Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Winnie looked at the papers strewn across her desk with a sigh. There was still more to do, but there was honestly always more to do. It was part of being in a small office. She wore a lot of hats.
Normally, she would have resigned herself to this “nothing is ever finished” state of affairs and gone home hours earlier. It was, after all, nearly seven o’clock in the evening on a Friday. Winnie might be the kind of person who focused on work, but even she had her limits.
Tonight though, she found the idea of going back to her empty house alone to be…
Sad.
Maybe this was the danger of opening up. She had let herself have a few good times with a few potential new friends, and now, all of a sudden, her own life seemed… empty.
What would she do if it didn’t last? Could she ever really be a part of the book club group?
They were all so lovely, and they clearly were close.
Would Winnie ever be part of the “in group” or would she forever be clinging to the edges like this?
It wasn’t like she really knew how to have friends, after all. She didn’t have any kind of practice.
An absent part of Winnie’s mind recognized that this voice wasn’t truly hers. It was Whit and Britt and the other bullies of her youth who had made her feel small and unimportant.
Still, though. Those wounds still lingered.
Not that lingering forever in her office would help matters. With a sigh, Winnie tidied all the grant application paperwork, and the historical provenance documentation, and complete chaos of miscellaneous paperwork into neat little piles. It would all keep until Monday.
She tried to keep her self-doubt at bay as she headed back to her house. Cooking for one was, frankly, too depressing to manage that evening, so she threw a frozen meal into the microwave, then poured herself a glass of wine as she weighed whether or not this was actually sadder.
“You live a truly glorious life, Winnie Burnett,” she told herself.
And then, as if in answer, her phone rang on the counter. This surprised Winnie so much that for a second, she just stared at the device before leaping to answer it.
“Hello?”
Diana’s warm voice came over the line. “Winnie, hey. Are you busy? Am I interrupting anything?”
The idea was so ludicrous that Winnie almost laughed.
“No, not at all,” she said honestly. “What’s up?”
“Well, we’re assembling an emergency book club session.” Winnie felt a little thrill at being included, then registered the word emergency.
“Wait, is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” Diana said. “’Emergency’ was a bit much. It’s just that Eleanor finally got this bookshelf that’s the centerpiece to her bookstore, and she is…”
“Beyond stumped!” Eleanor’s voice came from the background, sounding torn between being amused and being frustrated.
“She’s struggling,” Diana said diplomatically, which made Winnie chuckle. “And the opening is tomorrow, so we’re in an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation.”
“I can definitely help,” Winnie offered immediately. Frankly, it would be a huge improvement on her current evening plans. “But isn’t Eleanor dating the hardware store guy?”
“She is,” Diana agreed. “But he is on a job tonight and Eleanor—” She raised her voice so that Eleanor could hear her. “Eleanor is being stubborn about calling him, even though he would definitely come!”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” Eleanor shouted back.
Winnie felt herself smile at the banter between the two friends.
“I’ve built a bookshelf or two in my time at the historical society,” she said. “I can be right over. Do you have tools?”
“We have tools and snacks and good cheer,” Diana said. “All we need is a Winnie, and we’ll be all set.”
Winnie felt almost as though she could blush. “Well, I can provide. I’ll be there.”
“Wear something comfy!” Diana called before she hung up.
Quickly, Winnie changed into yoga pants and a t-shirt she wore to do chores, hoping that this was the right level of comfy.
She wondered how many times she’d have to hang out with the book club group before she stopped hearing that little naysaying voice in her head.
She told that voice to shush it as she hurried over to Eleanor’s store.
“Hello?” she called as she poked her head through the front door.
“Winnie!” Her name came as a chorus from Diana, Cadence, and June, who turned toward her with broad smiles.
Winnie was relieved to see that they were all dressed as casually as she was, June even more so, in a pair of sweatpants that were spotted with paint from a past renovation job.
Poor Eleanor, meanwhile, looked like she was about to go out of her mind. Her normally smooth red hair was frizzy, her eyes a little wide, like she’d had too much coffee.
“Winnie, hey,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course,” Winnie said, offering the other woman a gracious smile.
Her relationship with Eleanor was the least smooth, although Winnie could feel things getting a little easier between them with every encounter.
She hoped that by helping out today, she could really show Eleanor that she wanted to be a true friend.
From the way Eleanor clasped her shoulder appreciatively, Winnie thought maybe that was within her reach, after all.
Just then, Miriam waltzed into the main room, carrying a tray of wine glasses like she was a professional waiter.
“Oh, hello, Winnie, dear,” she said grandly. “Would you like a drink? Eleanor, darling, you need a drink. You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin.”
Eleanor accepted a glass of red wine with a grateful smile. Winnie did too.
“You’re really agile with that tray, Miriam,” she praised.
Miriam bobbed a curtsey. “I have lived a rich and storied life, Winnie, dear,” she said. “You will continue to be astonished by my many talents.”
She shot Winnie a wink to make it clear that the comment was in jest.
“Okay, here’s where we are with the bookshelf debacle,” Eleanor said, bringing Winnie over to the troublesome piece.
Even half-assembled, Winnie could tell that the bookshelf would be spectacular. It was covered in designs that would make it perfect for holding kids’ books, or even fantasy or sci-fi titles.
“Oh, this is gorgeous,” she breathed.
That got a weary smile from Eleanor.
“Thanks. It will be, once it’s all put together.”
“Call your boyfriend,” Cadence said in a sing-song voice as she walked past, a handful of popcorn in her hand.
Eleanor rubbed at her temple, visibly conflicted.
“Hey,” Winnie said. On impulse, she wrapped her arm around Eleanor’s shoulders. She was relieved when Eleanor didn’t attempt to pull away. “We can build this. No big deal. Did it come with instructions.”
To Winnie’s surprise, this question made Cadence begin to laugh. A few minutes later, the booklet of instructions in her hand, she understood why.
“This is in German,” she said. “Or… Dutch? I don’t know. But it is not English.”
“It’s not English!” Eleanor agreed, looking as though she was rapidly reaching the end of her emotional tether. “And you might think, oh, okay, no big deal! There are pictures! Except the pictures are wrong, I’m pretty sure.”
“Yeah, the pictures are definitely wrong,” Winnie agreed. She felt a bit goofy turning the booklet upside down, but she had to try, right?
“Hey, I did that!” June exclaimed. She poked Cadence in the thigh where they sat next to one another on the floor. “You told me it was dumb, but Winnie did it too.”
“That might just mean we’re both dopes,” Winnie murmured out of the side of her mouth.
“No, we’re amazing,” June said in the same kind of voice, making both Winnie and Cadence laugh.
“Let’s call ourselves amazing when we get this thing built, huh?” Winnie said.
With that, they all leapt into action. Winnie wanted to believe that the whole shelf-building process would get easier once they started. That sometimes happened, where everything fell into place as soon as you solved the one confusing element.
This, alas, did not go that way. Instead, they had to try everything about five times before they managed to get anything right. Winnie’s right hand started to ache from all the times she had to screw and then unscrew various elements. It took forever.
And yet…
And yet, Winnie found that she was having a great time.
She hadn’t been to very many sleepovers as a child, but Winnie’s few memories paralleled the ambiance of the evening… with more wine at the adult version, of course. But, despite their many setbacks, the energy of the night remained jovial.
Winnie and Eleanor ended up spearheading the actual building portions, while Cadence appointed herself the person to deliver snacks, Diana and June became the backup helpers when Winnie and Eleanor needed an extra set of hands, and Miriam became head of emotional support.
“I’m too old to lift things,” she said, “but I have a lifetime’s worth of cheerful things to say.”
It was extraordinarily late by the time they finished putting the bookshelf together. Winnie and Eleanor exchanged a single glance and then slumped into the free spots on the couch with a shared sigh of relief.
“Guys,” Diana said, a smile in her voice. “This looks… incredible.”
And it really, really did. The artistry was beautiful, and the way Eleanor had arranged the rest of the store made the gorgeous shelf a focal piece without letting it overwhelm the rest of the room.
“You really picked well,” Winnie said approvingly.
Eleanor leaned back to look behind Cadence’s head, giving Winnie a soft smile. Winnie could feel the meaning in that smile. She and Eleanor were good. It had taken them a while to get there, but they were good.
Winnie felt a jolt of satisfaction as she thought about Whit and Britt, not to mention any of the other naysayers who had told her she’d never make friends, that she was too dorky, too uptight, too weird.
They were wrong. Winnie had friends. They had bonded tonight. She knew it.
“Okay,” she said, slapping her hands on her knees. “We need to stock the shelf too, right? Let’s get moving, people.”
“Winnie, no,” Diana moaned.
“Wait, we didn’t think ahead when we made such a competent friend,” June teased.
Winnie grinned when their jokes didn’t even cause the slightest flicker of dismay to move through her.
“Up, up,” she chided her new friends. “Let’s get going.”
Every grumble they made as they complied made her feel even happier. She’d made friends. It had taken her a long time, but she’d gotten there.
And she was pretty sure that nothing had ever felt better.