Chapter 21 #2
He shrugged. “Why not? How about Saturday? Let’s go to the market. I’ll take you out for coffee.”
“At Starbucks?” The original Starbucks was right across the street from the Pike Place Market.
“Starbucks,” he agreed. “What do you say? Can we start over?”
Starting over, starting the fire between them again. Maybe even building a stronger foundation for their relationship. Second-chance romance.
She nodded. “Saturday.”
He grinned, wrapped an arm around her. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”
Once there, he stood and waited while she got in her car. He didn’t try to kiss her again, and she found herself wishing he
had.
“I’ll pick you up at ten,” he said.
She nodded, shut the door and drove off. And called the bookstore to report in.
“Mark is taking me out on Saturday,” she told her mother.
“Now, that is good news,” said Nola.
“We’ll see,” Scarlet said.
“Remember, it takes two,” said Nola.
It had taken two to fall in love but as far as Scarlet was concerned it had only taken one to wreck them.
Still, she couldn’t help feeling excited as she dressed for their day at the market. The famous Seattle rain had stayed away,
but the day was gray, and she knew the air would be cold. She made sure to add a knitted scarf and beret to her coat and gloves.
Paired with her dark green sweater and long pants she was ready to look good whether inside or outdoors.
Mark arrived to pick her up wearing jeans and a turtleneck and the vintage-style wool blend blazer she’d bought him for Christmas
two years earlier. They hadn’t bought their house yet and there’d been no talk of cutting back on the spending. He’d bought
her a ring with her birthstone—an emerald. It had been a fun Christmas. Unlike the one they’d just waded through.
“You look great,” he said.
“So do you,” she said. Mark was a big man, loaded with muscles. He’d set her hormones jumping the first time she’d seen him.
They were jumping right then, creating sparks, and she told them to settle down as she climbed into his truck.
The market was busy with locals coming in search of fish, handcrafted items and dried flower arrangements. Tulips had already
begun to make their appearance and come spring there would be bouquets of all kinds of flowers for sale.
Mark purchased her a coffee drink from Starbucks, then they strolled the market. She bought him some jerky and he bought her
a dried floral arrangement featuring lavender and daisies. Then they settled in at Beecher’s Handmade Cheese and ate grilled
cheese sandwiches. And talked.
“I still don’t really understand where it started, where we went wrong,” Scarlet said.
He shrugged. “Not sure I do, either. I just felt . . . jammed into a corner. The house, you pushing me to get my side business
going.”
“But we both wanted the house,” she protested.
“You wanted the house. I wanted you to be happy.”
“You don’t like our house?” she asked, horrified.
“It’s gonna be a money pit, Scarlet. I said that, more than once.”
But she’d known he had the skills to fix it up.
He hurried on before she could say anything. “But you’re right. It’s a good investment. I guess I wasn’t ready to make the
leap is all.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?” she demanded.
“How do you stop a tornado?”
She suspected he hadn’t just offered a compliment. Suddenly, her grilled cheese sandwich wasn’t tasting so good.
“Look, you’re high energy and exciting, and that’s what attracted me to you in the first place. But it’s exhausting. And I started feeling like I can’t keep up, like everything I do is wrong. Like I married a mom instead of a wife.”
“When you act like a child, what do you expect?” Scarlet said in her own defense. “Honestly, someone has to have some goals.”
“Okay, okay. I know. I acted like a kid and not a man. I was wrong. That was my bad.”
“It sure was,” she said.
“And I’m sorry. But can we just slow down a little? I want to enjoy our life and there’s no time. You have every minute planned,
every penny pre-spent. You have me planned.” He studied the cola in his glass. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough.”
She’d made him feel like that. “But you are,” she assured him. “You have so much potential.”
He shoved away the glass and stared at her. “Scarlet, I’m not a project.”
She blinked. Her eyes were the only thing working. Her brain and her mouth seemed to be out of commission.
“Everything was great when we first got together. I thought you loved me the way I was,” he said.
“I did. I do,” she corrected herself. But it was too late. She saw the hurt in his eyes.
He soldiered on. “Look, this is on me. I should have spoken up.”
“About what?”
“About everything. Buying the house, building my side business. Coming up with money to do all the work on the house that
we need to do. Sometimes it all felt like so much. And then you were already talking about when we should get pregnant. I
felt like I was in my mom’s pressure cooker.”
She’d put that much pressure on him? “Mark, why didn’t you say something?”
“I tried. Remember? I said maybe we should wait a while to buy a house, but you kept telling me what a bargain it was, even though it was really more house than we can afford. But hey, I had the side business, and you had plans. I didn’t want to disappoint you.
In the end I did. And I disappointed myself.
And I guess I was pissed at both of us, so I let some guy on the radio talk me into standing up for myself.
” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. ”
He’d resented her that much. She blinked again, this time to hold back tears.
“Look, I was a shit. I’m sorry, and I’m selling the sound system.”
“But it’s already in the truck,” she protested.
“I can take it out. One of the poker guys wants to buy it. Not for what I paid for it but oh well.”
“Your sound system,” she repeated.
“I don’t need it. What I need is to be a man you can be proud of. A man I can live with, too. It’s just going to take me a
while. Okay?”
She reached across the table and took his hand. “Mark, I’m sorry I’m a tornado.”
He half smiled at that. “You are a force of nature, babe. But you’re my force of nature. I want us to work things out. Really talk about things from now on. No more playing games. No more locking
me out.”
That had been the worst game play of all. “No more locking you out,” she said. Mark hadn’t been the only one acting like a
child. Then she added, “I have an extra key.”
He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Maybe we should go back to the house and get it.”
“Maybe we should,” he agreed. “Second-chance romance?”
She smiled. “You were paying attention.”
“Well, I’m starting to,” he said. “Come on, babe, let’s go home and start over.”