Page 46 of Pumpkin Spice and Promises

I told her Elizabeth had brought me dinner.

Becca’s eyes went bright. She didn’t interrupt.

“And I sat there,” I said, turning my coffee on the table, not looking at her, “doing the math on it. On how I’m a grown man and a woman bringing me dinner broke something loose in my chest like it was the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me. And it is. That’s the part I can’t get around, Bec.” I made myself look up. “I don’t know how to let someone take care of me. I realized I have no idea how to be on the other end.”

“I know,” Becca said quietly. “You’re always the one who steps in to take care of everyone else.” Her voice cracked. “You made me lunches with little notes in them, Matt. Do you remember that? You were barely more than a kid yourself. You’d write the dumbest jokes on the napkins so I’d have something to look forward to at the lunch table, and I thought every kid’s brother did that. I didn’t figure it out until later that no, that was just you, that was just my brother deciding I was going to have one nice thing a day if it killed him.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, fast, annoyed at herself. “And nobody was writing on your napkins. That whole time. There was nobody up the chain doing for you what you were doing for me, and you decided, somewhere in there, that wanting to be taken care of was a luxury you’d skip. So you skipped it. For years and years.”

The café went on around us, the door chiming, Violet laughing at something at the counter, the ordinary morning noise of a town that had no idea two of its people were quietly falling apart in the purple chairs in the back.

“I entered you in that stupid contest,” Becca said, “because I could not stand it one more year. I didn’t enter you to set you up with Elizabeth. I knew she’d make you have fun. You can’t be around her and not smile. Although”—she gestured at me with the fork, wet-eyed and grinning now—“I will be taking full credit forever. I entered you because I wanted you to have one thing, just one, that was only yours. That you did for no reason except that it might make you happy.” She reached across and put her hand over mine, the way Elizabeth had in the truck, and I thought about how the two of them had never once compared notes and had both somehow known to do the same thing. “And then you went and—you’re falling for her, and I am overjoyed because you are an overachiever at everything you do and her default is always kindness and you are going to make each other happy.”

I laughed, which came out wrecked, and scrubbed a hand down my face, and told her the rest of it, the part I hadn’t said to anyone, including myself, until the words were already in the cinnamon-warm air.

“I’m scared I’ll do something wrong,” I said. “She’s—Bec, she does so much, she’s so busy and stressed and amazing. I—” I stopped. Started over. “I see her. I see the part of herself that she hides.”

Becca was quiet for a moment.

“You said it out loud, perfectly, in one breath.” She squeezed my hand. “Matt. The fact that you’re scared of getting it wrong is the entire reason you’re going to get it right. The ones who get it wrong are the ones who never once worry about it. You’ve been worried about everyone else your whole life. Pointing some of that at yourself isn’t going to break you. It might actually be the thing that fixes you.”

She let me think it over. Then she pulled her hand back, picked up her fork, and ate the bigger half of the cinnamon roll, because she is still my little sister and some things don’t change.

“Can I tell you the thing I actually came here to say?” she said between bites. “Now that you’ve done all my work for me by having feelings in public.”

“I don’t think I can stop you.”

“You can’t.” She pointed the fork at me. “You spent your whole young life making sure I had one. A whole life, a good one, the kind where I got to actually be a kid—even knowing what I knew, even in that house. You held the bottom up so the floor never fell out from under me. I saw you do it. I always saw you do it. You did that. Nobody made you, and our parents never thanked you, and you did it anyway.” Her eyes filled again, and this time she didn’t fight it. “It’s your turn, Matt. You’re not on duty anymore. Nobody needs saving. The job’s done, and it turned out great. Look at me, I’m a delight.” She wiped her face and laughed. “Go be a person who wants something for himself. You’re so far behind on it. You’ve got a lot of wanting to catch up on.”

“Thanks, Bec,” I said, which was not enough, and which she understood to mean all of it anyway, because she’s my sister.

“Pay for the cinnamon roll,” she said. “I bought feelings, you buy breakfast. That’s the deal.”

“Fair.”

“So.” She sat back, wiped her eyes one last time, and switched gears with whiplash efficiency. “What’s next? In the festival. What are they making you do?”

“Pumpkin carving round.”

“Oh, no.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I love it. I’m delighted. You’re going to be terrible.” She propped her chin on her hand. “What are you carving?”

“I have no idea.” I heard how flat it came out and didn’t bother fixing it. “I’ve been thinking about it for days. Every idea I get sounds stupid the second I picture myself standing out there holding it.”

“Okay—” she pointed the fork at me again, which by now had the authority of a gavel “—stick to the classics.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning a face, Matt. A pumpkin face. Two triangles and a mouth. That’s it.”

“That’s what a nine-year-old carves.”

“That’s what a nine-year-old carves well,” she said. “You know what happens to every man who gets clever at that thing? He tries to do a wolf howling at the moon, and messes it up, and by the end it looks like a potato having a bad dream, and everybody claps politely and then makes fun of it.” She took the last bite of my half, uninvited. “Meanwhile some guy does a classic jack-o’-lantern with a crooked grin, and the crowd goes wild, because everybody watching the contest is eight years old for about four seconds and remembers doing it on newspaper on their kitchen floor.”

I thought about that. “Huh,” I said.

“Yeah, huh. I’m very smart. It’s a known thing about me.” She grinned. “Also, and I say this with love, you have the hands of a man who could accidentally put a knife through the back of a pumpkin. Aim low. Aim achievable.”