“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re being useful and extremely pleased with yourself. It’s a thing.”
Jordan leans, all nonchalance, and shrugs. “Maybe I sent a few texts. Called some people. Let folks know Springs & Bells could use a good week.”
“How many people?”
Another shrug. “More than a couple.”
I stare, the shelving pressing into my shoulder blades. “You orchestrated a hardware-buying spree.”
“I just provided information. People chose what to do with it.”
“Jordan…”
The mask slips. Suddenly their face is all earnestness, voice soft and serious. “It’s evidence, Maddie. You matter. This store matters. People just needed a nudge.”
The fight goes out of me. I scan the store, the register tape, the empty shelves, the footprints and scuffs, proof of life. The wall around my heart gives, a little, enough for something warm and wild to sneak through.
I shake my head, hard, and start flipping switches, killing lights with more force than needed, because if I keep looking at Jordan, I’ll either cry or kiss them or both.
Jordan lets me go and finishes the returns. A few minutes later they follow in silence, and that silence is the good kind—the steady, waiting kind.
*
Back at the house, Jordan makes pasta because my body is running on fumes and adrenaline and not much else. We eat at the kitchen table, everything the same and yet nothing quite the same; the air shifted, the space remade. Jordan tells a story about a chimney job gone wrong, whiskey in a snowbank, and I laugh so hard I nearly fall off my chair.
Then the phone rings with an Arizona area code. I know before I look. Drew’s mother, same time every few weeks, a ritual more reliable than the house itself.
I stare at the phone for two rings, thumb hovering. Jordan, washing plates, glances over, goes gentle and quiet.
I answer. “Hey.”
“Maddie, honey.” Her voice is sunlight and patience, warm as always. She asks after the store, the garden, the never-ending zucchini. I answer on autopilot, one hand crushing thecountertop, the other gripping my phone. We do this dance every time, comfort and landmines all at once.
Then it comes, careful, gentle. “Elaine mentioned you’ve been seeing Jordan lately.”
I go still. My white-knuckled grip could crack the counter. I brace for the judgment, the awkward pause, the hedging.
It doesn’t come.
Just a heartbeat, then, “Good. He’d like that.”
The dam inside me goes. Not all at once, but cracks spread, like ice on a spring pond. My breath shakes out, and then it’s tears, real and ugly, sliding down the cabinet to the floor, completely undone. I cry into the phone, into my hand, and Drew’s mother just stays, present and silent, not fixing or soothing or papering over, just holding the space with me until I can breathe again.
Jordan appears. Soft and solid, settling beside me on the floor, close but not crowding, a steady presence at my side. They don’t touch, just wait, patient and warm.
I cry until my whole body aches, until my shirt is soaked and the tissues Jordan finds me are gone, and I have nothing left but exhausted, shaky relief.
When it passes, I wipe my eyes and say, “I’m okay.”
“I know you are, honey,” his mom says, soft and soothing in that way only a mother can manage. “Call me next week?”
“I will.”
“Love you, Maddie.”
