay strong.”
“What are you two talking about?” I grab Devina’s arm and attempt to turn her, but Brienne’s grip stays strong, which makes us a weird tug-of-war trio, and Devina is the piggy in the middle. “What’s going on?”
“Magnolia?” Billy’s gruff voice pulls me up short. He steps into the diner ahead of Ramone, pausing on the threshold and staring into my eyes despite the dozen sets staring right back.
Squeaking, I release Devina and jump to my side of the counter, dropping to my ass, slamming my back against the shelving, and jacking my shoulder blade up in the process. It’s fine. He totally didn’t see me… in an apron. With a name badge pinned to my shirt.
“Er…” Brienne leans over the top of the counter, her fingers and half of her face exposed above my head. “He saw you, babe.”
“No.” I shake my head and furiously swipe humiliated tears from my eyes. “Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Tell him to leave. Right now.”
“Magnolia Sava!” Billy’s footsteps are slow and measured, each heavy stride loud enough to create a mirroring boom in my chest. “Come out and talk to me.”
“Please,” Ramone coughs. “Say please, dipshit.”
Billy clears his throat. But he adds an awkward, “please.”
“He said please,” Brienne quips. “That’s kinda special, no?”
“Brienne…” Billy huffs. “And Devina. In the same damn diner at the same time?”
Devina releases a squeak of panic.
“We’ll talk about this real soon,” he growls. “Where’s Cassidy?”
“She had to work,” Brienne responds, completely at ease. “Said she’ll come by later, though.”
“Wait! You know each other?” Ramone releases a dramatic gasp. “Whattttt?”
“Oh, be quiet,” Devina laughs. “You know we do.”
“Wait?” I bound up from the floor and face them all. “You know Ramone?”
“Magnolia.” A slow grin works across Billy’s face, transforming his grumpy exterior into something else entirely. He presses a palm to his heart and releases a happy sigh. “Hi.”
My hands shake. My heart thrums. My knees knock.
Jesus, my entire soul trembles.
“W-what are you doing here?” Hurt sizzles in my veins as I shift my gaze three feet to the left and stop on Ramone. “Why would you bring him here?”
“Because I’m sick to death of watching you two spin in circles.” With a smug swagger, he wanders across the diner and slides onto the stool beside Devina. “I would really love some of that coffee.”
“Here.” Brienne slaps the coffee pot onto the counter. Then she searches her apron pockets and snatches out a straw, still in its paper wrapping. “Now shush.” She swings beautiful eyes back to Billy. “Talk. Now.”
“I-I’d actually rather you didn’t—”
“I don’t want you to sell your house and leave Plainview.
” Billy remains a full twenty feet away, his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands on his hips.
It feels like I haven’t seen him in months…
years… though in reality, I see him every single day.
I sit in my house and watch him and Jeremy leave for school in the mornings, or I hang around in my backyard in the afternoons and wait for them to come outside and play.
I can’t let even a single day go by where I don’t see them at least once, but that doesn’t stop me from studying his unshaven jaw now, and the muscles flexing behind the short stubble.
Or his lips, thick in all the right ways. Kissable…
God, why didn’t I appreciate those few times I got to kiss them?
He draws a long breath, filling his chest and looking me up and down. “I was trying to keep to myself. To let you live your life and, if you chose to stay, then great, but if you wanted to leave, I wouldn’t stop you.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“But I can’t do that anymore. I can’t sit by and watch you climb into your car again, never truly knowing if that would be the last time you drove away.” He takes a single step forward. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I—”
“Jeremy doesn’t want you to go. Ollie and Rose and Eliza and Alana and Ramone and all our friends…” He shakes his head. “None of them want you to go.”
“Billy—”
“I’ve been in love with you since I was eight years old, Magnolia. I loved others in that time, and I don’t regret the love I gave them, but I never let you go. Not once in all my fuckin’ life.”
“Ahem.” Elson clears his throat, glaring and tipping his head toward his wife. “Language, please, son.”
“No, I wanna hear what he has to say,” she adds cheerfully. “Go on.”
Billy’s eyes, wide and round, swing back to mine. “Magnolia… you’re fired.”
“I…” My stomach drops. “What?”
“As my love expert.” He takes another step closer.
“I don’t want you to set me up with anyone else ever again.
I don’t want to go out on another first date for the rest of my f—” He looks toward Elson’s table and reconsiders.
“Effing life. I don’t want to meet another woman and explain to her she’s wasting her time, because I’m head over heels, stupidly in love with my next-door neighbor.
I don’t want to risk hurting her feelings, because she’d done her hair and makeup and slipped into a pair of sexy heels just for me, because do you wanna know what, Magnolia?
Telling a woman who did all the things, dressed up for a date, and then drove an entire hour out of her way to see me, that I’m not interested is risky.
” He lowers his hands, covering his crotch. “Really, really risky.”
Snickering, Brienne turns and hitches herself up to sit on the counter.
“You set those dinners up, and in one case, you cooked and created a picnic basket for us—”
“Actually.” Brienne raises her hand. “I prepped the basket. Maggie was crazy busy that day, so I packed a bunch of stuff up for her so she wouldn’t have to do it when she got home.”