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“Working at the museum?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to be an archivist. I’m also going to help with displays in duration and things like that. You know how it is here. Many hats.”
“Of course.”
“Hi, Heath,” Dahlia said, smiling broadly, and Ruby wanted to dump her coffee on her sister.
“Hi, Dahlia,” he said, backing up slightly. He was intimidated by Dahlia. A lot of men were.
Ruby admired that about her sister. That she was indefinably terrifying to the male species. Ruby herself could not claim to unsettle anyone. Not that she wanted to intimidate Heath. She didn’t know if she really wanted to talk to him either.
He was the same. A comforting sort of handsomeness that felt good to look at. Smooth around the edges and just pleasing, without creating any reckless heat in her.
“Are you still working at your dad’s?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s good work. And I don’t mind it.”
Living the cabinetmaking dream, apparently. Not that there was anything wrong with that. It just wasn’t what he had wanted to do when they’d been together. And certainly not what he’d gone away to college for. But Heath’s unrealized dreams were not her responsibility.
You are also back, Ruby.
That wasdifferent. She was working at the museum, with Dana. It was what she’d gone to school for.
“I’d like to have coffee sometime,” he said.
She shifted. “Sure. I’m... Not now. I’m headed out to...the museum.”
“Are you walking?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ll walk you.”
“Dahlia, are you...walking over to the newspaper office now?” Ruby asked, somewhat hopefully.
“No,” Dahlia said, grinning.
And Ruby didn’t really know how to politely decline his offer, and Ruby could tell that her sister wasn’t about to bail her out. And fair enough, really. She was an adult. If she really didn’t want to walk with him she should say. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was just that... Well, she didn’t want to.
But instead, she found herself waiting as he ordered coffee, then meandered back to her table, and then she picked up her own coffee and began to walk out the door with him.
“It is nice to see you,” he said, once they were out on the street.
Ruby surveyed the main street, the neat little square that sat in the center, where the road forked and the two lanes went around a patch of grass with trees whose leaves were beginning to change. Many of the businesses had American flags waving with overpronounced patriotism in the breeze, the redbrick facades bright, the trim a sharp white. She wondered how many coats of paint had gone over that trim in the years since the buildings had gone up. Probably hundreds. That was maybe not even an exaggeration. One layer of paint going straight over the other, drying crisp and white and new.
And if you are thinking about drying paint while walking next to a man, you really are not interested.
She looked at him and his boyish features and thought maybe she really ought to feel more for the man she had thought was her first true love. She knew now that she had never loved him. She had been enraptured by the idea of being in love. She’d been such a fierce romantic.
Maybe she still was.
But distance had well and truly broken any bond she had initially felt with Heath. “I think it’s good that you’re back,” he said, sort of abruptly.
“You do?” She hoped this wasn’t leading to any kind of declaration.
“The town doesn’t feel right without you, Ruby. You’re like the mascot.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “A mascot?” She immediately imagined herself doing a jig at the center of the town square.
