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He nodded. “Okay.”
“I know it means we’ll see each other less—”
“Hey, this is important to you, and you have to do the field practicum to get your degree, so that’s your priority.” He looked up at her. “I’m not going to mess that up for you, no way. Everyone in town is already convinced I’m going to ruin your life, and I’m determined to prove them wrong just to be contrary.”
She smirked. “Honestly, my last field practicum was kind of horrible.”
“Oh, really?” He eyed her.
“I just have to get through it,” she said, looking out across the counter. “Then I’ll graduate, and then…” She trailed off. The night they’d hooked up that first time, when he’d given her a hard time about being a social worker, well, maybe she didn’t like to think about that either.
“Then what?” He was bent over his phone. “I’m going to text Max and see if he wants Mondays and Wednesdays. He was saying he wanted more afternoon hours.”
“Well, then I’ll graduate and I’ll take my boards and I’ll get certified, and…” She cringed. She turned around and leaned into the counter. “What if you were right, hypothetically, and I’d be a terrible social worker?”
He looked up from his phone. “I never said that. Babe, you’re not terrible at anything. You’re brilliant and incredible at, like, all the things.”
She tilted her head at him.
“You are,” he said.
“Okay, well, you’re biased and you also don’t know me very well yet.”
“Uh, I’ve known you for a long time,” he said. “We’ve been working together here before we started dating, and I know you.”
She sighed. “You did so say it. It was the night of the, um, the night of the first bargain.”
His eyebrows shot up and something crossed his eyes, a mixture of lust and affection, and she knew that expression now, knew it as only hers, and it made her knees feel a little weak. She liked him. He set his phone down on the counter. “Maybe I was giving you a hard time, now that I think about it. But I don’t think I said you’d be terrible at it.”
“You said I have no backbone,” she said. “And you’re right, I don’t. And I don’t like conflict. And all it is, Niles, is conflict. Constant conflict.”
He furrowed his brow. “Well, I mean, yeah, I guess it would be.”
She swallowed. “But it’s too late now. I mean, I’m going to graduate in June, so I just… head down, butt down, do the work. I’ll have a master’s when it’s over. I could do something else, maybe.” She chewed anxiously on her lip.
“That’s seriously how you feel about it?”
“I don’t know.” She squared her shoulders. “Maybe this new field practicum will be better. Maybe the last one was awful, and this one will be easy and great.”
“I do think that, um, social work is, yeah, probably full with conflict. I mean, you’re dealing with people in turbulent points of their lives.”
“Yeah, and I thought I could be, like, a strong force of calm for them. I like to help people. But I guess I wasn’t counting on the people I was trying to help not being very open to that help?”
He gave her a small smile. “Yeah.”
“Honestly, I feel like I make people happier here in the sandwich shop sometimes.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I see that about you. You go above and beyond. You always keep back a few sandwiches for Mischa and her two kids, because you know what they want, and you know they’re going to come in late, and sometimes the selection has been picked over by that point. You’ve made up new sandwiches for people with dietary restrictions and allergies. You’re… you’re a helpful person.”
“But sandwiches don’t matter,” she said with a shrug.
“Who says they don’t?” he said. “Eating is kind of important for survival, right?”
She shot him a withering look.
“Honestly, I feel like if I could start a restaurant in this town, I’d do something that would really work for the town itself. Like, Will does some things. He’s serving affordable, convenient food, and he’s open later and stuff like that. I’d make a restaurant for the people who live here, not just for tourists, like all the other restaurants, you know? It’s crazy how many restaurants in this town are priced out of the range where most of the people working and living in this town can even eat at them. It’s like we’re all serfs and we serve the lords of the manor who come in here and drive up the real estate prices and want their snobby, overpriced crap, and want this place to be something other than it is. Especially since the heart of Shepherdstown is its uniqueness.”
“A haven for weirdos,” she whispered. “What would that restaurant look like?”
