“I could do it alone but for some reason people think it’s weird if you go snow tubing by yourself. A guy has to be careful with his reputation.”
“Look, Mason,” she started, and his face instantly lost some of its jovialness. Mia had been right. How she’d been behaving around him wasn’t her normal M.O. If she wanted things to return to how they were before, she’d have to revert to her old self, the cynical barista who gave no shits about finding love and whose heart was untouchable, unhurtable. Except this time, the words were harder to get out. “I-I’m here to work. That’s all.”
She almost added the wordsorrybecause the rejection gave her an uneasiness in her gut, as though she’d made the wrong choice even if her brain was convinced it was correct. Some guys didn’t get the hint if she wasn’t blunt; therefore, the apology remained missing. She focused her attention on finishing his drink, rolling the molinillo between her palms.
“It’s okay,” Mason said, which raised her head in surprise. She was used to expecting either silence or contempt, both of which she could handle. While his eyes reflected sadness, his lips tipped in a slight smile. He took his drink from her. “I’ll leave you to your work then. Thanks for the drink.” Mason slid his money across the counter before departing.
She continued to watch him, expecting the nervousness to leave her, to be replaced with a sense of relief. The anxiety remained, as though it was too late to return to the way it was before.
“I’m back!” Mia said, bounding into the horse trailer later, glowing with joy.
“What took you so long?” Natalie asked, irritation flaring through her. For the first time, she experienced annoyance at perfect Mia with her happy marriage and getting to live a blissful life, where she got to partake in things such as skipping through family farms to pick out a Christmas tree with the love of her life. What she felt wasn’t logical, but she felt it all the same, even while realizing how unfair it was to her best friend.
Mia flinched. “I’ve only been gone for twenty minutes, and you knew I had to also take pictures.”
“I asked you here to help me.” For some inexplicable reason, Natalie wanted to cry but she could only allow anger through. Tears didn’t make sense but being mad at the situation somehow did.
“Sorry. Was it really that busy?”
“No. It’s just… Mason stopped by while you were gone.”
“Okay,” she said, appearing not to understand the implication.
“He wanted…” As much as Natalie didn’t want to prove Mia right once again, she had to confide in someone. “He wanted to see if I’d hang out with him after closing.”
Surprisingly, her friend didn’t throw confetti in the air. “He asked you out?”
She picked at the edge of the countertop. “Yeah. Wanted to take me sledding near the barn.”
While Mia’s expression didn’t change, she did touch a hand to her chest.
“Stop it. You know I can’t.”
“Come on. I mean, I understand, but also I don’t understand. You’re really going to deny yourself sledding because you’re that worried about becoming your parents. It’s just a fun evening of sledding. He didn’t ask you to move in with him.”
“It’s not just—” Natalie stopped herself. She had told her a lot, but she hadn’t confided everything. “I almost had a quick marriage myself.”
“What?” The word vibrated off the walls. “When was this?”
She released a frustrated groan, fighting the urge to cry again. “You’re not going to judge me are you? It’s not something I’m proud of.”
Mia’s shocked expression softened. “No. We’ve all done something we’re not proud of. That’s just a normal part of life.” She rubbed a reassuring hand along Natalie’s arm. “You can tell me.”
She shrugged her hands. “I was nineteen. I’d just started working for my uncle. Some guy came into the coffee shop, started flirting with me. He was cute and I was flattered so I agreed to go out with him. I was instantly in love. Every day, after work, I’d hang out with him and I was so sure he was the one. And after a week of us being obsessed with each other, he asked me to marry him and I said yes. We were going to run off to the state line.”
Mia handed the drink she made to a customer while paying attention to Natalie. “Wait, so you’ve been married?”
“No, thank God. He was pressuring me to get married as soon as possible because his job was transferring him to the East Coast, and wouldn’t it be great to start our lives together as soon as possible? And I thought, yes, this is it. I can do this because I loved him. But I started thinking about what that really meant, leaving my whole life, my family, everything I know. It suddenly hit me that maybe it might be a good idea to stop and slow things down.
“I decided maybe we should wait for a little bit, not rush into it. Then he was different. Stephen went from someone who was charming to someone cruel. He insulted my family, my job, saying he thought I was someone who was special, someone who was stronger, but apparently, he was wrong about me, that I didn’t care about him at all. I was just a carefree flirt who didn’t care what I did to people’s hearts. And I started to think that maybe he was right.”
“Are you kidding? Of course, he wasn’t right.”
She nodded. “He said dealing with someone like me wasn’t worth it.Iwasn’t worth it. I was making him feel nothing toward me. And it killed me because if I truly loved him, I’d be able to do this for him. And if he had loved me, he’d understand that I wasn’t ready. If I can almost make a huge mistake whilethinkingI was in love, what kind of trouble can I get into if it’s actually the real thing? And the funny thing is that there never was any job. He’d lied to me. He was unemployed, couch surfing at a friend’s house and was about to get kicked out. But I’d been so charmed by him, I didn’t see anything. I’d probably be miserable if I had married him. And why be stuck and miserable when I can work in a horse trailer on a Christmas farm with you?” She did her best to lighten things with a smile at the end, like none of this bothered her anymore.
“Okay, that guy was clearly a douchebag, but Mason isn’t him. So, you got whatever you needed from that experience, and you learned. You can do better.”
“Yeah, well, now I’m looking out for myself. So now you understand.”
