by Sara Rider
“Sunday, then.”
“Sunday.”
He turned and walked out of her house, and even though she wanted to chase after him and beg him to forgive her, she let him go.
Nora drove past the parking lot entrance of the Holy Grale three times before she finally pulled in. Partly because she’d arrived seventeen minutes early thanks to a nervous overreaction to her fear of being late, but mostly because she still hadn’t built up the courage to come back here. Even though she’d gotten to know everyone at the book club, and considered them friends, that had been before things had gone so sour with Eli. She wasn’t sure they would welcome her back now.
How had she managed to ruin everything again?
Her stomach danced with nerves as she stepped out of her car and walked along the parking lot. It had been so much easier last time when Eli was here with her, filling her with confidence while he escorted her in. Heat colored her cheeks at the memory of the way he’d managed to make her feel calm.
She tried to switch her thoughts to the book as she stepped inside the Grale. The book had been more intense than the cover suggested. An angst-filled second chance romance about a couple rebuilding a life together after breaking each other’s hearts. It had been hard to read, even painful at times, but the exquisite ending had made the journey worth every moment of that stomach churning angst.
The Grale was busy as usual, but not so crowded that she couldn’t see through to the bar. Eli wasn’t there. Maybe he was in the back, hiding out with his machines. It’s what she would do.
She’d seen him last night when she was coming home with an armful of groceries, he was outside talking with Mr. Budd, the guy two doors down who liked to water his plants in his housecoat. Whether he wore anything beneath that housecoat had been a rather entertaining source of neighborhood gossip.
But she hadn’t been worried about what Mr. Budd was or wasn’t hiding beneath those frayed terrycloth edges when she’d seen them. All she could see was Eli, looking handsome and relaxed and completely indifferent to her. She’d tripped on the sidewalk and managed to split open her paper bag, sending her fresh Honeycrisp apples spilling everywhere. Mr. Budd had jogged over to help her, revealing the fact he absolutely did not have anything underneath, but Eli had just…ignored her. He walked to his car with only the briefest nod in her direction to acknowledge her presence and drove off. She’d grown so used to him being her hero over the last few weeks that not having him there to rely on felt like a stab in the heart.
But this is what she’d asked for, wasn’t it? She wanted to focus on building friendships, not the kind of romantic relationship that could break her heart all over again.
Too late.
She straightened her back and told herself to stop being so silly as she climbed the stairs to the mezzanine. Her faked confidence lasted just long enough to get to the doorway of the room where the book club met. She hesitated again, but the door swung open before she could change her mind.
“Nora!” Julia’s smiling face greeted her on the other side. “You made it!”
“Hi,” she answered weakly.
Julia slipped her arm through Nora’s and drew her inside. In a low whisper, she said, “I’m only going to say this once. You’re part of this club, no matter what’s happening between you and Eli. We take care of our own. And if you still have doubts, just know that Eli made sure to give me the same speech this week.”
Nora’s jaw dropped, though really, she shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been taking care of her from the moment they went on their first date. She took her seat at the table and realized a glass of red wine was waiting for her at her spot.
“Great. Now we can get started,” Clem said with a grin. She picked up her copy of the book and held it to her chest like a hug. “How did this book make you feel?”
By the time Nora arrived home from the Books and Brews meeting, she’d actually managed to distract herself from her lingering worries about her conference presentation, the job offer in Toronto she still hadn’t responded to, and Eli. For two hours, she’d done nothing but talk about a heartbreakingly gorgeous romance novel with people who understood exactly why she’d devoured it in less than a day, only to flip back to the first page and start it all over again. It wasn’t just the characters or the passionate love scenes that hooked her. It was the hope that filled every page, in spite of the obstacles thrown at the couple. Nora had needed a little hope right now.
She couldn’t help glancing at Eli’s house as she walked up her front steps. The lights were out. Julia had said he wasn’t at the Holy Grale, and it didn’t look like he was home.
Maybe he’s on a date.
She didn’t know where the thought came from but it felt like a stab in the gut.
You have no right to feel that way, she reminded herself. If she were a real friend, she would be happy for him to move on.
But you don’t want to be just friends with him. She sat down on her step and dropped her head into her hands. Why was it so hard to figure out what she wanted?
The sound of a power saw made her head pop up. She jumped up raced along the path leading to her backyard. Eli was in his yard, noise-cancelling headphones on, as he sliced the saw through a block of wood.
She watched him working for a minute, captivated by the way his biceps flexed with his precise movements and the look of determination on his face, before she remembered he’d probably hate it if he knew she was spying on him. With a sharp jab of regret, she backed slowly toward her door, hoping to sneak back inside without being noticed.
His eyes caught hers the instant she took a step backward, like he’d known she was there watching him this entire time.
He pulled off his goggles and noise-cancelling headphones. “Am I bothering you?”
She searched his face for any trace of emotion. Any hint of reaction to her presence. He was like a blank wall, giving nothing away. “No, I was just…curious.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not renovating anymore. I’m just finishing up this bench and then I’m done.”
“Bench?”
He nodded slowly, then motioned behind him to where a half-finished bench sat on the grass behind his work table.
It was a simple bench with a natural-edge back, and though the actual seat was still missing, it looked completely inviting. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks,” he said gruffly. For a moment, she thought she’d said too much, but then he added, “I’m making it for my mom. There’s a program with the city that lets you donate benches in Heartwood Park in someone’s memory.”
“That’s so wonderful.” She wanted to reach for him, but the chain link fence felt like an ocean between them.
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “It was Julia’s idea. Not mine. I’m just the grunt worker.”
“But you’re building it and that matters—”
“No, it doesn’t,” he bit out harshly. He walked over to her and set his hands just outside of hers, making her pulse jump. “I don’t get to take credit for building things. All I do is destroy, remember?”
“Eli.” She reached her hand to his, trying to let her touch say what she kept bungling with her words. His brows furrowed, and for a moment, she thought she was getting through to him. That he would let her explain how she hadn’t meant to hurt him. That she missed him.
But he jerked his hand away. “Save it.”
He walked back to his worktable, and she tried desperately to snatch the right words out of her brain before it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” she called. “I didn’t mean it and—”
It didn’t matter. He’d already put his noise-cancelling headphones back on.
14
“It’s perfect!” Julia ran her hands over the smooth edges of the bench and smiled. After a long day sanding and staining the wood, Eli finally finished the bench just in time for tomorrow’s ceremony. This was a lot better than the reaction he’d gotten to the memory book wit
h the photos from their childhood he’d shown her earlier. His sister had hugged him with tears in her eyes, only to harass him two seconds later about whether he’d made sure to track which album the photos came from so they could put them back in perfect order. He’d managed to reassure her that he’d labeled the back of each picture in pencil, but it had hurt more than he wanted to admit when she’d asked him if Nora had helped him figure out how to do that. Because she still didn’t trust him.
“It had better be. I broke my nail sanding this thing down.” He tried not to let his annoyance show. It wasn’t his sister’s fault he was in a sour mood. Hell, it wasn’t even her fault she was the one to come up with the idea of making a bench. She was always thinking of the right thing to do. The special touches. The logical course of action. He was the screw-up who still hadn’t come up with any genuine contribution to the ceremony.
Julia smacked him in the chest. “Be serious.”
“Okay, fine,” Eli conceded, holding up his hand and showing off his short, ragged nails that had been ravaged from years of working in the brewery and a tendency to act like an overanxious squirrel when he was stressed. “I won’t make you pay for my emergency pedicure.”
She rolled her eyes. “Manicure. And I should take you for one. Your nails are disgusting.”
“How about you buy me a new hand sander instead?”
“Let me see a copy of your speech first, and then we’ll see.”
He leaned back against the vinyl siding of his house and raised his eyebrows. “What speech?”
She stopped petting the wood and looked up at him. “The speech. The ceremony is tomorrow and you’re supposed to give a speech!”
“Julia,” he said as calmly as he could. “You told me months ago not to write a speech because you had that covered.”
“Because I thought you weren’t going to take this whole thing seriously.” She groaned and began pacing, which, in any other circumstance would have been amusing with her spiky heels sinking into the grass. But it wasn’t funny. It was pissing him off that she was tearing up the lawn he’d worked hard to maintain.
He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep, rough breath. “I am taking it seriously.”
His patience was stretched so thin, it could snap from a gust of wind, but he was trying to hold it together. Her frustration wasn’t just about the stress of the event. It was about stress of the last ten years trying to hold everything together. She’d been a teenager when their mom died. The insurance money had taken care of them financially, but she hadn’t had anyone there for her emotionally. Eli had been in a different city, mired in his own emotional tailspin while she’d had to figure out how to put the house up for sale, how to rent an apartment and do her own taxes, and every other complicated thing life threw at her. All of it on her own, because he’d been too self-absorbed to realize she needed help. And in the end, she didn’t really need his help. She’d learned it all on her own.
“I know you’re taking it seriously now. That’s why I thought you were preparing a speech. I didn’t think I had to tell you that.”
He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing her reassuringly while still giving her space to breathe. “I’ll write something tonight. It will be fine. I do my best work under pressure. You know that.”
She blew a strand of her usually perfectly styled hair off her round face. “Okay. Thank you. Oh, and don’t talk about that trip to Tijuana when I was seven. I’m already bringing that up.”
He smiled, trying to make it seem genuine. “No problem.”
She hugged him, burying her face in his chest. “I’m sorry I’m being hard on you. I just…I miss her so much. I want this to be perfect.”
His throat felt suddenly raw and painful. “I know. It will be.”
Eli had been confident when he’d reassured Julia that he would get a speech done, but it turned out to be another case of him jumping head first into something he couldn’t pull off. Every time he set his pen to paper, the words that came out were so hollow, he couldn’t imagine bringing himself to read them out loud in front of a small crowd of his friends. Nothing sounded right.
Mom was a special woman…
He balled up the page and threw it across the room. He’d be better off just stealing a bunch of lines from a Hallmark card.
He closed his eyes and thought about the memories that had surfaced when he’d gone through the photo albums. Most of the photos weren’t even of her. There were hundreds of him and Julia. The only solo photo of his mom had been a blurry one of her wearing a big artist’s smock covered in paint. She’d signed up to take an art class. He must have been about twelve at the time, and he remembered that strange feeling of realizing for the first time his mom had an interest that didn’t directly revolve around him or Julia. He hadn’t been sure what to make of it at the time, but he knew he resented having to babysit Julia when he wanted to be hanging out with his friends. One night, he’d gotten into a fight with his sister when she stole his Game Boy. He’d called her some mean names, and she’d yelled back that she could do whatever she wanted because Mom had secretly left her in charge since he was too immature to babysit. He knew instantly she wasn’t lying, and it had made him explode in anger. He ran off to a local park, and was picked up by the cops a few hours later. His mom had been frantic and stopped going to her lessons.
His eyes burned with the stinging threat of tears. He’d been such a shitty kid back then. But the worst part was, he hadn’t changed. Not really. He was still so self-centered, he couldn’t even write a damn speech to honor his mom because it hurt too much. He was the reason his mom was dead, and he couldn’t even do this one thing for her.
Nora was right. He destroyed everything.
He swiped his arm across the table, knocking the pad of paper, along with the cup of coffee he’d been nursing, onto the floor. The mug landed with a clatter, breaking into a million pieces on the floor and splattering brown liquid everywhere. So many emotions surged through his body, he could barely breathe. He stood up and threw his chair into the wall, but it wasn’t enough. He suddenly needed to tear down everything in this house.
Adrenaline pounded so hard in his veins, he couldn’t see straight. He was the reason his mom was dead and now he was having a goddamn temper tantrum.
“Get yourself together,” he mumbled, as if saying that out loud would force his mind and body to comply. He had to close his eyes and count to fifty before he had calmed down enough to open them again.
He ran his hand through his hair and looked around at the mess. There was a fist-sized hole in the drywall from where the chair had made contact. A pool of coffee was seeping into the seams of his wood floors, and bits of jagged white ceramic were everywhere. He swore out loud and grabbed a dishcloth from the drawer next to his stove. He wiped up the mess and gathered the pieces of broken ceramic into a pile.
“Dammit!” He looked at his hand and saw a thick drop of blood spilling out from a small slice on his palm. What the hell was he doing? He could break everything in his house and every last bone in his body, and it wouldn’t help. He needed an entirely different kind of self-destruction.
15
“Have you gone to see a dentist yet?” Nora rolled over in bed and fumbled to turn on her lamp.
“I’m not going to give my money to some hack who’ll overcharge me for a bunch of stuff I don’t need.”
She sighed and rolled out of bed, accepting the fact she wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon. If her dad was calling her in the middle of the night about a painful tooth, it was probably ten times worse than he was letting on. “You have insurance.”
“I’m not going to the dentist. I don’t have time. Just tell me what that stuff your mom used to give you is called.”
“She gave me a sugar placebo because she doesn’t believe in supporting the pharmaceutical industrial complex.” She pulled on her robe and headed to the kitchen. “If you have an infected
tooth, there’s no drug that will help with the pain. You need a root canal. Even Mom would tell you that.”
The silence that followed was so painful, Nora had to hold her breath. She wasn’t even certain her dad was still on the line until he finally spoke again. “Have you talked to your mom lately?”
Nora pressed her palm against her forehead, wishing this conversation were just a dream. “She was just here for a quick visit before she flew to Italy.”
Her dad’s heavy exhalation filled the receiver. “I miss her.”
It was Nora’s turn to not know what to say in that moment. She turned on the kettle and hunted in her drawer for some chamomile tea while searching for her next words. “Do you regret marrying her?”
It was a stupid question, but after everything that had happened with Eli, she needed to hear she wasn’t making a terrible decision in pushing him away.
“Never,” her dad said swiftly. “I loved her. I know we didn’t fit together, but not marrying her would have hurt even more. Plus, I wouldn’t have you.”
She swallowed the heavy lump that had settled in her throat. “I love you, Dad. Promise me you’ll go see a dentist tomorrow.”
He grumbled something that sounded like a reluctant acceptance and told her he loved her, too. She pressed her palm against her aching chest and wondered how on earth she was going to fall back asleep after that. She hated that her parents were hurting. Hated that she didn’t know who was to blame anymore, or if there even was someone to blame.
Most of all, she hated that she was feeling the same pain every time she thought about Eli. She’d been so busy trying to protect her heart that she’d forgotten he needed to protect his.
Her kettle whistled at the same moment a knock came at her door. It was nearly midnight. Only one person would knock at this hour. Her heart kicked into high gear. She abandoned her tea and dashed to the door.