Chapter Nineteen
Due to the Memorial Day observances, Kenzie and Rhylee bumped their shopping trip to Tuesday. The restaurant closed at two and the town hall didn’t close until three, so Kenzie had a little time to kill.
Since she hadn’t been sleeping well, she left a note on the door for her cousin and went up to stretch out on her bed. Maybe she wouldn’t actually nap, but she’d close her eyes and rest for a few minutes.
The next thing she knew, she was being bounced awake by Rhylee flopping down on the bed next to her. After rubbing her gritty eyes, Kenzie started to sit up but then dropped back to her pillow.
“You’re being uncharacteristically lazy,” Rhylee said. “You’re not sick, are you? I probably should have asked that before I got this close to you.”
“I would have told you if I was sick because I’m not a jerk, thank you very much. The past few nights, I haven’t really slept great, so I laid down and I guess I fell asleep.”
“The past few nights? So basically since Danny Kowalski went home.”
“No.” But actually, yes.
“About that. You gave me nothing in your texts, Kenzie. A famous writer sweeps you off for a night away, and all I get is that the pizza was good?”
“The pizza was good.”
“But it’s funny how I asked you if you actually spent the night in the guest room right as the restaurant got so busy, you couldn’t answer me.” Rhylee’s foot crossed the imaginary line down the center of the bed, nudging her ankle. “I know you didn’t, so tell me everything.”
And because it was what she’d done for literally as long as she could remember, Kenzie sat up and told her cousin everything. She held back on some of the more intimate details, but Rhylee was interested enough to listen to it all without interrupting.
Until she got to the part about Mike and Lisa Kowalski walking into their son’s house and finding her wearing just a T-shirt in his kitchen, and then Rhylee laughed so hard, she snorted.
Kenzie kicked her foot. “If you don’t stop laughing, I’m going to shove you off my bed, drag you down the stairs and out the front door, and then change the locks.”
Rhylee just laughed harder, waving her hand to indicate she was trying, but couldn’t help herself.
“I hope you get a wicked case of the hiccups,” Kenzie muttered.
It was at least another minute before her cousin calmed down enough to get words out. “Tell me the part about what you were wearing again?”
“No.” She swung her pillow, hitting Rhylee with a satisfying thump. “It was traumatic, thank you very much.”
“But worth it?”
She sighed and replaced her pillow so she could flop down without smacking her skull on the headboard. “So worth it.”
Rhylee sighed as if she was watching a rom-com and had just gotten to the swoony part. “I knew it.”
Kenzie stared at the ceiling, knowing Rhylee had her head turned on her pillow and was watching her. She blinked twice but couldn’t stop a tear from escaping and running down into her hair.
“Kenzie?” Rhylee rolled to her side, propping her head on her hand so she could look down at her.
“Remember when I told you I didn’t want to yearn for something I couldn’t have?”
“Yes, and I pointed out you were already yearning, and I was right.”
“You were right about the yearning, but it’s even worse. I love him.”
“Oh, that’s—” She stopped, and through the corner of her eye, Kenzie saw her frown. “Worse? That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Since I can’t have him, yes. It’s pretty bad.”
Sighing, Rhylee laid back down, but with her head on Kenzie’s pillow so their hair was touching. “You really don’t think he’d move up here?”
“He’s pretty consistent with the hell, no,” she said sadly.
“That sucks.” She sighed. “You quote your mom a lot. Can I quote my mom?”
“I’d rather you didn’t because it won’t help.”
Karen never really said anything to Frank or Kenzie, but she knew her aunt was of the opinion that her sister-in-law’s widower was a grown man who should recognize that he was robbing Kenzie of a life of her own and do something about it. She wasn’t wrong. Kenzie knew that.
Maybe if either of them had been stronger after losing Corinne so suddenly, they would have sold the place and moved on.
Or Kenzie would have moved on and Frank would have either made a go of it with hired help or sold it later down the line.
Instead, they’d leaned on each other and thrown themselves into Corinne’s legacy, and now it felt too late in her dad’s life to start all over again.
“If it was just me,” she said, “I’d go. For Danny, I’d slap a For Sale sign outside and pack up my stuff. But it’s not just me and he’s my dad. I’m all he has—me and the restaurant.”
“Have you ever actually talked to Frank about it?”
“No. I think he’d pretend to be okay, but I know him. He’d be lost, and yes, I know he’s a grown man and it’s up to him to find his own way, but I also know I just can’t abandon him like that.”
“Maybe Uncle Frank thinks the same thing about you,” Rhylee said softly. “And what if this is your one shot at love? I don’t want to see you lose it.”
Kenzie shook her head. “I can’t blow up my life and my dad’s, too, for a man who’s dead set against living up here.
And I can’t let myself try because I’ve been through this already.
I walked away from a man I loved and a future I wanted to take care of the restaurant and my dad, and I can’t do it again, Rhy.
Sometimes I resent it all, and if I started making a life with Danny and then had to give him up, I’m afraid that resentment would be hate, and I can’t risk that. I can’t.”
“I don’t think you’re giving Uncle Frank enough credit.”
“I know he’d figure it out. I just don’t want him to have to. And it’s my restaurant. It was my grandmother’s, then my mother’s, and now it’s mine. That means something to me.” Kenzie blew out a breath. “It’s not just about my dad.”
“I don’t know the right answer, Kenzie, but you know I’m here for you, whatever you need.”
“What we need is to get up and go to the store or we’ll never get the shopping done.”
“Okay, fine. But I’m putting ice in the cooler because we’re going to need ice cream.”
“Lots of ice cream.”
* * *
He made it two weeks.
The two weeks with no Kenzie in them felt more like two months, until finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He packed a bag, got in his truck and headed north.
He was already on the road when he thought to call and tell them he was on his way. His brother didn’t answer, so he left a voicemail and kept driving. Rob must have listened to it at some point, because he didn’t look surprised when Danny’s truck pulled up to the house.
“Hey,” Rob said when he climbed out of the seat. “I owe Hannah twenty bucks now, and I think you should pay it.”
“What was the bet?”
“I said you wouldn’t come back and she said you wouldn’t make it to the end of June.”
He didn’t love his inability to stay away being the topic of conversation in the family, but he knew before he got in his truck that it would be the price he had to pay to see Kenzie again. “I like it up here. There are a lot of good places to walk and walking helps me think.”
“Sure,” Rob said, clearly not believing him.
“Where’s Hannah?” he asked, looking to change the subject. “I didn’t see her car.”
“She went to the town hall just really quick to look something up in the archives, but digging through musty old boxes is one of her favorite things, so she probably won’t leave until they close. And then she and Rhylee will stand around for who knows how long in the parking lot talking.”
Danny laughed, Rob joining in. Their dad was a talker, and he couldn’t even count how many times he and his brothers had sat in the car, waiting for Mike to finish his parking lot conversations.
“I was just going to make myself a sandwich,” Rob said. “Should I save you the awkwardness of trying to get out of eating lunch with me while also being hungry enough to go to the Kitchen and tell you there’s only enough lunch meat for one sandwich?”
“Is that true?”
“No, but I’ll say it anyway.”
“Do you have popcorn chicken?” When Rob shook his head, Danny blew out an aggrieved breath. “Damn. I guess I’ll have to go up the road to find some, then.”
“I thought so. Tell her we said hey.”
Danny started to get back in his truck, but paused. “Hey, how’s the side-by-side running?”
They’d bought a used four-seater side-by-side from the Maine branch of the Kowalski family last year. He knew it hadn’t gone out on the trails just for fun nearly as often as they thought it would when they bought it.
“It’s good. Are you planning to take it out for a spin?”
“Maybe tomorrow afternoon.” Rob snorted and waved before walking away.
Danny carried his bag and travel mug into the house and, after a quick trip to the bathroom, climbed back into his truck.
The closer he got to the restaurant, the more he worried Kenzie wouldn’t be happy to see him, though.
That tear on her cheek still haunted him, and he’d been torn.
Would seeing him again make it harder? Or would it help them get back to being easy, happy friends?
The parking lot was almost empty, much to his relief, but he found himself holding his breath as he walked through the door. Then she turned and saw him, and her face lit up with that smile he couldn’t get enough of.
“You’re back again?” she asked as he took a seat at the counter.
“Just for a couple of days. Brian comes up on the weekends, but he doesn’t want to be away from Siobhan and Oliver all week, every week for the entire summer.”
She laughed and folded her arms. “And Birch Brook Campground has so many campers there on weekdays, Rob and Hannah can’t keep up?”
“Just because they can doesn’t mean they should have to, right?” When her eyebrow arched, he gave her a sheepish grin. “Also, it’s a good excuse to see you.”
“I thought we agreed—” The words cut off as she looked over her shoulder, probably checking to see if her dad was in the window, eavesdropping on their conversation. “We talked about this.”
She was trying hard to look annoyed, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching. It was an expression all Kowalski men were very familiar with. “Yes, it was a time-out. But you know, teams get multiple time-outs for every game.”
“This definitely isn’t a game,” she said, her amusement instantly gone.
He’d tried, but he wouldn’t push. “You said we can be friends. I like to see my friends sometimes.”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Fine. I like to see my friends sometimes, too.”
“Unless you’re out of popcorn chicken, in which case I’m leaving now.”
“What is it with your family and popcorn chicken?” She pulled the order pad from her apron pocket to write it down without even asking if he wanted fries. Of course he did. “Do you want coffee?”
“Desperately.”
After clipping the order in the window and calling to her dad to let him know it was there, she went to the coffee brewer. Danny tried not to watch her moving around, but it wasn’t easy because she was in his line of sight.
Then Frank was in the window, reaching up to grab the slip of paper. He read it and then looked at Danny through the pass-through. “This yours?”
He was almost afraid to answer. Why did he want to know? Was he going to slip something into it because Danny had made his daughter cry? “Yeah.”
Frank laughed, then shook his head. “What is it with your family and popcorn chicken?”
Kenzie was also laughing when she set down the coffee. “On the plus side, we don’t have to wash a lot of silverware after a Kowalski eats here.”
“We go through more napkins, though,” Frank called back.
“Ouch.” Laughing, Danny covered his heart with his hand. “Rough crowd today.”
Kenzie cashed out a party of three, and then refilled coffees for the remaining table before returning to lean her hip against the counter, arms folded. “So what really brings you back this time?”
He couldn’t dump the real reason on her—that he’d missed her so much he’d driven over two hours to sit in the restaurant for an hour just to see her.
“I’ve been itching to hit the trails, and the weather’s supposed to be perfect tomorrow.
Cool and overcast, and it’s going to rain overnight tonight, so it won’t be too dusty. ”
“There won’t be many people out there on a Wednesday, either. I can tell from the amount of people in here on weekends that the trails are getting busier every year. Which is good for my business—and yours—but not as fun if you’re out riding.”
“You got plans for after work tomorrow?” When her eyes narrowed, he held up his hands. “Hey, four-wheeling is more fun with friends. It’ll be like a walk in the woods, except we’ll be going a lot faster.”
“It does sound like fun,” she said with a slight reluctance. “I was planning to defrost the chest freezer at home.”
“Oh, we’ll have so much more fun than freezer defrosting. I can almost guarantee it.”
She laughed. “Almost?”
“I mean, you never know. We could break down or blow a tire or get lost and just ride around lost in the woods until we run out of gas.”
“I’m not likely to be lost out on those trails.”
Neither was he, since they’d been coming here since he was a kid. “See? My life might depend on you being with me.”
“You are such a—” She stopped, laughing. “Fine. I’ll be there after work tomorrow.”
Then Frank bellowing Kenzie’s name made them both jump, and she rolled her eyes before turning to get Danny’s lunch from the window. “I’m literally right here, Dad.”