Chapter 5 A Second Opinion
A Second Opinion
Holly
Ican’t even with this guy.
Jake backed his way out of my half-empty floral boutique nearly ten minutes ago, and I’m still standing right where he left me, willing my heart to stop telling me things that don’t make any sense.
He’s just so… nice.
No, nice isn’t the right word for him. Nice is what you say about the guy who helps you at the grocery store. It’s what you say about the librarian who holds a book for you, or the person who waves and smiles at you when they stop for you at the crosswalk.
Jake isn’t nice.
He’s so much more than that, which makes him dangerous.
Because what if he turns out to be just like Corey was?
Shoot. I promised myself I wouldn’t give that guy any more headspace, and here I am, thinking his name for the first time in nearly a year.
Jake is nothing like that monster.
I know this intrinsically, but I also don’t trust it.
When you’ve been burned by the wrong guy, it’s hard to know who the right one is. And yet, everything in me says Jake is worth exploring. At the very least, I could have a new friend in town.
Only, I don’t think friendship would cover it all.
Not even close.
“Oh, it’s all a moot point anyway,” I scold myself aloud, finally moving into action. “I’ve got enough on my plate right now.”
I’m definitely not in the market for a new man, even if he did just show up like a gift from the Goddess herself.
Which Jake totally did, and how unfair is that?
I head to the sink and splash water on my face, trying to get myself together. Whatever my body thought was happening with Jake… Well, it cannot happen.
“I won’t let it,” I affirm aloud, as though saying it will make it so.
Ordinarily, that would probably work. Words have Power after all. But Power is directed by intention, and my traitorous brain has other ideas. Which I squash by walking to the front of the shop and flipping the lock.
Take that brain and feelings.
“Locked. Just like my heart.” Or like I want it to be, anyway.
Stupid heart.
As soon as I think of my heart, I see Jake approaching, and dang it. I already thought he looked hot in that flannel and jeans getup, but somehow the addition of the tool belt is making my brain melt.
Or maybe my brain already melted right along with my heart earlier when he brought me the most delicious latte, and then moved Beatrice with incredible strength and the utmost care before single-handedly hanging my sign exactly in the perfect spot, and then making himself smaller so I wouldn’t be scared.
Goddess, I can’t believe I reacted like that, flinching away from him when he was just trying to help. But that’s self-preservation for you. You learn to scurry when a hand is coming at your face.
You also learn to paint everything evil, I remind myself, which isn’t always a good thing. I’ve seen Jake’s aura, felt his energy. I know he is not evil. In fact, he’s quite the opposite.
Which is why I flip the lock again and open the door for him, even though I probably shouldn’t, given the way my body keeps reacting to him.
It would be so much easier if he were ugly. Or old. I mean, he’s older than me, but not decrepit. It would definitely be easier if he were old and grey, and mean, and unintelligent, and not the slightest bit virile, but he’s none of those things.
Unfortunately for me and my lady parts.
And my heart.
I resist the urge to rub over my chest again, and just take a deep, cleansing breath instead, mentally willing my body to chill out with the warm fuzzies.
My heart rate comes back into a more normal range, but my gut doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. There’s a curiously fluttery sensation working its way through my belly as Jake maneuvers his tall stepladder into my shop.
“I have a ladder,” I share. Although the fact that he thought of everything we might need for this project isn’t lost on me.
Another point in his favor. Competence porn for the win.
It’s like he knows me.
Which isn’t helping.
“I didn’t want to assume,” he says, giving me a genial smile. “And I like to be prepared. Help is supposed to lift a burden, not make more.”
His meaning isn’t lost on me, and I nod in acknowledgment.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I tell him honestly. “I didn’t mean to shut down like that, I just…” Goddess, this is hard. “I’m not used to people being kind out of the goodness of their hearts. In my experience, there’s usually been some type of ulterior motive.”
One you don’t find out about until it’s too late and you’re already invested and trapped, but I keep that bit to myself.
“Well, you’ve clearly not spent time with the right people.” He smiles again, warmer this time, and unsurprisingly, I feel myself melt a little more.
He is seriously trouble for me. Why am I reacting like this to him?
At another time in my life, I would have said it was Fate. Destiny. I mean, everything about him calls to me, and I’m not even into mountain men. It’s part of why I moved here. I figured I’d be impervious to their supposed charm.
Obviously, I stand corrected.
“Thanks for your help, Jake,” I say openly. “If you meant what you said earlier, I think I would actually like help with hanging the plants.”
“I mean what I say, Holly,” he says seriously, his gaze fixed on mine. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t intend to follow through. That’s not my way. You don’t know me well yet, but know this. I’m a man of my word, and I don’t use it lightly. Also, you are one hundred percent safe with me.”
I nod, swallowing against the lump trying to form in my throat. I could literally feel the vow in his voice. Feel it right down in my root.
And oh my Goddess, I think my ovaries just swelled.
What the actual hells is happening here?
To distract myself, I share my plan for hanging the plants with Jake, who listens intently before setting his ladder up to check for studs.
Of course he has a stud finder.
As he reaches over his head with the thing, I wonder what else he has in that tool belt man-apron.
He’s like a male Mary Poppins, all kind and chipper and intelligent, with creative solutions for seemingly mundane problems. He’s even humming something while he works.
I think it’s Vivaldi. And he’s beautiful too—tall, dark, and handsome.
But not magical. Not in the way Mary Poppins was, anyway.
Or the way I am.
As I hand Jake a drywall screw, I wonder what he’d make of my gifts. I know better than to share them outright. I learned the hard way what happens when people who’ve shut off their own connections to what is colloquially known as magic become aware of the people who haven’t.
Oil and water have nothing on that dynamic.
Witch hunts are very real and still ongoing.
I have no desire to be vilified again or burned at the stake, either literally or figuratively, for owning my Power, using my gifts, and honoring the old ways of collective care.
I’m only just now getting my verve back.
“Does this one have a name?” Jake asks as I hand him the Lipstick Plant.
“She hasn’t shared it with me yet. But this type of plant is called a lipstick plant, or Aeschynanthus if you’re into scientific names.”
He chuckles. “I’ll stick with lipstick plant on this one. And I can see it too. The flowers kind of look like lipstick tubes.” He climbs down from the ladder and takes a few steps back, examining his handiwork. “She looks good there.”
I smile, nodding my agreement. “And she’s going to absolutely love the morning sunlight. They all will.”
“What do you want to do with the little ones?” Jake motions to the counter, and I head over and pick up a spherical glass terrarium.
“These are air plants. I was planning to put some of them up back here.” I motion to the work area.
“Do you have hooks for those as well?” Jake asks, taking the orb from me and examining it. “Or do they hang by some other means?”
“I have a frame for most of them, but I thought I’d hang the glass ones in a cluster in that corner with some twine.”
He nods, handing the little terrarium back to me with great care, making sure I have both hands underneath the glass before releasing his hold and heading back to his ladder. He takes the ladder over to the corner I’d indicated and pulls out a measuring tape.
While he checks for studs and measures angles that make sense to him, I think again about what he’d said earlier about being prepared and being a man of his word. About how helping someone should ease a burden, not create more.
In so many ways, Jake’s presence here is a delight. His soft-spoken, calm way of being is definitely good for me. Definitely easing some kind of anxiety I’ve held for far too long.
And yet, I can’t quite let myself sink into the quiet Knowing that’s thrumming through my system right now. Can’t let myself believe it.
But what are the chances?
I remember when my cousins and I played games at teatime as kids, trying to discern who we would marry from the dregs of our cups. I’m pretty sure a bearded mountain man wasn’t in any of my leaves, but then again, we’d only just begun learning tasseography when we’d played that game.
And I don’t actually believe in fated love anymore, anyway.
I know Love is real. It’s literally the guiding force of the entire universe. But little ‘l’ love? I’m not sure it’s in the cards for me.
Or the tea leaves.
“I don’t actually know anyone around here,” I admit while Jake works. “Not really. I mean, I’ve met Clay at the Mercantile, and conversed with the folks at the bank and the post office—”
“What are you doing on Tuesday?”
His query stops me short.
“Tuesday? Like next week?” Is he asking me—
“It’s my day off.”
“You only get one?” I shake my head, handing him another screw. “Now that’s a travesty. Aren’t you the boss?”
He chuckles, securing the last of the hooks, and I can’t help thinking how natural he looks. How happy.
“I am the boss,” he says, climbing down the ladder. “And I have rotating days off, but next Tuesday, I’m off, off. No rescue work, no coffeehouse.”
“Rescue work? You mean like helping your other neighbors?”
He smiles at that. “In a sense. I’m a volunteer firefighter and serve on a wilderness rescue team.”
“Of course you do.” I laugh. Because, of course he does. What doesn’t this man do?
“And for the record,” his serious look is back, and I’m captivated by those espresso-colored eyes, “I didn’t rescue you today. You were doing great on your own. I just gave a helping hand.”
“Well, it looks fantastic,” I praise, unable to hide my smile. “Everything came together so quickly and beautifully, thanks to you.”
“What can I say?” He shrugs, the corners of his mouth lifting. “We make a great team.”
I almost agree with him, but something holds me back. An old fear I know I need to bless and release, but haven’t just yet.
I’m not sure why I haven’t already let it go, but it’s clear in this moment that if I don’t, it will continue to run its subroutine in the back of my mind, dimming every interaction, no matter how brilliant.
I definitely don’t want that.
At the same time, I don’t have the energy for that type of shadow work today, no matter how important it actually is.
“What’s in that head of yours?” Jake asks softly, his beautiful voice bringing me back to the moment.
I answer without thinking, giving him the truth. “Just a quote.”
“What’s it say?” There’s no mockery in his tone, no guile. Only bald curiosity. He really wants to know.
So, I tell him.
“‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate’.”
“Carl Jung, huh?”
I meet his gaze, surprised that he knows it. He just gives me a soft smile.
“Jungian psychology actually has a lot of overlap with Stoicism and Buddhist teachings,” he explains after a moment. “I’m a fan of all three.”
Well, color me surprised.
“I didn’t peg you as the philosophical type,” I admit.
He smiles wider, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Happy to have subverted your stereotyping.”
I gasp at being called out like that, but he’s grinning and gives me a wink, so I don’t think he’s actually offended.
He follows that up with an invitation to lunch, and even though I should probably decline to protect myself from what’s sure to be future heartache, I accept. I even smile while I do it.
Maybe something really is wrong with me.
I know in my bones that’s not true, but my ego still scolds me for accepting the lunch invitation from a man I hardly know.
A man who seems too good to be true. Meanwhile, my heart is skipping again, dancing to its own beat while that fluttering has kicked up again in my belly as I help Jake out the back and lock things up.
So what if we’ve just met?
A girl’s gotta eat, right?
Right.
That’s what I’m going with. No reason to make a big deal out of nothing.
As Jake heads for the shiny Bronco parked next to my 4Runner, that sense of Knowing that quietly thrummed through me earlier floods my senses again.
I try to shake it off, try to deny it, but my intuition has never been wrong.
Still, I do my best to ignore it, which doesn’t quite work.
So, I try reminding myself that fate isn’t a thing in my life.
Not a good thing anyway.
But I can’t shake the sense that this isn’t nothing. Whatever is budding between Jake and me, it’s definitely something, even if I can’t quite name it.
Or don’t want to, as the case may be.
“Everything okay?” Jake asks, holding the door open for me. “We can stay here if it makes you more comfortable.”
I give him a weak smile, struggling with the words, and marveling at how patient this man is. How thoughtful and kind.
“Just hungry,” I manage, hoping he doesn’t see my inner struggle. There’s no reason for him to know he has me feeling off-kilter. He’s only being himself, after all.
I think.
Maybe I need a bigger sample size to be sure.
He shuts me into the car like a perfect gentleman, and as he rounds the hood, smiling, I can’t help wondering what it would be like to be that carefree. To wear your heart on your sleeve for the whole world to see and know, without fear of having it shattered into smithereens.
There is definitely something for me here with Jake. Some lesson and invitation in this situation. In this meeting. I’m too addled to process it properly right now, but I keep coming back to thoughts around not making mountains out of proverbial molehills.
Jake smiles at me before putting the car into gear, and my heart melts even more, making me wonder all over again about the portent of this moment.
Maybe it really is nothing.
Then again, maybe it’s everything.