25. Chapter 25 #2
“You know what? I don’t actually know,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes.
I had purchased some fairy lights for the Sleeping Beauty room to incorporate the fairies I had somehow forgotten, but decided the room didn’t really need them, so I kept them for myself and hung them above the window.
Was it a bit childish? Dominic thought so. But this room wasn’t about what Dom thought, or what guests would want, or whether the theme matched, or if it was a good business decision. The only theme this room had was Rosie.
And Rosie as a theme is a mix of things that probably shouldn’t go together but somehow do.
Apparently, making one space mine wasn’t enough, because the day after I finished my room, I started on the garage.
There were shelves and drawers the Jacobsens had left behind, so I pulled my car out, parked it on the street, and got to work cleaning them off, labeling everything, organizing the boxes of random supplies stacked along the wall, finding space for all the cans of paint, sweeping the floor, and finally giving all my tools an actual home instead of random places around the inn.
After that, I took the box of pie tins back to Pam Vasser. Because even if she paid me a million dollars, I will not be running the festival ever again.
Okay, I absolutely would do it for a million dollars. Honestly, I’d probably do it for considerably less.
With the pie tins gone and everything finally where it belonged, I was ridiculously pleased with myself.
Now, after a full weekend of guests coming and going, I’m still surprised every time I walk into my room and take in the changes or open the garage door to see everything organized with my car parked inside, and I get this little jolt of happiness all over again.
And I also feel something else: both spaces—my not-so-perfectly-decorated room and my garage that’s still a work in progress—feel like mine now. For once, I made something just for me.
So naturally, Hal shows up the next afternoon to ask if he could put his truck back in the garage.
“Oh,” I say, after he’s done with his sob story.
It’s basically a repeat of the first one. His wife wants the truck gone, and it’s his dad’s, and he can’t seem to part with it just yet.
“It would only be for a week or two,” he says. “I promise.”
“Right,” I say, thinking about all the things I just moved around in there and all the work I put into it.
I could make room for Hal’s dad’s truck. I could move my car to the street and relocate the boxes I just stacked up against the wall to the back corner, and if I needed a tool, I might have to shimmy my way between the drawers and truck, but I could do it.
But . . . I don’t really want to.
The thought makes me feel itchy, like I shouldn’t be having it. But I just got that room nearly to what I want it to be. I only need to buy myself a workbench and a pegboard to hang things on, and it will be my dream garage.
Hal’s truck was never part of that dream.
But that feels selfish and wrong. Yes, it’s my garage, but I’m not really using it as much now that the guest rooms are done, and my car survived on the street just fine before. Hal only needs the space for a couple of weeks.
Of course, that’s what he said last time too, and one week somehow turned into three. I’m guessing it would have been even longer if Dean and I hadn’t moved the truck ourselves.
Still, I could say yes. I could move my car, shift everything around, and make it work. I’m good at making things work.
“So, are we good?” Hal asks, his eyebrows high on his forehead.
I open my mouth to tell him yes, but what comes out is: “Actually, no. I don’t think it will work this time, Hal.”
What? It’s like my subconscious took over for my brain.
Almost immediately, I want to take it back. And I almost do, especially when his eyebrows drop and his mouth pulls down at the corners.
But I can’t bring myself to say the words. I don’t actually want to tell him yes.
“Oh,” he says. “Right. Okay. Not a problem.” He forces his lips into a closed-mouth smile. “It was worth a shot.”
“It’s just that I cleaned it up and organized everything, and I finally put all my tools away, and my car is in there now, and I was going to get a workbench and one of those pegboard things for the wall.
I swear, if I wasn’t using it, the garage would be yours.
I’m really sorry,” I say, not being able to help the rambling words that come out of me.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
Easy for him to say. I can already tell this little encounter is going to haunt my sleep tonight.
Which is why, as Hal says goodbye and turns to leave, I almost say, Just kidding! Haha! I had you there. What a jokester I am. Of course you can park the truck there.
But I don’t. I say goodbye and then stand there as the door shuts, feeling kind of horrible.
Is my garage going to be tainted now? I don’t want to walk in there every day and chastise myself for not making room for Hal’s truck.
I test the theory. I go into the garage, and yep. It doesn’t give me that little jolt of happiness like it did before Hal came to the inn. It just looks like a drab, semi-organized space with a car that really could use a good washing.
I stand there for a second, feeling ridiculous about how much this is bothering me.
He only asked for a truck in a garage. Not a life-saving kidney or something.
So, why does it feel like it? Why does it always feel easier to inconvenience myself than to disappoint someone else?
That’s a very deep question that I’m not sure I want to know the answer to.
I sit down on the little step just inside the door, feeling terrible, and then the tears come. Maybe it’s exhaustion from barely sleeping while I worked on my room and the garage, or maybe it’s because I don’t know how to be okay with telling Hal no.
Some tears might also be for Dean. I miss him, and I hate how things turned out.
I let myself sit there for a while before getting up, turning the light off, and shutting the door.
“Rosie?” Emma says when I walk into the kitchen to find both her and Dominic standing there. “Where were you?”
“In the garage,” I tell them, trying to act cheerful even though I know my red face and swollen eyes will be a dead giveaway.
“What’s wrong?” Dominic asks.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Rosie,” Emma says.
“Can’t a girl have a good cry in her garage about a truck without her siblings needing to interrogate her about it?”
“Of course,” Emma says at the same time Dominic says, “What truck?”
“Never mind,” I say to Dom. It wasn’t really about the truck anyway. It just happened to be the thing that tipped me over the edge.
“Why are you here?” I look from one sibling to the other.
“I was helping Emma put a shelf up at the library, and she said we should check on you,” Dominic says.
Emma whacks him on the arm with the back of her hand. “Dom,” she chides.
“Fine. I told her about your midlife crisis.”
“My mid—what? I’m not even old enough for that.”
“Your room,” he says, pointing toward it.
“I want to see it,” Emma says.
“It’s not anything special,” I say, but she’s already walking toward it.
I may have lost my little jolt of happiness in the garage, but it’s still there when I walk into my room with my siblings.
I love it. The Fairest of Them All walls, the picture collage, the new bedspread, even the fairy lights. I might love those the most, actually.
“Rosie, I love it,” Emma says. “It’s so you.”
I smile, appreciating that she could see my Rosie theme.
Dom takes a seat on the couch, and Emma on the desk chair, so I sit on the bed. All of us fit nicely in my space, which makes me feel even happier that I finally made this room mine.
I hardly ever brought anyone back here, and now I know why. It never really felt like mine. It still felt like the Jacobsens’.
“The inn has turned out so amazing,” Emma says.