Chapter Twenty-One #2
“It’s not about him.” He turned the glass around in slow circles, his eyes on the patterns the spinning made in the condensation on the table.
“Maybe seeing you with him jumpstarted it, and then what the guys said—I can see I’ve been asking you to live like me.
But I’m a sixty-year-old man who lost the love of his life, and I ease that loss by feeding my community in the restaurant she loved.
You’re a young woman who never got to make the choice. ”
“I had a choice, Dad,” she said, doing her best to keep the unshed tears out of her voice. “You never asked me to stay—I chose to. Maybe feeding my community in the restaurant Mom loved helps me feel close to her, but I also love Corinne’s Kitchen myself. It’s ours as much as it was hers.”
He nodded, then cleared his throat roughly. “I’m glad, Kenz. But you need time and space away from here if you’re going to find someone—or something—of your own. Whether it’s Danny or some other guy or pottery classes or… I don’t know.”
“Pottery classes?”
He held up his hands. “I don’t know why I said that. I remember that weird space rocket thing you made in school, and I do believe you can do anything you set your mind to…other than working with clay.”
“It was a pig.”
His frown made her laugh. “Are you sure?”
“That’s why it was pink.” She waved her hand. “Anyway, I would like to talk to you about being closed on Tuesdays. Even though closing at two on three days gives me afternoons to do stuff, I’d love to have one day a week to sleep in.”
Smiling, he nodded. “That does sound nice. I don’t know if I remember how to do that.”
“I bet I’ll remember pretty quickly.” She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table.
“We should talk to Nathan before we make any decisions. I know he does some off-the-books work for his brother when he’s off, but it doesn’t feel right to take a day from his schedule without talking to him about it. ”
“Kenzie, you have to be more selfish sometimes.” He shook his head, but his eyes were warm with affection. “And I already talked to him about it. So you and I, we’re going to have a conversation very soon and figure this out, okay?”
“That would be great,” she said honestly, mustering a smile for her dad.
It would be great, even though it wouldn’t make a difference as far as any relationship with Danny was concerned. She understood he had a nice life he really enjoyed, but she had no time for a man who expected her to rearrange her life to suit him without any compromise on his part.
It was time to stop yearning for a man who didn’t want her enough and learn to be content again.
* * *
Breakfast was a rushed affair, which suited Danny because it made the other two less likely to notice he pushed around more food than he ate. After a miserable night of tossing and turning, occasionally interrupted by restless sleep, he didn’t have much of an appetite.
It was best for everybody—including himself—that he go home as soon as possible.
Rob looked up at the clock after every few bites until he finally pushed back his chair. “I hate to eat and run, but I have to meet Scott to pick up the York rake. He’s not exactly jovial on a good day, so I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“Do you need a hand with it?” Danny asked. The large rake they pulled behind the tractor or a UTV to smooth out the trails had needed some TLC, and Scott had called the previous night to tell them the welding was done.
“No, we’ve got it.” Then he kissed the top of Hannah’s head and was gone.
“Your pancake okay?” she asked a few minutes later, probably because his brother wasn’t there to distract her from the fact Danny was pushing the cut-up pancake around on his plate.
“It’s great. I might have had too big a midnight snack last night.”
“I thought I heard you moving around. And Rob made the pancakes, so I’m not offended or anything.”
When she got up to clear her place, he did the same. Hannah filled the sink with hot, soapy water while Danny put the syrup and butter away. She handed him the sponge so he could wipe down the table, and then she washed while he dried and put away.
She was humming while she worked, which left his mind free to roam. And where it roamed to was the memory of Rob and Hannah making a road trip to California to return her parents’ camper and pack up her things so she could move to New Hampshire to be with him.
“How did you know Rob was worth it?”
Hannah looked at him, tipping her head. “Worth what?”
“The risk, I guess?” He blew out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “You left your whole life in California to be with him. You’re all the way across the country from your family. How did you know what you two had was worth that?”
“Sometimes it’s really hard being away from my family.
Especially my nieces, to be honest. But we’re in constant contact, and, while I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like, we actually talk and text and video chat more than we used to.
And I didn’t have to give up my job. Did I have to give up the big production deal?
Yes. But I’m still doing the part of it I loved.
” She gave him a pointed look. “It’s very nice to be able to work anywhere, as you know. ”
“It’s not just about me working. You miss things—birthdays and cookouts and all of those moments.”
Hannah frowned, shaking her head. “Danny, it’s a little over two hours from here to your parents’ house. Nobody misses out on anything.”
“But I’d have to go alone. Oliver’s birthday party on a Saturday? Kenzie would be working. Mother’s Day brunch? Kenzie would be working. I could go alone, but I know I’d hate it eventually. If I’m going to share my life with somebody, I want to actually share my life, you know?”
“Have you explained that to Kenzie?”
“No, I haven’t, because it won’t change anything. It’s not like she can tell me she’ll take those days off because she can’t.”
“For the record, I really don’t want to be in the middle of this. But I will say this one last thing—for me, it came down to whether I could be happy without Rob in my life, and the answer was no.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
She snorted and put the last dish in the drying rack before pulling the plug.
“The question is simple, but the answer is absolutely not, and you’re the only person who can answer it.
Now, since I don’t want to talk about this anymore—with either of you—I’m going to go find something else to do.
The nice thing about living here is there’s always something. ”
He managed a chuckle. “On the flipside, there’s always something.”
When Hannah went off in search of something to do that didn’t involve talking to him, Danny let her go.
He’d caught that she stressed she didn’t want to talk to either of them, which meant she’d had a conversation with Kenzie.
He was afraid if he tried to continue the conversation, he’d push to find out what they’d talked about, and Hannah had made her feelings about being in the middle very clear.
Because he’d had a rough night for obvious reasons, Danny brewed himself another cup of coffee and sat at the table with it. He’d hit the road soon—there was no point in staying at the campground any longer—but he wanted more caffeine in his system first.
Maybe twenty minutes later, his brother came through the back door, interrupting his brooding. One of the best parts of living alone was being able to stare dejectedly into his coffee in peace.
“I just came in to grab a water,” Rob said. “You heading out soon?”
“Very soon. And I probably won’t be back up this summer. If you need a hand getting it closed up for the winter or the end of the season paperwork or whatever, just let me know.”
His brother looked at him for a noticeably long time before opening the fridge. “Joey’s always been the one who slapped you upside the head when you needed it, but he’s not around, so I guess I’ll have to give it a shot.”
“I hope you mean metaphorically because you might be rugged, but I’m smarter and I can still take you.”
Rob laughed. “You are not smarter than me. You just spell better. But back to the point, what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going home,” Danny replied, still hoping he could bluff his way out of this conversation. “I came up, took the side-by-side out on the trails, and now I’m going home. As planned.”
“You may not be smarter than me, but you’re too smart to play like you don’t know what I’m talking about.” He flipped up the straw on his tumbler to take a drink. They kept prefilled reusable tumblers in the fridge these days to lessen the temptation to just grab a bottle from the store’s stock.
Danny didn’t have the strength to go through it all again.
Maybe if he kept the focus off the restaurant and his fears he’d eventually come to resent Kenzie’s schedule, and instead focused on why he was no good for her, his brother would agree with him and let it go.
And at some point, he’d probably get a more accurate version from Hannah, but Danny intended to be gone by then.
“Listen, Rob, you of all people know how I am. Sometimes I’m fine, and then sometimes it’s two in the morning and I’m smearing chocolate on my keyboard from my fingers and I don’t even know what day it is.”
“I’m pretty sure we’ve talked about this before, so I’ll just repeat the part about a ton of authors having spouses and kids. You’re just not that special.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to Kenzie.”
Rob frowned, shaking his head. “I think you’re holding some kind of caricature version of yourself in your head. I’m not sure why you are, but I can tell you the various people who’ve shared living space with you over the years can attest to you being a fully functional adult.”
Danny knew continuing to argue with Rob was pointless. Even though forming words into coherent sentences was his job, he couldn’t think of a way to articulate his fear when it came to Kenzie.
Not only did he not want to compete with the restaurant, but he didn’t want to be another person she had to take care of. Yes, he was a fully functioning adult. He knew that. But he also knew he tended to be high-maintenance at times.
Not that it would really matter, because Kenzie would rarely be around, anyway. The more he turned it over in his mind, the more he was convinced she was right when she said it was impossible for them to be more than friends.
Of course, now he’d ruined the friendship, so he had nothing.
“Look,” Rob said as he opened the door. “You’re telling yourself you’re a bad bet because it saves you from the fear of figuring out if what you have with Kenzie is real enough for the sacrifices you’d have to make in order to find out, and you get to tell yourself you’re doing it for her. But it’s bullshit.”
He was gone, the door closed firmly behind him, before Danny could think of a response other than flipping off the space where his youngest brother had been standing.
But as he went through the house, making sure he’d gotten everything that belonged to him, it was Hannah’s words that kept running through his mind, burrowing in and taking root.
Could he be happy without Kenzie in his life?