Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Eleanor knew that she probably looked like a total cuckoo, pacing in front of Nuts and Bolts, Garrett’s hardware store, but she couldn’t help it. She was just feeling really nervous about this conversation.
It was silly. She told herself, time and again, that it was silly.
Garrett was a wonderful boyfriend, and it wasn’t like Jeremy was some sort of secret child that she had hidden from him.
He knew about Jeremy! He’d even waved to her son once or twice in the background of video calls between mother and son.
But that didn’t mean that he’d ever seen her really do ‘mom stuff.’ And while Eleanor thought of her mom-self and her girlfriend-self as two versions of the same person, not two separate people, it still remained true that Garrett had only seen the one side of her.
Kids changed things. And yes, it was possible she was extrapolating from her marriage.
She and Brian had been married barely a year when Jeremy had come along, and from then on, they hadn’t really dealt closely with one another.
They’d been parents first and people second.
It was why their marriage had fallen apart so quickly after Jeremy had gone to college.
She had enough perspective to see that now.
And yes, Eleanor’s logical brain knew that a visit from a twenty-year-old son was not the same as bringing a baby into the world. But her logical brain was not the one running the show here today.
And by here and today, Eleanor meant all week. All week, in which she had not yet gotten up the courage to tell Garrett about her son’s upcoming visit. But she was running out of time. Also, she was starting to feel like a real coward about it.
She stopped her pacing and sucked in a breath. It was time to go inside. Plus, it was really cold out.
She strode boldly into Nuts and Bolts, pausing only long enough to note the sign on the front desk that said In Back Workshop in Garrett’s no-nonsense, blocky handwriting.
She headed to the doors of the workshop, not letting herself second-guess her decision…
especially since it would be more like twenty-thousandth-guessing at this point.
Eleanor opened the door carefully, wanting to make sure that she didn’t startle Garrett, who sometimes got caught up in detailed work.
Since that ‘detailed work’ often happened with power tools, she wanted to make sure to be extra careful.
Breaking the news about Jeremy’s visit would be way more awkward if they had to have it in the emergency room because she’d made him cut himself with a jigsaw.
She found her boyfriend bent over his current project, a custom barn door for one of the big old houses that was on the outskirts of town, where properties were larger and lots of people kept animals.
If she recalled correctly, the people who had ordered this piece of woodwork were hobby farmers, not professional ones, but they clearly had enough of a budget that they didn’t need to make money off their farm, since the work they had ordered was detailed, beautiful, and expensive.
“Hey, honey,” Garrett said when he noticed her standing there. “This is a surprise. What’s up?”
Eleanor wrung her hands together. She’d felt a momentary calm while she’d watched Garrett work, something that she found oddly soothing whenever she stopped by the hardware store to spend time with her boyfriend.
Now though, with his hands no longer gently and competently guiding sandpaper over a curve in the carving, her anxiety came back full force.
“I have something to tell you,” she said, gnawing slightly at her lip.
Whatever he saw in her face made him drop the sandpaper to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, crossing to her, his hands coming to her shoulders right away. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Are you sick? Is it the store? What’s going on? Whatever it is, we’ll get through it.”
And this was so sweet and so lovely that, of course, Eleanor made it all worse by bursting into tears.
“Oh, baby,” Garrett said, gathering her in his arms, sounding completely freaked out. His voice was steady despite his obvious stress, however. “We’ll fix it. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
“No, no,” she said, pushing back and wiping her tears. “It’s nothing bad. It’s just… I’m so silly. You’re so wonderful and I feel so silly for freaking out.”
Garrett paused, looking at her. “Nothing’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she assured him.
“Goodness, woman.” He pulled her into his arms again, this time in relief, and he pressed a kiss to her head. “Don’t scare me like that. Okay, what’s going on?”
“Okay, so…” She sucked in a breath. “Jeremy is coming to visit.”
Garrett blinked at her very slowly.
“Eleanor,” he said with absolutely no inflection. “You come in here like that, making me think that you’re sick or hurt or something terrible, and what you have to tell me is good news?”
Her brain felt very confused, because Garrett’s tone didn’t sound happy, but he was telling her the thing she wanted to hear.
“Um,” she said. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he said, pressing a finger to the space between his brows. “Okay. I’m going to move past the part where you took a year off my life and just get to the nice part. Right.”
He seemed to need another moment, and Eleanor gave it to him. She supposed this was only fair, given that she’d been the one to shake him up.
Whoops.
“Right,” he repeated. “So, when is he coming? How long is he staying?”
She explained the details of the trip, and how Jeremy’s school intersession gave him a few weeks to come visit. Her excitement slipped through into her tone as she spoke, and Garrett smiled in a way that she knew was mirrored on her own face.
“Honey, that’s amazing,” he said happily, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “The only part I don’t get is why you were so nervous to tell me. I’m looking forward to meeting him!”
Eleanor rolled her eyes, but it was self-directed.
“I told you it was silly,” she reminded him. “But I guess I just… I don’t know, you’ve never seen me do the mom thing. I don’t know if you even really like kids.”
The way he watched her was indulgent and loving. “Well, for your information, I do like kids. You know I like my nieces.”
Eleanor had admittedly forgotten about his nieces in the midst of her panic.
“Plus, Jeremy is, what, nineteen? It’s going to be a pretty different dynamic than, say, if he was three or ten or even fifteen.” Garrett shrugged. “From what I know of him, my guess is that as long as I keep treating you well, he and I will get along just fine.”
She pouted. “That’s so reasonable. It’s so rude when you’re reasonable and I’m being nuts.”
Garrett slid his hands down to her waist, then pulled her in close for a quick peck.
“Not nuts,” he corrected. “Just a concerned mom and a good girlfriend.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “So, according to your logic, I am actually acting this way because I’m awesome?”
“Pretty much.”
Eleanor felt he deserved another kiss for that and, accordingly, gave him one.
“Well, your logic means that you’re a great boyfriend,” she said.
“I do try,” he said. “Now, let me finish up this project, okay? It will be nice to have a little less on my plate when your boy gets here. I’m looking forward to getting to know him as more than just a tiny face on a three-inch screen.”
After one more stolen kiss, Eleanor left him to his work, her boyfriend’s encouraging words echoing in her ears.
Now, all she had to do was hope that Jeremy felt as excited about meeting Garrett as Garrett was to meet him.
* * *
June and Cadence relaxed on the couch in June’s house, sipping wine, eating cheese, and keeping an absent eye on Benjamin and Izzy, who were playing some sort of inscrutably complex game of their own creation in the corner play area.
They had tried to explain the rules to their moms at one point in the proceedings, but June had gotten lost when they’d tried to show how the Monopoly pieces were worth three times the points when they were seated atop the Scrabble tiles unless one of the wooden blocks were nearby.
“I’m going to decide just to be happy that they’re so creative, and not worry that they might be smarter than us,” Cadence said when the two adults had retreated to the couch, leaving the kids to their schemes.
“Oh, yeah, let’s go with that,” June agreed, reaching out to clink wine glasses with her friend.
They’d started having these girls’ nights plus kids about a year ago, when their two children had gotten old enough to entertain themselves for a few hours with minimal supervision.
They’d had playdates before that, of course, but they hadn’t been as restful for the parents as they were now that the kiddos were a little more self-sufficient.
The wine and cheese had been a genius addition that had increased the cheer of the events when Cadence and Tyler had separated and Cadence had really needed some extra support. Now, they kept the wine and snacks around because who didn’t like wine and snacks?
“So,” Cadence said quietly when they were certain that neither Izzy nor Benjamin was listening in. “Time to spill. Tell me about your date with the swoony country star!”
June laughed. “I want to object to your somewhat dramatic characterization,” she said with a chiding note to her voice, while Cadence shrugged, totally unabashed, “but he is kind of swoony.”
Cadence did a happy little shimmy, taking care to avoid spilling any of her red wine on June’s couch. June appreciated this, although she’d had this couch since Benjamin was a baby, which meant that it had survived a great deal more than spilled wine.
“Okay, okay, tell me everything,” Cadence exhorted.
June did so, providing all the details that her friend desired, from descriptions of their meals to their conversation, to the way spending time with Levi made her feel.
“He sounds pretty great,” Cadence said when June was finished gushing.