AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh Not Jane? What do you mean? She was a treat.”
“I’m sure she’s the reason people keep coming back.”
“Honestly there’s something freeing about bad customer service,” Carter says.
“Yeah, I mean they probably won’t care when we get our food and immediately start shoveling it into our mouths. I plan on tipping the plate of fries directly down my throat.”
“And they definitely won’t even blink when I manage to eat sixty bucks worth of lobster in five minutes.”
“I’m going to dump my milkshake over my fries like sauce.”
“And I’m going to slurp my chowder with a straw.”
That one makes me burst out laughing. “Gross.”
“But it made you laugh, Ange, so mission accomplished.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why is that the mission? Why are you being so…so…nice?”
All of the possible answers to that question run through my head, and somehow the worst one is this: that he feels so badly about what he did and how he treated me all those years ago, that he thinks he needs to make up for it. That making me laugh, that the kiss, is all about pitying me.
If Carter were to think of me like that, to think that I was still hung up on him after all these years, I couldn’t handle it. I’d collapse from shame.
But instead, he just says, “Because I like making you laugh. You have a nice smile and an even prettier laugh, and I’ve seen both too rarely over the last year since you moved back.”
“That would be the job,” I mutter.
“Was the job why you moved back? After all those years?”
My gut clenches at this. I don’t want to explain myself and I don’t want him to dig into why I stayed away for so long.
“No,” I say. “Not really. I got tired of only seeing my moms on holidays and in the summer.”
“But you were in New York. Why come back to Harborview?”
“I like New York, but I actually love Harborview. And I spent the first eleven years of my life in New York, and then the years of college and my masters degree, and working after. I had my fill. Especially of sharing an apartment with three other girls and having to go to a laundromat.”
These things aren’t even lies, just carefully veiled versions of the truth.
Ididget tired of New York City. But that happened way earlier than I’m admitting to, though. I wanted to come back to Harborview as soon as I finished my master’s degree. But I didn’t want to see him. I could barely handle it in the summer, running into him at the beach or at O’Malley’s or the bookstore. Sure, Carter was often away at school, but the University of Maine is close to Harborview. So close that he can come home for an evening or a weekend whenever he wants to.
Plus, everything in Harborview just reminded me of him, for a while anyways. Until I decided it was time I reclaimed it. Made something new for myself there.
“You were crazy for ever leaving Maine in the first place,” he says with a shrug.
Carter is a true Mainer. I get the sense that he’ll never leave.
“I’m not even really from Maine, though. I was born in the city.”
“Doesn’t matter. You love it here.”
I blush at that for some reason, but am spared coming up with something witty to say, because just then, Minnie arrives with the first of our food.
Carter’s two lobster rolls, my clam roll, and a huge basket of fries.
“Minnie,” Carter says, staring intently at his lobster roll, clearly salivating, “you’re my hero.”
I glance at Minnie, and she looks like she’s about to fall over.
