by Olivia Miles
“So you’ll essentially manage it from Seattle?”
“Yes.”
Max rubbed his chin thoughtfully, finally tilting his head in acceptance. “As long as the job gets done, I can’t argue. You know what you’re doing, and I trust you to handle the project as you see fit. I guess my one question for you is this...Why the hell do you want to get out of this town so badly?
“That obvious, huh?”
Max rose his eyebrows in response at the same time that Emily reappeared at their table to refill their water.
There was one reason Scott was desperate to get out of town. It wasn’t his father. It wasn’t even the business. Or the memories. The reason was the person standing less than two feet away from him. The person that was strangely starting to look like every reason to stay, rather than to go.
Twelve years ago he knew he would rather never see Emily again than lie to the girl he loved. And twelve years later, it was still the truth. He loved her, damn it. No amount of time was going to change that, and no amount of wishing was going to undo the reason they could never be together.
Chapter Seven
The caw of the crows through the half-open window next to her bed woke Emily as the first crack of sunlight peeked over the treetops in the distance. She rolled over and glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Then, with a groan, she flipped back over, snuggling deeper under the duvet, squeezing her eyes shut. She wished she could stay in bed all day, but it wasn’t possible. Even though Sweetie Pie didn’t open for another four hours, she knew she had to go in early to get a jump start on the baking.
They’d kept her at the diner until closing last night, which had its perks, really. After Scott’s strange mood yesterday, she wasn’t sure what was running through that handsome mind. She could spend the rest of her life wondering why Scott had treated her as he had, she could force it out of him, or she could see it for what it had been. Two young kids. Ancient history. Who was she to punish him for the sins of his past?
All the same, having a valid reason to avoid coming home last night had put her at ease just as the thought of another confusing conversation made her gut tighten. She didn’t need to be falling for him all over again, and the more time she spent with him, the more she increased the odds of that happening. When she’d counted her tips last night, she’d known the extra shift was worth the effort double-fold. Her plan was to pay the rent for this place for six months out, just to give Julia a cushion and ease the blow of her departure. If she even ended up getting accepted to that cooking school, that is. Yesterday’s mail had once again brought nothing but a stack of bills and catalogs for clothes neither she nor her sister could afford.
A knock on the door caught her attention and she turned to see Julia standing in the open doorway, looking hesitant. “I thought I saw you moving around. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“No,” Emily said, her voice tight. It was the first exchange the sisters had shared since their argument the other night. She thought she was over it, but now she realized Julia’s words still stung a bit. “I was going to make blueberry pancakes,” Julia offered, her expression hopeful enough to make Emily soften her stance. “You interested?”
Emily glanced at the clock. “Sure, so long as it’s quick. I need to be at Sweetie Pie’s soon to get a start on today’s menu.”
Relief swept Julia’s face as she bounded away, and the sound of pans clanking in the kitchen quickly followed. With a long, tired sigh, Emily pushed back the blankets and sat up, rolling her feet onto the old oak floors. Outside her window, the sun had fully risen, and the rain from the past two days seemed to have dried. It would be nice if this weather held up for the Spring Fling, she thought, and then noticed the hope she still felt over the possibility of seeing Scott there.
She frowned as she tied her lightweight robe around her waist, remembering some of the sweet things he had said to her back in high school, in those magical days and nights when they were finally free of everyone’s prying eyes. She grit her teeth, banishing the memories. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. Those words didn’t matter now.
“Thanks for making breakfast,” Emily said as she wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a mug of coffee from the freshly brewed pot. “This is a nice surprise.”
“Figured it was the least I could do for upsetting you.” Julia whirled around and met her gaze, her green eyes murky with concern. “I feel really bad.”
“Let’s forget about it,” Emily said as she stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee. She tapped the spoon against the rim of her mug and set it down. “Besides, you made some good points.”
She took in a breath, wondering if now was the time to come clean about applying to the culinary school in Boston. After the speech Julia had given her the other night, she was starting to think her concern that Julia would feel let down or betrayed was all in her own head. All this time Julia thought Emily was fine with things as they were—that she didn’t long for more out of her own life—and nothing could have been further from the truth. Emily did want more. A lot more. The problem was that none of it was really in her control. The school could reject her just as easily as Scott had—the two things she wanted most. She couldn’t have both. She might not even get one.
She stopped herself right there. What was she thinking? She and Scott were just exes now. There was nothing more to it than that.
Then why, she wondered, as she slid into her usual chair at the small kitchen table, did it feel like there might still be something between the two of them?
“I made some good points? Really?” Julia brightened as she turned back to the stove and plated the slightly burned pancakes. “Oops. The edges are a little black.” Her face darkened with guilt and Emily bit the inside of her check. “Guess you should never turn your back on pancakes.”
“They cook pretty quickly,” Emily agreed and then shrugged, “Come on. I’m sure they’re delicious. A little syrup will cover up any of the crunchy bits.”
They sat in companionable silence, eating their breakfast and leafing through the catalogs that had gathered on the kitchen table. Several times Emily opened her mouth to tell Julia about the application she had sent in, but each time she thought she could mention it, her heart would pound so loudly she had to stop herself. Up until now, the application was her own special secret. If she didn’t get in, it would be her own quiet loss. If she did...well, wouldn’t that be the more appropriate time to share the news? When there was actually news to share at all?
“Spring Fling’s tomorrow,” Julia mused.
Emily’s pulse skipped a beat. “That’s right,” she said, forcing a casual tone. Feigning disinterest, she flicked a page in the catalog.
“I wonder if Scott’s going,” Julia continued.
Refusing to feed into her sister’s overt insinuations, Emily took a large bite of the nearly inedible pancakes and leaned in closer to the catalog. It was useless. The page blurred and all she could see was Scott’s face. That boyish grin that tugged one side of his mouth, the sheepish way he’d glance at the ground and back up at her. Her heart started to flutter.
“With everyone in town attending, I wasn’t sure what his plans would include,” Julia was saying. “But when I talked to him last night, he told me he was thinking about going.”
Emily snapped her eyes to Julia’s grinning face. Her mind whirled as her breath went still. Julia’s bright green eyes sparked and she hid her growing smile behind the rim of her mug.
“You talked to Scott last night?” Emily clarified.
“Uh-huh.” Julia smiled and casually cut into her pancakes. “Oh,” she said, bringing her fingers to her lips. “These are delicious if I do say so myself.”
“Julia.” Emily stared at her sister, imagining a hundred different turns a conversation between her sister and Scott could have taken. “When di
d you talk to him?”
Julia regarded her quizzically. “I told you. Last night.”
Growing impatient, Emily forced a deep breath. Her sister was having quite a bit of fun with this, but Emily didn’t find it amusing in the least. In fact, she downright cared. Too much.
“Yes, but when last night? Did you run into him somewhere?”
“He stopped by here.” Julia lifted an eyebrow. “He was looking for you.”
Emily felt herself pale. So he had been serious when he’d asked her if she’d be around last night. But why?
“He wanted to return the pie plate,” Julia continued, motioning to the cleaned and empty pie plate sitting on the counter.
Well, that about summed it up.
Emily shrank back in her seat, and stared listlessly at her plate of burned pancakes. She knew she had no right to feel as disappointed as she did, but nevertheless her heart felt heavy. She was getting hopeful, setting herself up for a fall, wishing for something that wasn’t there, for someone who was long gone, just passing through. For someone who wasn’t hers to miss anymore.
“He asked about you,” Julia added, and Emily felt her pulse skip.
“Really?” She cut into her pancakes, attempting to cover her rising hope with the taste of charred batter.
“He seemed genuinely let down that you weren’t here.”
Emily sat back in her chair and gave her sister a level stare. “Maybe he was afraid you’d give him the third degree again.”
Julia laughed and waved her hand through the air. “Oh, please. He knows my bark is worse than my bite. I always used to tease him when he’d come over.”
Emily smiled at the memory. There seemed to be no greater amusement to the young Julia than spying on her sister and Scott, building up their romance to be so much more than it was in the end.
“So what happened then?” she dared to ask.
Julia shrugged. “I invited him in. He hesitated at first, but he couldn’t think of an excuse quick enough for me, so I gave him a beer and we talked.”
Emily dropped her chin and stared at her sister. “Beer? Since when do we have beer?”
“Since I bought some yesterday on my way home from work. You know, just in case we had any male suitors...”
Emily held up her hands. “Okay, then what happened?”
Julia took a sip of her coffee and pinched her lips. “My, my, aren’t we suddenly curious? And here I thought you were no longer interested in the comings and goings of Scott Collins?”
“Are you going to tell me how the conversation went?” Emily’s voice felt shrill, even to her own ears.
“Maybe you should ask him yourself,” Julia said with a sly smile, and Emily let out a shaky sigh.
“Fine,” she said briskly, pushing back her chair to stand. “I will.”
Julia’s smile widened. “I thought you’d say that.”
Emily paused from picking up the dishes. “Thought or hoped?”
Julia seemed to consider this for a moment. “Both, I think. Yes, both.” She shrugged. “Just in case you see him today, why don’t you borrow my black cotton sundress?”
Emily hesitated. “Thanks. I will. But not because I want to impress him or anything,” she added in a rush.
“Sure.”
“I mean it, Julia. Scott and I are just exes. Now he’s in town, and we’re behaving like civil adults. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Is that what you really want?” Julia gave her a hard stare and crossed one long leg over the other.
Emily released a long sigh and set the dishes in the sink. She turned the tap on high. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Scott has his own ideas.”
“Oh, that he does,” Julia said.
Emily whipped around to face her sister. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Emily, I saw the way he looked at you the other night. He still cares about you.”
Emily hesitated. “You’re not making any sense,” she muttered.
“I know I gave him a hard time the other night, but I wanted to see his reaction. I wanted to see if he felt bad for what he did to you all those years ago.”
“And what did you deduce?” As much as Emily was trying to tell herself not to care, she couldn’t help it. She had so many unanswered questions, and if Julia could give insight into the situation, then she wanted to hear it.
“He still cares about you, Emily. I thought maybe he’d be a jerk about it, brush it off, but he didn’t,” she said. “You saw for yourself. He looked like he felt genuinely...guilty.”
Emily hesitated. “Maybe,” she shrugged, turning back to the sink.
“So has he told you why he left like that, then?”
Emily tossed her hands up in the air, spraying soapy water onto the counter. “It doesn’t matter now, Julia. That was half a lifetime ago. It’s over. He’s moved on. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Sure it can,” Julia said easily. “I see two people who might still have feelings for each other who aren’t being honest about where things broke down.” Julia set a hand on Emily’s arm. “You’ll always wonder, Emily. You might have been too hurt back then to ask, but now is your chance to find out. Once you know, then you can move forward.”
Emily tried to ignore the implication that she hadn’t gotten over Scott yet. She let out an exasperated sigh. “I told you! He’s not even staying for long. He might not even be back.”
Julia just shrugged. “All the more reason to ask then. It’s now or never.”
“Why are you pushing this, Julia?”
“I just see two people who meant a lot to each other who have a lot of things left to say,” Julia said. “I say it like I see it, Em. What can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic.”
Emily blinked, wondering if she should take her sister’s opinion to heart or not. Julia had a way of getting ahead of herself, letting imagination take control, but she wouldn’t be so careless when it came to Emily’s well-being. If Julia thought that Scott still cared about her, then maybe her sister was onto something.
But no... Emily frowned, thinking of the things Lucy had told her yesterday, the way Scott was so eager to get out of their parents’ house. Out of town. His bags were still packed and waiting. He’d rented a car.
Disappointment tugged at her again. Scott had cared for her once, and maybe a part of him still had some lingering fondness for the time they’d shared. But there was no room for her in his life. There hadn’t been for the past twelve years and there wouldn’t be for the next.
Hopeless romantic. Emily shook her head. That’s exactly what Julia was. But when it came to herself and Scott only one word in that phrase applied: hopeless.
* * *
Scott leaned back against the old bench swing on his sister’s front porch and gazed over the hedge onto Main Street, for once looking to the center of town and all its buzz as an escape. Anything felt more desirable than sitting here, having a heart-to-heart with his sister.
Lucy pushed open the screen door and handed him a glass of iced coffee, taking a long sip from her own as she joined him on the swing. It creaked under the weight of their two bodies and began to sway slowly, naturally. They sat there quietly, as though no time had lapsed and they had never been apart. Scott glanced up at the back of the diner at the corner of the narrow side street the Miller cottage was nestled on.
He studied the second story of the building, trying to remember the exact layout of Lucy’s old apartment—well, Emily’s apartment now. If the bedrooms were across from the living room then, yep, the windows all the way to the left corner were the bedroom windows.
Realizing he was staring like some Peeping Tom into the bedroom windows of the Porter sisters, he jerked away his gaze, his pulse kicking up a notch as the fire escape
door flew open and Emily appeared on the metal landing.
Beside him, Lucy chuckled and called out, “Emily?” Under her breath she muttered, “What is that girl up to?”
Having reached the ground, Emily swiveled toward the house, alarm transforming her features when she registered her audience. “Oh. Hi.” Her normally pleasant smile was replaced with something tight and stilted.
Scott raised a hand by way of hello, matching his sister’s effort.
“You off to the bakery?” Lucy inquired.
Emily hesitated. Frowning, she looked around helplessly, as if searching for someone else to come along and answer the question for her. Scott watched her heave a sigh and then take a few long strides toward the cottage.
“I was going to get an early start on the baking,” she explained as she reached the bottom of the porch steps. She glanced at him and then quickly away.
“That a new dress?” Lucy asked.
Emily glanced down at herself and gave a modest shrug. “I borrowed it from my sister.” She cast another brief look in his direction and then looked down at her black cotton sundress.
“I think it’s cute,” Scott said before he could stop himself. The heat from his sister’s sidelong glance was enough to melt the ice in his glass, and he felt a rush of warmth creep its way up his neck.
After a deliberate pause that Scott would later pay her back for, Lucy said, “I agree, Em.”
“Oh, well...” Her eyes darted to his and she quickly looked down and dragged her foot through a patch of dirt.
The silence felt like an eternity and when Scott turned from Emily’s reddening cheeks to focus on the ice cubes in his glass, he could almost hear them crackling.
“Well, I should go,” Emily said at last, and Scott felt a twinge of disappointment.
His gaze lingered on her as she walked back toward the diner, her shoulders squared and proud, before she strangely seemed to break into a sprint as soon as she rounded the corner.