5. Lia
LIA
Monday morning Harlow decides I'm staying.
Nobody holds a town meeting. Nobody takes a vote. I just walk into Marie's diner at ten a.m. for coffee and a plate of eggs, and Marie—who has poured me exactly one cup of coffee in my life—slides a piece of pie across the counter before I've even ordered.
"Blueberry," she says. "On the house. You've been working."
"Marie, I?—"
"You've been working."
"I'm not supposed to eat pie before eggs."
"Lia."
"Yeah."
"Eat the pie."
I eat the pie.
It is extremely good pie. I have an entire slice of blueberry pie in front of me at ten in the morning and Marie is standing on the other side of the counter refilling my coffee with the look of someone being proved right, and when I look up, two of the tables behind me are looking at me too.
Not in a weird way. Just—watching. Like they've been told to keep an eye on me and they are going to do it seriously.
A man in a John Deere cap at the end of the counter tips his mug at me.
"Ma'am."
"Hi."
"Wes treatin' you right?"
I choke on my pie.
Marie, without missing a beat, hands me a napkin.
"Ignore Don," she says. "Don has opinions."
"I have observations," Don says. "There's a difference."
"Don, eat your hash."
Don eats his hash.
I eat my pie.
When I leave, Marie hands me a to-go cup I did not ask for and says, "You come back for lunch. We do a meatloaf Sundays. Wes likes it with the gravy."
"Marie—"
"Tell him I said so."
"Marie."
"Bye, honey."
I leave the diner holding a coffee I didn't pay for and a piece of information about my boss's lunch preferences that I didn't want to learn from the diner owner.
The hardware store is next door. I didn't plan to go in. I do it anyway, because Maya texted me to pick up a washer for her kitchen sink, and because the man behind the counter has clearly been watching through the front window since the moment I stepped onto the sidewalk.
"You're Lia," he says, before I've opened my mouth.
"I am."
"Walt Boettcher. My wife runs the flower shop across the street."
"The one who waved at me Friday."
"Mm." He nods like this is information I earned. "She said you waved back."
"I did."
"Good." He points at the washer aisle. "What size?"
I tell him the size. He picks one out. He doesn't charge me.
"Walt."
"On the house."
"On the house?"
"We get a new neighbor three times a decade." He's already putting the washer in a small paper bag. "Town needs some new blood. You're welcome here, Lia Reyes."
"How do you know my?—?"
"Small town."
"Walt."
"Lia."
"Is everybody going to do this?"
"Probably," Walt says cheerfully. He hands me the bag. "Bye, now."
I step back onto the sidewalk with the bag in one hand and the coffee in the other and my phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out.
Lia. I've been thinking. Can we talk? From Evan. First message in four days.
I look at it.
I look up at the flower shop across the street—Mrs. Boettcher's mums, exactly where she left them, someone's dog tied to the post out front. The diner sign is still lit. The coffee in my hand is still warm.
I put my phone back in my pocket without answering.
It doesn't feel like a decision. It feels like I already made it.
Maya is, as promised, insufferable.
I come back to her house with the washer and the extra coffee and half a slice of pie that Marie boxed up for me because I couldn't finish it, and Maya takes one look at me in her kitchen doorway and crosses her arms.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What, Maya?"
"I'm just standing here."
"You have a face on."
"I don't have a face on."
"You have the face on. You have the face you had in college when I came home and you'd heard a boy's voicemail before I had."
"I don't have any face on. I'm reading a magazine."
"You are not reading a magazine. You are looking at me over a magazine, which is a different thing."
"Mm."
"Maya."
"Marie called me."
"Marie called you."
"At nine fifty-three." Maya is grinning now, full grin, no attempt to hide it. "She was waiting for you. Walt, too. Don at the counter is going to tell everybody at church tomorrow that you ate pie for breakfast like it's a character reference."
"Oh my god."
"Lia."
"Oh my god."
"Lia, this town saw you in that bar Friday night and Saturday night and decided you belonged to them. There was a vote at the diner this morning. You don't know about it because they didn't tell you, but there was a vote."
"Maya."
"I think Marie has already picked out your wedding pie."
"Maya."
She is laughing now. She has her forehead on the kitchen counter and she's laughing. I stand in her doorway holding a to-go cup and a bag with a sink washer in it and I close my eyes.
I don't want this to feel good.
It feels good.
It feels good in a way that's making me itchy, because I've known this town for seventy-two hours and Harlow has made a space for me without asking, and nobody has made a space for me in a very long time.
"I hate it here," I say.
"You love it here."
"I hate it here."
Maya lifts her head off the counter. She is still laughing. She reaches for a tissue from the box on the windowsill and hands it to me without a word.
"Lia."
"What."
"You're crying a little."
I press the tissue to my eye. "I am not."
"You are a little."
"Don't look at me."
"I'm not looking." She is looking. "I'm sorry. I'll stop."
She doesn't stop. She picks up another math worksheet and makes a notation on it and her shoulders are shaking in the way they shake when she's trying not to laugh. I put the sink washer down on the counter. I put the to-go cup of coffee down next to it. I blow my nose.
"I'm going to go take a nap," I say.
"Good plan."
"Wake me at seven."
"I will not."
"Maya."
"You need sleep. I'll wake you at eight-thirty. You have time to shower."
I give up. I go take a nap.
Wes picks me up at nine that night.
He drove over—he says he drove, though I suspect he walked—and he's on Maya's porch in a dark flannel and jeans, clean-shaven except for the neat beard, and he's holding a thermos.
"What's in the thermos?"
"Coffee."
"You brought coffee to my front door."
"It's a walk home."
"Wes. It is four blocks."
"Four blocks is a walk."
"Your thermos is for four blocks."
"Hot coffee," he says, mildly, "travels."
He stares at me. His mouth twitches at one corner.
"Fine," I say. "I am delighted by the thermos."
"Thank you."
"Let's walk."
We walk.
It is a slow walk. It is a very slow walk.
He has shortened his stride because I'm a foot shorter than he is.
He figured it out in the first block without me having to say anything.
His hand is wrapped around mine—the whole of my hand inside the whole of his.
The night is cool. The sidewalks are empty.
Harlow is in bed at nine-thirty on a Monday.
I talk the first block.
He talks the second block. Not much. A story about the bar's roof and the winter it went through last year. A thing about Leon's dog. I hadn't known Leon had a dog. I have a whole mental picture of Leon now that includes a dog and I am, somehow, touched.
At the third block I stop.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"Can we—can we sit somewhere for a minute?"
"My porch," he says. Without hesitation. "It's on the way."
"Your porch."
"You've seen my porch. Up over the bar. The balcony on the back."
I haven't seen his porch. I was only in his apartment for the twenty minutes of showering I did at five in the morning yesterday before he drove me home and I didn't look at his porch.
"Yeah," I say. "Your porch."
We walk a block. He lets us in through the side door to his apartment.
He leads me up the narrow stairwell to the second floor where his apartment is, hand never letting go of mine, and he takes me through a small hallway to a back door that opens onto a narrow wooden balcony looking out over the alley and the hills.
There are two Adirondack chairs.
There is a blanket folded over the back of one of them.
"You keep a blanket on your porch."
"It's cold."
"Wes."
"What?"
"Do you sit out here a lot?"
"Most nights."
"Alone."
"Mm."
I sit in one chair. He sits in the other. He puts the thermos down between us and pours a cup and hands it to me. The hills in the distance are black. The sky is full of stars in a way that my brain, which has lived in cities for ten years, has not processed in a long time.
He doesn't rush me.
He pours himself a cup. He sits back. He puts one hand on the arm of my chair, palm up, and I put mine in his without thinking about it.
I sit there for a while.
"You asked me Friday night what I was running from," I say eventually. I am looking at the hills, not at him.
"I didn't ask. You told me."
"I told you some of it. I didn't tell you the real part."
"Okay."
"I was with him for two years. Evan. He was—he was fine.
He was fine. He was nice enough, and he had a decent job, and he had that kind of surface-level charm where people always said I really like Evan at parties and I felt like I was supposed to feel lucky.
And I kept waiting for the fine to turn into something, and it didn't. He was late a lot.
He never—he never really listened to me.
He would ask how my day was and then start talking before I answered.
And every time I'd try to talk about the future—kids, marriage, moving, any of it—he'd get this face.
Like I was asking too much. Like I was being too much. "
"You weren't."
"I felt like I was. That's the thing. I started to not bring it up. I started to make my world smaller around him. And then I found out about her on Thursday and my first feeling wasn't even surprise, it was oh, of course. And my second feeling was thank god."
"Thank god?"
"Yeah. Because he had given me a reason. I could leave and it wasn't my fault. I could leave and nobody could tell me I was asking for too much."
I take a sip of the coffee.
"I drove here," I say, "because I didn't have a better idea.
And then I walked into your bar and you hired me in thirty seconds, and I sat across a bar from you and told you I was done wasting time on men who make me feel like I'm too much.
And you looked at me." I turn my head toward him.
"You looked at me like you'd been waiting to hear me say that.
Like every single thing about me was exactly the right amount. "
"It is."
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"You don't have to fix this. I am not bringing this up so you can fix it."
"I know."
"I just—I wanted you to know the real part. I'm not running from a bad breakup. I'm running from two years of making myself smaller. And I don't—I don't want to do that again. I will not do that again."
"You won't have to."
"I don't want platitudes."
"It's not a platitude." His hand tightens around mine. "I am not going to make you smaller. That is not the kind of man I am. You couldn't be too much for me if you tried. The thing that nearly put me on the floor Friday was specifically how much of you there is."
I laugh. One short laugh. Half-surprised.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"The thing that nearly put you on the floor."
"Yes."
"How much of me there is."
"Every part of you."
"Oh my god."
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. That's the problem."
His eyes are on me. Dark in the porch light. His hand is warm. I take another sip of the coffee.
"He was an idiot," he says. Flat. Final.
"Evan."
"Yes."
"Wes—"
"He was an idiot. He had you for two years and he wasted it, and you deserved better then and you deserve better now, and if I ever meet him I will not hit him because I'm not that kind of man anymore, but I will look at him long enough that he'll never forget my face."
I am crying.
I don't notice it happening—it's just that all at once my face is wet and he's reaching over and wiping under my eye with his thumb, and I am leaning toward him, and the thermos is in the way.
I push it off the chair with my foot.
He makes a small amused sound and he leans across the gap and he kisses me.
Slow. Careful. My face in his hand. His mouth warm and his thumb on my cheekbone wiping the tears away.
"Lia."
"Yeah."
"I am not going to waste you."
"Okay."
"I am going to show up," he says. "Every single time.
You are going to get tired of it. You are going to wake up and want a morning alone and I'm still going to be making your coffee wrong in the other room, and you're going to have to send me out of the apartment, and that is the only way this is going to go. "
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"That's—you can't?—"
"I can."
"You—"
"I can, Lia."
I sit there. On his porch. In a blanket he kept folded for a guest he hadn't yet had. I hold his hand across the arm of the chair. I don't speak for a full minute.
"Wes."
"Yeah."
"Take me inside."
"Yeah?"
"Not for that. I'm tired. I just—can I sleep here tonight. Next to you. I want to sleep next to you."
He stands up. He pulls me up with him. He pulls me in. I press my face to the middle of his flannel. I hear his heart—slow, steady. His arms come around me. His chin is on the top of my head. We stand there on his porch for longer than either of us needs to.
"Come inside," he says.
"Okay."
He leaves the blanket on the chair.
He doesn't pick up the thermos.
We go inside. I sleep under his arm, in a bed that smells like him, and when I wake up at three a.m. I'm curled into him and his palm is open against my lower back like he's holding me in place even while he's asleep.
I'm not running anymore.
I don't want to be.
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