Chapter 19 #2
“Sure, do I get to spin the wheel?” The woman asked, and Chloe stepped aside for her to give it a go.
It made a lovely clicking noise as it spun, though maybe I just liked it because it meant we’d made a sale.
The woman ended up getting thirty per cent off her honey, which was our first jar sold for the day, so everyone walked away happy.
“Not bad, Barlow,” I said as the woman left, and Chloe smiled sweetly at me, but I didn’t get a chance to enjoy it, because two different shoppers who had been nearby came up to the table after that, and we were off to the races.
* * *
We didn’t sell out – we didn’t even come close to the success of the cheese festival – but the rest of the market was significantly better for business than the morning.
Alice and Dylan had sold better, too, and Dylan even had two commissions for more bees ahead of the next market day.
Chloe’s gift basket photos were already getting engagement online, and several people had stopped at our table specifically because they’d seen the organisers share the giveaway post online.
By the time we packed up, I was feeling marginally less terrible about the day.
The drive back to the farm was quiet, both of us tired from hours of forced enthusiasm.
I kept glancing at Chloe, wanting to say something about how she’d turned the day around; how impressed I was, yet again, with her quick thinking.
How impressed I was with her all the time, in fact.
But she seemed too satisfied, her head back against the seat rest with a soft smile on her face, and I didn’t want to make things weird again.
We were unloading the van, still in silence, when I heard the crunch of gravel and turned to see Jack’s vintage Defender crawling up the drive.
Before the others arrived, I knew I needed to clear the air with Chloe.
Or I wanted to, anyway, maybe selfishly.
But I only had a moment or two, depending on how quickly Jack drove, so I stepped in front of her as she headed back to the van, ignoring the look of surprise and disgruntlement on her face.
“I owe you an apology,” I said, setting down a box of unsold inventory on the ground at my feet. “For being grumpy this morning, but also for other things.”
Chloe looked up, surprised, a look of pleading crossing her face. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” I took a breath, trying to find the right words. “And, besides, you were amazing today. Not just with the gift basket, but with the customers, too. You know our product better than … well, better than I do, if the blind tasting is anything to go by.”
“I pay attention,” she said quietly. “I care about this place. What you’re—what we are doing here.”
It made me smile hearing her use the word “we”.
“I know you do,” I said. “And it makes a massive difference.” I paused, watching car doors slam across the parking lot.
“And I know there are other things going on, but the most important thing to say is that you’re in the right place. We’re lucky to have you.”
The expression that crossed Chloe’s face – surprise, gratitude, maybe a lingering hint of trepidation – made my chest tighten in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
“Teddy—” she started, but Jack had parked his car alongside the van, and we could hear the opening and closing of doors.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re okay. We can talk about the other stuff later, if you want. I just needed you to hear that.”
The others came around the van then. Jack and Morgan walked hand-in-hand, Phil held a carrier bag with a delightful smell wafting from it, and Fatima and Amy carried a cooler between them that looked heavy, based on the way they struggled with it.
I greeted each of them, but I could see out of the corner of my eye Chloe staring at me, biting her lower lip between her teeth as if deep in thought.
It wasn’t until Jack addressed her directly, draping his arm over her shoulder for a hug, that her gaze broke away from me.
I put on my best hosting smile, pushing down whatever conversation Chloe and I had been about to have, and picked up the box I’d discarded.
“Welcome to Gwenynen Hollow,” I said, a hint of showmanship in my voice, grateful to have something to focus on other than the soft look of surprise still lingering on Chloe’s face.
* * *
Speaking of being right where we needed to be, Chloe was spending more and more days at the farm.
She said she liked getting more spontaneous content in addition to her planned stuff, and while I could have done without her phone in my face quite so much, it was nice to have her around more, especially since things seemed to have eased between us since the artisan market.
It seemed to make her planning easier, too; she had suppliers and partners over to the farm all the time to go through things for the festival.
She’d even stepped in to help Jen with one of the workshops; I usually dreaded those days, not wanting the barrage of questions enthusiastic amateurs had, but Chloe expertly steered them away and answered what she could.
She’d been spending so much time at the farm, in fact, that Maggie and I had taken it upon ourselves to clear out the shepherd’s hut for her, a long overdue chore.
It was hardly the place to store everything we’d piled in there, but it also meant Chloe didn’t have to spend hours of each day on the bus if she didn’t want to, and I didn’t have to feel bad about not offering to drive her every day.
I couldn’t handle a repeat of what had happened the last time I’d done that.
Not that it made those lingering feelings any easier, having her stay at the farm a couple of nights a week.
The first time we’d bumped into each other in the farmhouse kitchen in the morning, it had taken me a good minute to realise it definitely wasn’t a dream, and it was probably weird that I had stood in the doorway for so long just watching her make beans on toast.
On the third or fourth night she spent at the farm, I was walking past the shepherd’s hut on the way in from the garden when I saw her struggling to open a box. She was sitting in the doorway, her feet on the step, clenching the red and white cardboard between her knees.
“Do you have a knife or scissors on you?” she asked me. I took out my multi-tool and handed it to her, and she sliced through the packaging easily before handing the blade back to me. “Thanks.”
“Getting mail here now?” I asked.
“No, it’s my new gaming console,” she said, pulling smaller boxes out of the bigger one. “It’ll give me something to do when I’m in the hut at night.”
“You bought a gaming console to avoid spending time with Jen and me?” I teased. She rolled her eyes at me.
“I pre-ordered this months ago, thank you very much.”
“What is it?” I stepped forward, and she moved her feet to the side, gesturing for me to sit on the step below her.
“A handheld console, but it can connect to the TV, too. So I can play the same games here that I’m playing at home.”
I racked my brain for the name of literally any video game; it had never been my thing. I’d played some skateboarding one at a friend’s house a few times when I was a kid, and I was pretty sure my college roommate had played something involving guns, but that was the extent of my knowledge.
“What do you play?” I asked. “Like, what’s that one where you shoot people a bunch?”
Chloe laughed. “You’d have to be more specific. But no, I don’t do first person shooters usually.”
“Okay, then, what kinds of games?”
Chloe paused, looking out at the farm with a frown on her face. I felt my cheeks flush; I must have sounded like an idiot.
“Sorry, you don’t have to tell me,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” she said, smiling at me, the evening sunlight glinting off her hazel eyes, making them look almost green. “I just have never had to explain types of video games to anyone, and every category I can think of seems unhelpful to someone who’s never played before.”
“Sorry,” I said again, not sure what else to say, but Chloe carried on.
“I like adventure and RPG games mostly. So, things where you’re playing a character, and you have to figure out how to progress the story. Solving puzzles, fighting enemies, that sort of thing.”
“So, like D though, maybe it was less that the video games were interesting and more that she herself was.
She shrugged. “Most video games are faster paced than that. Some are similar, though. I play one game pretty often that’s actually based on D&D.”
“Can you show me?” I asked, nodding at the console. I expected her to laugh, or to just brush me off, but instead she smiled.
“Yeah, let me get it set up, and we can play something.”
My eyes went wide. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“That’s okay,” she said, standing up and hopping down onto the gravel, “I’ll pick something easy. Something fun. It won’t be like what I was describing, but I play most of those on my console at home anyway.”
I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, not sure what to say, and also wondering what I’d gotten myself into. But it actually sounded … fun, maybe? “If you’re sure,” I said eventually.
“Totally,” she said, already walking into the farmhouse.
I followed her inside and made us each a tea while she set things up – it took a while as she signed into her account and set up the device. Then she asked if I’d ever heard of Mario Kart, though she pronounced it like Mary-oh.
“Do you mean Mario?”
“Oh my god, whatever,” she said. “Have you heard of it or not?”
“I don’t live under a rock,” I said, not admitting that I only vaguely knew what it was. “Isn’t that something to do with bananas and turtle shells?”
Chloe laughed. “It is indeed.”