by Barb Curtis
Rob was walking proof of what love did to people. Lonely, disappointed, and depressed. He’d understand Tim’s reservations about getting into another relationship better than anyone.
Stacking their empty plates, Rob carried them to the sink. Tim drained his beer and got up for another. Rather than go back to the table, he sunk into a recliner. “This situation with Emily is moving fast, and I’m worried she’s getting too attached and that she’s going to want the whole nine yards from me, you know?”
Rob rubbed his three-day beard and took a seat on the couch. “So what if she does?” He shrugged, propping his bare feet on top of the stack of self-help books. “Emily’s solid, and let’s face it, prior to Melissa, you always kind of drifted through relationships. I get that you took a chance with Melissa, and it didn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean you should never give it a shot again. Everyone can see you have this great connection with Emily, and the two of you have a solid friendship as a base. I think you’d be crazy to pass that up.”
Well, that was the last thing he’d expected Rob to say, given his current problems. “I hear what you’re saying, and the last thing I’d ever want to do is lead her on…I’m just not sure I’m ready for what she wants.”
But he’d fallen for her, no question. The problem was, she wanted the same things Rob had once upon a time—the nice house, the perfect relationship, and probably the damn fence.
What if he could never be that guy again? And worse yet, what if he lost his best friend in all this?
Chapter Twenty-One
Life went back to more of a normal routine the following week, with Nana gaining a bit more strength and Emily’s dad having gone home to the Finger Lakes. The tension at Nana’s hadn’t improved on Saturday. Emily’s mom’s edginess only seemed to amuse Nana, who’d pointed out more than once that she had changed her outfit three times before Emily’s dad arrived.
Halfway through dinner it had become apparent that the choice coping mechanism for nearly everyone at the table was to get tipsy. Her dad had brought a couple of bottles of wine and kept everyone’s glass full. The only one not drinking was Nana, because of her meds, though she still laughed at every joke made, whether it was funny or not.
It had taken a few glasses of wine, but her mother’s guard had finally come down, and she’d stopped giving her dad the cold shoulder.
Emily had spent Sunday and Monday catching up on rest, cleaning her apartment, and doing pretty much every other chore she’d neglected while helping take care of Nana.
Tuesday she’d gone back to work full force. With the festival only a week away, she and Tim met with the committee to go over last-minute details. The little maps and passports Fuzzy designed had been printed and distributed to all the local businesses. Excitement for the festival increased, with shops starting to decorate their storefronts and advertise specials.
Despite being busy with the details, Emily had a lot of time to think about Tim, and she became more convinced than ever that he was pulling away. Sure, they still saw each other, but it mostly revolved around festival business. There was a definite change they needed to address—have an actual conversation that didn’t revolve around syrup vendors or Nana’s health, or Jay and Leyna’s wedding.
They’d been having a lot of fun together with no labels, but it was time to actually discuss the relationship they tiptoed around. Ultimatums weren’t usually Emily’s thing, but she was tired of playing games. If Tim never intended to bend on his relationship rules, she’d be better off knowing now.
With this conversation in mind, she’d asked him to meet up on Friday and walk over to Jolt with her. If she tried to talk to him in either of their apartments, she’d be surrounded by too many good memories and likely lose her nerve.
His light knock brought her out of her daze. “It’s open.”
He eased the door open and stepped into the kitchen. “Hey.”
God, what if this all backfired and he said let’s just go back to the way things were before? Could they remember how to be just friends? Would she even want to be?
He crossed the kitchen and met her with a soft kiss. Her hands roamed up his back, and she never wanted to let him go. She forced herself to stay focused. “Did you want to head over to Jolt?”
“Yeah, we should.”
A palette of mauve and gold painted the sky, and the streetlights around town square lit up one by one. He was quiet on the short walk, but then again, so was she. A million thoughts cluttered her head, all vying for her attention.
They both ordered a tea and carried them to a table near the back.
Tim sank into one of the plush armchairs.
Nope, he was definitely not himself, either. Maybe he’d beat her to the punch.
She took the seat opposite him at the table.
He traced his finger along the lip of his cup. “So, what’s on your mind?”
Just say it. Her stomach flopped and she pushed her tea away. “I need some kind of clarification here on what we’re doing.” She sucked at this. When he didn’t say anything, she scrambled to explain. “Everything is so vague. I just…I need to know this is going somewhere.”
He pressed his lips together and kept his gaze lowered. “Okay…”
She swallowed hard. “It’s just hard, you know? It’s all so casual, but my feelings for you don’t feel casual.” She squared her shoulders before she lost her nerve to use the c word. “I think we need to decide if we’re committing to each other or not.”
His head jerked up.
That got his attention. “Have you asked yourself where any of this is going?”
Awareness changed his expression and he set his cup aside. “Sure, it’s been on my mind. Things have been going really well with us, and I’ve loved every minute we’ve spent together.” His gaze darted to a magazine rack and then back to her.
“I guess I’ve been reluctant to think too much about it long term. I’m just taking each day as it comes, you know?” He ran a hand through his hair. “I know that’s not really fair to you, and sometimes I worry we made a mistake, sleeping together, because it upped the stakes and makes everything that much more complicated.”
For a second she couldn’t speak, and she had to try to find her breath and catch up to it. His words stunned her. “Do you regret it?”
“No.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know.”
Her heart began to pound. “Is there a part of you that thinks we could ever be more?”
His shoulders rose and fell. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
There was an enormous but in there, just waiting to slap her.
Too many I don’t knows. And she detested the word maybe.
Please God, don’t let him launch into some kind of pep talk, like “You’re great, Shorty, rah-rah-rah.” The perfect guy for you is out there…Her heart would collapse.
His silence lasted an eternity. “Emily. I’m worried I’ll end up disappointing you somehow.”
No pep talk, then, but his words were still a punch to her gut. Even more paralyzing than she’d expected. She couldn’t quite find her breath. “You are not a disappointment to anyone. That’s bullshit.”
He pressed his forehead into the palms of his hands before looking up. “No, it isn’t. I know the kind of girl you are. You want Prince Charming to carry you off into the sunset, and I don’t fault you for that. In fact, I want that for you. You deserve it.”
When his eyes glistened, a sob closed off her throat.
“It kills me to say this, but I don’t know if I can be that guy, Em. You know I don’t trust happily-ever-afters.”
Every fiber of her unraveled inside. Determined to stay strong, she sucked in a breath and nodded. “Well, I’ve been reminded lately that life is short, and I’m tired of wasting time. If I were ten years younger, I might be content with keeping it casual, but I’m running out of time to meet a guy and fall in love and get married and start a family. I want to make plans, like Leyn
a and Jay. I need to know if we’re on the same page or not, because my feelings have gotten really invested in this. Maybe too much.” And if after everything they’d shared the last couple of months, he couldn’t see how great they were together, then maybe everything was still just one-sided like it had always been.
If Tim Fraser couldn’t reciprocate her feelings, he didn’t deserve her.
He leaned back in his seat. “Do we need to have all the answers right now? I like what we’ve got going on here, but it’s only been a couple of months, Em, and we said we’d take it slow. Don’t you think it’s a little soon to discuss the future?”
“No, I don’t think it’s too soon. I think we’re great together, and it’s stupid to just keep tiptoeing around it. It’s obvious we both have feelings. We’re spending all our time together and getting closer by the day. If there’s no commitment in sight, then what’s it all for, Tim? We’re either doing this or we’re not. I will not be strung along.”
“Strung along?” He shook his head. “The hell with that. I have always been honest with you.”
She couldn’t hold out for him any longer. Carrying a torch for so long wore on her. It was time somebody carried one for her. If Tim refused to be that guy, she was better off knowing now. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “The thing is, it’s been going on a lot longer for me than it has for you.”
He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve liked you, Tim. A lot. For a really long time.” With the words finally spoken, a long breath released.
He closed his mouth, and took a sidelong glance at the seating area in the back. “Okay…like for how long?”
Her cheeks burned. Shit, why had she opened this can of worms? She leaned her elbow on the table and gathered her hair over one shoulder. “Remember when I made you that mixtape?”
Silence.
For crying out loud, here she’d been dwelling on it for years, and he didn’t even remember.
Seconds later, something seemed to click. His blank stare filled with disbelief as his eyes widened, a sea of stormy blue. “That was like the eleventh grade.”
Which might’ve actually been the most humiliating part of the entire thing. The fact that she’d allowed an incident so irrelevant, at least to Tim, to cause her so much heartache and affect everything that had come afterward. Her eyes welled up. She wished she could just flee from the coffee house, because it was too hot in here and it felt like a vise tightened around her throat.
A hot tear rolled down Emily’s cheek. “I tried to tell you a couple of other times, but it always backfired, and then we just slipped into this friend zone, and honestly, as important as you are to me as a friend, it’s felt like my own kind of purgatory because I’d come to terms with the fact that you’d never ever see me as anything else.”
She hugged herself. “I buried my feelings countless times over the years when we were living away or seeing other people. But then we got so close last year after you and Melissa split, and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I made a decision to avoid you. I’d completely sworn off you when you came up with this fake relationship.”
“And you didn’t want to do it.”
He swore under his breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “Em, I never would have put you in this position if I’d known—”
“I had my own motive for agreeing to it.”
He started to speak but stopped short, his brow rippling as he leaned forward. “What does that mean exactly, that you had your own motive? Like, you saw the fake relationship as an opportunity to get closer? To try to trick me into falling for you?”
“What? Trick you? No,” she said, as heat flared up her neck. “My motive was Nana’s party. I’ve been honest about that.” She might’ve hoped that spending time together as a pretend couple would give him a glimpse of the real thing, but she sure as hell wasn’t the one that dragged him into this. She didn’t force him to open up to her. A tear slipped out of her lashes, and she wiped it away. “If you’re too much of a coward to get over your commitment hang-ups, then I think we’re done here,” she managed in a low whisper. “I’ve said all I wanted to say.” She pushed away from the table, grabbed her purse, and somehow held back her tears until she got out onto the sidewalk.
Tim stared at the door long after Emily disappeared onto the street. Minutes might’ve passed, or hours. He couldn’t be sure. He just sat there in a stupor trying to make sense of what had just happened.
He’d known since the brunch that they were coming to a crossroads. But the fact that she’d been carrying a torch for him for years? That had come out of left field.
He’d always had her pegged as wanting a different type of guy. Somebody very polished, a hopeless romantic.
Basically somebody like her.
How wrong was he? Not only did she want the fairy-tale ending with a guy who was the exact opposite of that, but she’d apparently been dreaming of it since high school.
And then he’d gone and accused her of using the fake relationship to manipulate him. Nausea burned deep in his stomach. Emily would never do that—never trick him. She wasn’t Melissa.
And now she was across town square in her apartment, believing he didn’t love her, because he’d been too much of an idiot to admit it. She was gorgeous and funny, and he loved every moment he spent with her, and he’d just blown everything by choosing to hide behind his own fears.
The lone staff member turned off the music and started cleaning tables.
Fuzzy came out of the back room and clicked the door shut. He started to call out to his staff but instead his eyes fell on Tim and the two cups of tea on the table, cold and untouched. He hurried over. “What’s wrong? You look like you just lost your best friend.”
Tim swallowed, and after a few seconds of pondering, he tore his eyes away from the tea and leveled his gaze on Fuzzy.
“I think I just did.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What was a girl to do when a ball of fire blazed inside her heart and threatened to engulf her whole being from the inside out? When sappy songs flooded the airwaves and every channel on television aired romantic comedies? When every single thought that ran through her head made her want to pick up the phone and text the only person she couldn’t talk to?
Work.
Nonstop.
So that’s just what Emily did. Right after Leyna dropped everything Friday night and came over and then refused to leave until Emily practically pushed her out the door. And right after she’d cried herself to the point of being physically weak.
Saturday morning she hit the kitchen before the sun came up, and the hours since blurred together. Was it Monday now? She had to check her phone to confirm. Yes. Last-minute festival stuff had taken precedence, but the cake she’d had in her head for weeks wouldn’t leave her alone. And damn it, it had been just the thing to save her from her own misery.
What started as a vague image in her mind now cluttered her kitchen in various stages of construction.
A wedding cake, most people would assume, and it would resemble one, once complete. God knew at this point she’d never have her own wedding to plan, so she’d give her all to this work of art that would be the focal point of her storefront later this week during the festival.
Tim Fraser’s commitment issues would not stand in her way.
Early this morning, she’d lined her counter with parchment paper and set to work crafting maple leaves out of maple taffy. The ones she’d done yesterday were simply not good enough. She’d worked on them while distracted by a million other things—namely the social media frenzy over Tim’s newly single status. The information had leaked, and already, more women lurked around the entrance of Great Wide Open, probably looking to snag a spot on one of his guided tours. Rumors that he and Melissa had reconciled gained momentum, too.
Lars’s doing, if she had to guess. She avoided all traces of those stories. They served no purpose other than to mess with her head.
<
br /> At least since their breakup, her own phone had stopped pinging with unwanted messages, people no doubt forgetting about her already.
Cake dummies consumed half her counter space. Five tiers waited to be assembled. It would resemble a curved staircase, with maple taffy dripping over onto each tier. The last stage would be the placement of the leaves. The finishing touches had always given her the most satisfaction. This cake would be a showstopper.
By the time her phone began to repeat her angsty playlist, she’d had enough. Her cramping hand desperately needed a break, and she had a string of texts from Leyna dishing that a pigeon had shit on Jay in town square that morning—an attempt to cheer her up.
It worked, actually.
A gentle giggle gained momentum as she pictured the scene unfolding and imagined the combination of curse words Jay probably spewed. Eventually it escalated into a kind of psychotic, can’t-catch-your-breath, tears-streaming-down-your-face laughter.
Thankfully no one was around to have her committed. Emily’s shoulders still shook when she replied to Leyna. Nana says a bird shitting on you is good luck. When she’d collected herself, she made a few calls about last-minute festival details and fired off an email to the committee members to make sure everything was set for the kickoff on Friday. She’d have too much to deal with later in the week, so the more she could accomplish now, the better.
Satisfied, she powered off her phone and stuck it in her purse to keep it out of sight, so she wouldn’t be tempted to scroll through social media to read the latest gossip about Tim.
She didn’t need any reminders of his relationship misgivings.
His problem to figure out.
It occurred to her when the sun stretched around to shine in the front windows that she’d skipped breakfast, and when did she last have a coffee? Because she was avoiding Jolt, she brewed a pot and tore the wrapper open on a granola bar. While her coffee percolated, she stood back to admire her work.