by Meg Easton
She could walk right up Main to Treanor’s right now and ask him what his story was herself. But no— that was a terrible idea. Back when she was in high school, she’d been so strongly attracted to him. They had been best friends only for that first year and a half, and she’d had to work pretty hard to keep herself from pushing for more. It was probably a good thing he’d left, because she’d never have been able to get over him and move on if he’d stuck around.
It was a little alarming that, after all these years, the attraction was just as strong. But this time it was going to be a piece of cake to keep herself from pushing for more. In high school, she held back because she hadn’t wanted to ruin the beautiful friendship they’d had. Now, she held back for reasons that were so much stronger. Now she had experience on her side. That experience told her exactly what that man could do to her heart, so she knew to keep it well protected. She was going to have to get through this decorating quickly, so she could put some distance between her and him.
Chapter Four
At the end of the Main Street Business Alliance meeting, the only thing Eli’s mom’s text had said was Your dad needs you here. How quickly can you get to the hospital? Nothing about how he was doing. So of course Eli’s mind went to every worst case scenario as he drove the thirty minutes to St. Anthony’s.
After making his way to the information desk then through the hospital to where his dad was recovering, he finally took in a deep breath when he heard his dad’s voice coming from his room. It was a croaky voice, but not as strained as he had feared. He stopped outside the room for a moment to calm his heart and his breathing before stepping into the doorway where he could be seen.
His dad lay on the bed in his hospital gown, an IV still in his arm, a blood pressure cuff around his arm, and an oxygen sensor on his finger. His mom sat on the opposite side of the bed from the equipment, holding his hand. They stopped talking when they saw him, and his mom stood up and hurried to him. She wrapped her arms around him, pinning his arms to his side. He managed to awkwardly pat her back with his fingertips.
“Hi, Mom.”
She put her hands on his cheeks. “You’re looking so grown up and handsome, son. We’re so glad you are here, aren’t we, Robert?”
Eli’s dad grunted and pushed with his elbow, adjusting his shoulders on the bed. “I was wondering when you were going to get here.”
“Hey, Dad,” Eli said. “Other than being a bit pale, you’re looking good. Surgery went well?” It had been a full four years since they’d last come to visit him in Sacramento, and the truth was, the extra wrinkles they both sported had caught him off guard just a bit, but they both looked good.
“As good as it can when a doctor cuts open your ankle, files off the ends of your broken bones, makes your own blood into a glue to stick it back together and puts in a couple of rods for good measure, and then makes you stay in this blasted bed with all these blasted cords attached everywhere.”
“I see the surgery hasn’t dampened your spirits at all.” His mom playfully punched him in the arm, to show that she understood that he was joking. He wasn’t. His dad still had his trademark “Treanor fire.” Eli turned to his mom. “You didn’t say what the problem was in your text. Is everything okay?”
She sat down on the bed and wrapped her hand in his dad’s. His dad smiled and squeezed her hand back. Why couldn’t they have been like this when he was in high school? Back then they didn’t hold hands— they fought nightly until they finally decided to be separated for his junior and senior year, and neither of them was better for it. Now if he hadn’t known better, he’d have guessed they had a textbook blissful marriage.
“Everything’s fine. They said that the surgery went well. They were able to fully repair the damage. They expect recovery to be slow, but that’s normal for this kind of surgery. I texted because once your father was awake from the anesthesia, he was anxious to talk with you about the business.”
He should’ve guessed that’s why his mom asked for him to come. Of course. Now that she’d said it, he wondered how he ever thought it could’ve been something different.
“Now I don’t need to remind you that I built this business from the ground up,” his dad said. “It’s been my life for the past thirty-two years.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Eli said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “I was only in town for a few minutes, but I had a good long phone call with the shift supervisor—”
“Grace,” his mom supplied.
“Yes, and things have been going great today. You’ve trained her well, and I’ll—”
“There’s more to running a business than checking in with the shift supervisor,” his dad said. “There’s all the building maintenance and managing the employees and the accounting software and equipment upkeep and purchasing and advertising and customer relations.”
Eli worked to keep his breathing even. A few months after he had escaped to California with nothing more than his car and the things he’d packed in his trunk, he’d called his mom from a payphone to say that he was okay. Eli hadn’t been remotely prepared to be on his own, in a state where he knew no one. Both his parents had flown to the general area they’d figured out from the number on their caller ID, and found him at his lowest—sleeping in his car, showering at the local gym, flipping burgers for minimum wage, and about as far as possible from being the upstanding college student they’d wanted. In a heated argument over what he should’ve been doing with his life, his dad had said, “I didn’t raise a low-life worthless bum. I no longer consider you my son,” before flying back home.
Eli had come a long way since those first couple of years on his own. He was proud of what he’d made of his life. But whenever he was around his dad, it felt as if he still saw him as that same stupid, stubborn kid who made every bad choice possible. “I’ve got this, Dad. You don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve run my own successful business for years now, you know.”
“This isn’t a business where you just get everyone to hold hands and sing Kumbaya! This is a real business, and it takes a real businessman to run it.”
Heat rushed through Eli, making his breathing quicken and his hands sweat. “Why did you ask me to come here, Dad?”
“Because I... I don’t know. I shouldn’t have had this stupid operation. My ankle was fine enough before. I just need to get out of here so I can go take care of things at the shop like I always have.”
The machine next to his dad started beeping, and his mom put a hand on his dad’s arm. “Now calm down, Robert. Remember? The doc said to not do anything that will get your blood pressure up.”
A nurse rushed in just then, hurrying to check the numbers on the machine. She pressed the button for the blood pressure cuff to start, and turned to them. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave for a minute while I take care of Mr. Treanor here.”
“No problem at all,” Eli said as he turned and left the room.
“Eli,” his mom called out, stopping him in his tracks a few feet down the hall. He turned slowly to face her. “Now you know your dad didn’t mean all that.”
“I’m pretty sure he did.”
“He’s just frustrated that his body is getting older and forcing him to slow down. He loves that business, and just wishes he could be there, taking care of it.”
“I get it. The man only has so much love to give.”
“He loves you. He does. He just struggles to show it.”
Eli knew it was pointless to argue otherwise with his mom. He also knew it was pointless to believe her. It had been a very long time since Eli was the kind of son that deserved his dad’s love. “When you go back in, you can tell him that he doesn’t need to worry. I’m going to take good care of Treanor’s.”
His mom smiled and wrapped an arm around him, giving him a side hug. “You’re a good son.”
“Oh, and tell him that I wish him a speedy recovery. Like inhumanly speedy. The kind that will make them write an article for
the medical journals.”
She let out a chuckle that broke the tension, and made Eli give a quick chuckle, too.
“It’s good to have you back. I hope we get you for longer than you’re hoping to be here.”
Eli returned his mom’s hug and then left. He hoped his mom didn’t get her wish. Because too many things seemed too much like they were before he left so long ago.
He took a deep breath as he got in his car and headed back onto the freeway. He was a different person now, and things were going to turn out differently this time. It was going to start with his dad’s business.
After parking in the lot behind Treanor’s, Eli walked around to the front of the shop, then decided he was too close and walked to the middle of the pedestrian bridge that went over Snowdrift Springs. He stared at the building, imagining it through the eyes of a customer, looking for anything that might turn them away.
Sounds of group laughter took his gaze to the outdoor tables at the restaurant two buildings down. There were normally tables for five separate groups, but they were all pushed together into one large group. It looked like a mix of couples, families, high school friends and— he squinted— right in the middle of all of them was a very animated Whitney, telling some story that had them all enthralled.
Back in high school, it felt like this entire town didn’t like the two of them. He had never been able to understand how anyone could’ve not liked Whitney. But now it appeared that the town had finally figured it out. The thought brought a smile to his face. And for some reason, it brought to mind Ben’s conversation about Eli finding someone to date for longer than his self-imposed two week limit.
He let the smile fall from his face. Ben was wrong. He wasn’t going to date anyone, and he definitely wasn’t going to date Whitney. He hadn’t stepped foot in this town for twelve years, so he hadn’t done anything that would make them change their opinion about him, and he didn’t want to drag any of that Whitney’s direction. Besides, after the way he handled things when he left all those years ago, there was no way she would ever date him again anyway.
He was here to do exactly one thing. Make his dad proud by running his business well.
Oh, yeah. And plan the decorations for Fall Market.
Chapter Five
Whitney checked her appearance in the mirror of the bathroom at the Gazette. She twisted a curl that looked out of place, tucked one side of her hair behind her ear, applied new lipstick, smoothed down her shirt that read More Style than the AP, and straightened the front of her blazer. Then she dropped her hands to her sides and rolled her eyes at herself. Why was she checking to make sure everything was perfect just because Eli had texted, just like he’d promised, and she’d told him to meet her at the storage unit? She wasn’t the type of girl to primp. She got ready in the morning, and didn’t even glance in the mirror again all day. She did not care how she looked when she saw Eli again. Not at all. He was just someone she used to know who she still happened to be mad at.
She walked the block and a half down Main Street to City Hall, got the key to the storage unit from Gloria, the woman at the front desk, where Mayor Stone, one of the council members, and a police officer all stood chatting. She asked Officer Banks how his daughter was— “giving them a run for their money,” apparently, and they all joked about how they did the same with their parents. After saying goodbye, she headed around the corner to Pack It In storage. Eli was already there, leaning against the door to the unit, reading something on his phone, looking like a page out of a magazine.
She glanced down at her watch. She was never late! She glanced back up right as he did, and she called out, “I’m so sorry— I guess I socialized at City Hall longer than I realized.”
Apparently that was amusing to him, based on the crooked smile that took her right back to high school.
After unlocking the door, she pushed the key into her pocket and hefted the door open. Eli flipped the light switch, and they both stood there for a moment, staring at the stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes, plastic totes, large plastic-covered items— some that towered up to the ceiling— and wobbly stacks of things in plastic bags.
“Whoa,” Eli breathed. “Is this the burial ground of festivals past? Are we standing on hallowed ground?”
Whitney smiled. “Nope— it’s the birthplace of festivals future.”
“Oh, so that’s what the smell is,” Eli said, coughing at the dust. “Hope, possibilities, and,” he turned his head to the side as he looked up at a 15 foot replica of the Statue of Liberty, “moderation.”
“And three month old fries,” Whitney said as she picked up a bag with the Keetch’s Burgers and Shakes logo, containing the remains of someone’s lunch— probably Donald’s from the Fourth of July celebration— and made a bee-line for the garbage can just outside the door. When she came back in, she took off her blazer and slung it over one of the boxes. She noticed his smile when he read her shirt. It shouldn’t have made her heart tingle, but it did. She brushed away the feeling, pulled the clipboard out of her bag and said, “Okay, our first step is to go through all this stuff and make a list of the things we might be able to use. Then we’ll meet again and make a plan of how to do the decorations. Sound good?”
Eli nodded. “Start at the back corner, and move our way to the front?” He led the way through the maze of objects, stopping to hold up some long floral stems that had fallen across the makeshift aisle, like they were following an animal trail through undergrowth in the mountains.
When they reached the back corner, Whitney looked down at her clipboard, then set it on a stack of boxes and turned around, leaning against the boxes. “I’m pretty sure we can be cordial to each other with the best of them. But maybe we should think about addressing the elephant in the room.”
Eli reached up, petting the air, and said, “Hello, Elephant.” Then he took a deep breath, like he was bracing himself.
No, not bracing himself. Closing himself off. Whitney pushed forward anyway. “Graduation night, twelve years ago. What happened?”
Shrugging, Eli said, “What can I say? I was a stupid kid.”
Whitney took a deep, steadying breath. “Agreed. But what about the months after? The years after?”
“Stupid kid, stupid adult,” Eli said, writing invisible checkmarks in the air.
Whitney studied him. There was a definite storm brewing beneath the surface— she should’ve known better than to hit it head on and expect an answer right off the bat after all this time, when an answer hadn’t come at all in the past twelve years. Fine. He was going to be here a while; she’d just have to keep trying. She picked up the clipboard, and, still looking at it, said, “How’s your dad?”
“Recovering. Fighting. Still just as ornery. His doctor told him he won’t sign off on him going back to run the business for at least four to six weeks. Six is most likely for a surgery like his, but there’s no way my dad will let the doc keep him a day past the minimum.”
“He’s a good guy, your dad. I know he has impossible expectations for you, but he’s a good guy, deep down. He treats his customers well and does a lot for the community. He’s more social than he used to be, too.”
Eli gave her a look that she couldn’t quite understand, so she said, “What?”
“I just hadn’t ever thought about the fact that you would know my dad better than I do.”
“Have you seen them at all in the past twelve years?” She suddenly realized that she wasn’t sure how she would feel knowing that answer— would it make her more sad to know he had no contact with his parents either, or if he did, but still never made contact with her? She turned her back on him and opened the first box she saw.
“They come for a short visit every four years or so. My mom calls about once a month.”
“It looks like all these boxes are for Easter.” She turned to the next stack without making eye contact with Eli. She didn’t know what expression was on her face, and didn’t want to know what was on Eli
’s.
“Easter here, too.”
“Of course some things from other holidays might work for us. Let’s not rule anything out.”
“Oh good,” Eli said, pulling something yellow and fluffy out of a tote. “Because I would really like to see you in this ‘fall’ bunny costume.” He reached over and placed the bunny ears on her head.
She twitched her nose like a bunny. “Deal. But only if you dress up as a ‘fall’ elf.”
He laughed and took the bunny ears back off her head. “Maybe we better keep Easter right here where it belongs.”
“Oh! The archways!” Whitney made her way around a couple tall piles of boxes to where six metal arches stood that were each nearly ten feet tall and six feet wide. “I don’t think those have been used since... Founder’s Day maybe five years ago. And that was in the park. I’m not sure they’ve ever been used for Fall Market. She whipped around to face Eli. “We have to find a way to use these.”
He smiled at her enthusiasm. And even though she was still mad at him, things automatically slipped into a comfort level like back when they were in high school— for the first year and a half, when they were best friends, before they started dating—like they didn’t know how to act otherwise.
They went through all the boxes and totes, unwrapping big objects just enough to see what they were, and opening bags of supplies, writing down everything that could possibly be used for a fall celebration.
“We haven’t checked the boxes in that corner,” Whitney said. “Those are part of the banners for the Fourth, but those two boxes over there are promising. I can feel it in my bones.” Whitney scooted as close as she could to the stacked boxes that were blocking her path, but she couldn’t reach far enough to get them without falling face down on the boxes.