Page 37 of 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover

There’s hardly any traffic in Windfall. It’s a neighborly town where drivers stop for pedestrians and slow for cars that need to merge. With Delilah this close to me, I wouldn’t mind a standstill or two. “Was the dishwasher fine this afternoon?”

“Yeah. Thanks again for that.” She’s being polite. Cordial but stiff.

Time to play twenty questions. “Do you still eat pickles?”

A quick glimpse shows her side-eyeing me. “Yes.”

Guess who’ll be buying ten jars at his next grocery shop? “What’s your favorite show you’ve seen the past ten years?”

“The Punisher. It’s so intense.” She fiddles with her seat belt. “Yours?”

“That’s so wild,” I say with as much fake enthusiasm as possible. “Mine’s The Punisher too.”

Even from the corner of my eye, I catch her headshake. “You’re so full of shit.”

Busted. “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is up there, and I recently watched Gilmore Girls, which was adorable.”

“And . . . more shit.”

“It’s rude of you to make fun of my digestive system.”

“It’s rude of you to ask me a simple question you’re not willing to answer.”

“But I did answer. I love Mrs. Maisel’s hilarious antics, and the cute town of Stars Hollow reminded me of living in Windfall.” Delilah’s silence indicates she’s not buying what I’m selling. I get it. Before witness protection, I loved binging Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad. After, not so much. “I can’t watch anything with crime and twisted deceptions. Kind of sets off my tendencies to fantasize about torturing my father with a set of rusty pliers.”

Harsh, I know. You try having your life torn apart and hastily glued back together with corrosive lies.

“Wow, E,” she says quietly, then swivels toward me more fully. “You seriously love those other shows?”

“Have you seen the outfits on Maisel?”

She laughs. “Only you, Edgar Eugene Bower.”

I ease my foot off the gas, slowing us down. Whatever it takes to keep us in my new used truck for a few extra seconds. “Do you do any of the baking at your shop?”

While I feel her attention on the side of my face, I don’t check if I’m getting a can-I-risk-trusting-him-with-personal-details perusal or if it’s more of a what-does-his-six-pack-feel-like perusal. Either way, my whole right side buzzes.

“I made all the food the first couple years,” she finally says. “Never took time off. When the shop started earning enough to hire a baker, I found Angel. She does most of it now, with Leif or whoever’s hired at the time.”

“Those kitchen-sink bars are still my favorite, tied with everything else you make.” She doesn’t reply with a snarky or light comment. Her silence lingers so long that I glance at her. “What?”

“Being around you brings back a lot of memories,” she says, her voice hesitant.

There’s no way she has me beat on memory consumption. I’m so drunk on ours I need a fifty-step program. “Good memories?”

Another pause. “You were my best audience when we were young—laughing at my bad jokes, telling me my failed baking experiments were the best things you’ve ever eaten, lying to my face. I missed that about you.”

“You missed me lying to you?”

She shoves my shoulder playfully. “I didn’t miss your obnoxious humor, but you always went out of your way to lift me up. Like when my dad died, I was such a mess and you wouldn’t leave my bed. You kept your arms so tight around me, but—”

“I had to pee,” I cut in. Fuck, did I have to pee. “I mean, I didn’t piss the bed, to be clear.”

She laughs under her breath. “You were bouncing your knees and I couldn’t figure out why, then I asked if you were stiff or thirsty, and you started going on about how water wasn’t allowed to be discussed and that you might have a bladder infection from not peeing and a bunch of other nonsense I don’t remember, but I remember laughing. Laughing so hard on the toughest night of my life, all because of you.” She sighs and sinks back into her seat. “You worry about others before you worry about yourself, and you always went out of your way to cheer me up. Those are rare qualities. I’m happy you haven’t lost them.”

I do my best to keep my focus on the road, not on how her words please the heck out of me . . . and the way they gnaw at my gut. The guy she planned to marry didn’t lift her up. Hugo tore her down, made her feel insignificant, and I want to say something. Offer comfort. With her engagement ruse, my lips are sealed on the topic. Unless I don’t mention specifics.

I turn off the main road, loose gravel rocking my truck as I drive toward the town’s dog shelter. “After what my father did, it wasn’t easy keeping a positive outlook. I dissected every interaction we had—conversations, times we laughed together, times we fought. I was convinced I did something to push him over the edge, that I maybe begged too much for a certain video game, complained about a bike Avett had that I wanted too. I thought my badgering him to buy me things might have pushed him to take a risk, earn more cash, provide for his family. In the end, I learned a valuable lesson.”