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“I’m not going to defend Boone to you, Jake. We’re done. We ended months ago. There’s nothing else to say.” Sarah moves back to the door. Her hope is admirable, futile though it is.
“Your sweatshirt says enough.” It’s black with Boone’s number on it and ugly as hell. “You should take it off.”
“I’m not doing this, Jake.” She finally backs away from the door to gain some distance from me.
“Doing what?” I ask and step deeper into her cabin. I pick up the book at the top of her stack. “What are you reading?”
She swipes it out of my hand. “Give it to me.”
I move around her and pick up one after another from the stack. “Pirates, good choice. What’s this one? He’s wearing an old-fashioned suit.”
Sarah reaches for the rest, but they spill on the floor. “This is a good reminder,” she mumbles to herself.
“It’s a great reminder of how amazing we were together.” It’s a reminder we should never have broken up. I move into the kitchen area, knowing she’ll follow behind, and flick on the overhead light. “Now it’s time for dinner.”
I check the cabinets and then try the refrigerator. They’re all empty. Has she been starving herself as a form of vacation fun?
Sarah rubs at her temples and groans my name. “You’re not leaving, are you?” she asks. I shake my head. “The box of hot chocolate packets by the kettle.” She points in their direction. “Tiramisu and fruit. They were going to be my dinner.”
Her favorite dessert. She mentioned it once, so I arranged for a local bakery to send their stock to her hotel room after Atlanta. She invited me over, and I didn’t leave until the following day. Ladyfingers dipped in coffee can accomplish amazing things when you need them to.
“Both of them?” I smile at the image of her snuggled upon the loveseat, my new quilt over her legs, and a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. I’d be on the other side of the loveseat, reading her book aloud, with my feet in her lap. “Well, let’s eat then. Go sit down; I’ll bring everything to you.”
Her glare is hilarious. “I could have you arrested for trespassing.”
I toss her my phone. “Don’t forget to add a kidnapping charge.”
Sarah sits in the cabin’s small eating area, a square table with only two wooden chairs. “You should know; I haven’t thought about you in weeks.”
That’s funny because we haven’t spoken in months. I set the kettle to boil and find a knife to cut up her dessert. Despite my teasing, the truth is I finished a delicious homemade dinner not that long ago. I cut a tiny sliver for myself and leave the rest for Sarah.
“That’s all?” she asks when I set the ridiculous meal before her. “What about you?”
“I already ate.”
That earns another glare. “How did you get here?”
“I drove you.”
“That’s not what I meant. How did you end up on an empty country road in January?”
“I was visiting some people I knew. At the last minute, I took the scenic route home. The view was better than I hoped.” I wink at her and swallow my share of tiramisu in one bite.
I spent the last several days in my childhood home. It isn’t easy to see my family during the season, so I take advantage of the long break over Christmas and January. With four younger sisters and my mother to care for, keeping up is a constant struggle. Our father is gone because of me, so I consider them my most important responsibility.
“Friends?”
“I’ve known them forever,” I answer and lean back, waiting for Sarah to inquire further. She doesn’t, so I say, “It was a nice break, and now I’m with you.”
My family isn’t a secret, not because I keep them hidden. It’s more that I never volunteer the information. There are plenty of ways to further my career that don’t require using them as PR fodder. It’s working, too, even if my plans are progressing slower than I hoped.
I scoot down in my chair to wrap my legs around hers. Sarah stiffens and presses her back against the seat.
That earns me my third glare of the evening. She drops her fork, and it clatters on the glass plate. “Stop.” She points at me, and I can see her chest moving. “We were barely a couple, and we aren’t now. We had a good time, nothing else. So stop.”
“That was your decision, not mine.” I respected it and didn’t push back when she made that ridiculous claim about the new boyfriend. I believed it for a few weeks, but she attended the race every Sunday, proving the boyfriend claim to be a lie. Sarah would not travel with a love-struck boyfriend waiting at home. She especially would not travel if the man waiting at home was good enough for her. “How’s your dating life?”
“None of your business.”
