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“You should’ve never given me the ammunition.”
“I’m starting to realize that.” He flexes his jaw, his eyes drilling into mine, then drags a hand over his cheek. “Look, for the record, I didn’t know you’d be here. Austin didn’t tell me anything about who was coming when he invited me.”
“That was who you were talking to during my interview?”
He nods. “It was. I was trying to find every excuse not to come, but he guilted me into it.”
I look down, toying with a piece of lint on my sweater. The wind picks up, the icy breeze hitting me square in the face. On it, I catch a hint of smoke and hear the leaves blowing on the ground around the porch. It’s every bit a fall morning here—crisp and cool and nearly completely silent. You could lose yourself in it if you tried. I take another sip of my drink, letting the warmth fill me. “I can’t believe you guys are friends.”
“Why?” He fiddles with a button on his flannel absentmindedly, watching me. As I try to come up with an answer, a way to put my scrambled thoughts into words, a few more leaves fall from the nearly bare tree next to the porch.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s just that you’re so different.”
His hand drops to his lap. “Meaning?”
I focus my attention on him. “He’s…fun. I don’t know. Carefree.”
“And I’m not.” He nods, looking away.
My heart drops, and I run a hand over the leg of my sweatpants, suddenly even colder than I was before. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.” His tone is clipped, his voice icy. Suddenly, he’s refusing to look my way. “Trust me, I’m not offended. I realize I’m nothing like Austin. Wild and free and easy… I’m never going to be any of those things.”
Easy.The word spills out of his mouth as if he read my thoughts last night. “So, if you’d known I’d be here, you wouldn’t have come?”
He looks at me then, stares my way with a heavy bitterness in his expression, and I can’t tell if he’s angry at me or himself. “I don’t know, Lena. All I know is…I didn’t mean to come across as rude during our interview, despite having my reasons. I should’ve handled it better. And I didn’t mean to overstep by being here, either.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Is that another apology?”
He lifts his hand, opening his mouth, then drops his palm to his knee, puffing out a breath from his nose. “It’s a clarification. I don’t want there to be any hard feelings between us.”
I lick my dry lips. They’re beginning to get chapped from this cold air, but I refuse to leave right now. “Well, thank you for clarifying, then.”
“Are there?” he presses, swirling the coffee around in his mug. “Hard feelings?”
“Not on my end,” I say simply, brushing hair back from my face when the wind picks up again.
“Good.” If he’s pleased, he shows no signs of it. If anything, he looks angrier than before.
“Good,” I repeat. “So, is that the only reason you set your alarm to wake up early? To do things for the store?”
He nods, draining more of the liquid from his mug. “I like to have my responsibilities handled before the day sets in. That way there’s room for things to fall apart.”
“That’s probably a smart way to look at it, but also a pessimistic one.”
He gives a wry grin with a faraway look in his eyes. “A realistic one, more like it.”
“Do things frequently fall apart for you, then?” I ask, trying and failing to make a joke that clearly doesn’t land.
He swallows and turns his head to look at the house next door. “My family didn’t have very much when I was growing up. Just the store and our apartment. We struggled most of my life. My parents taught me the value of hard work. They were at the store from five in the morning until well after midnight each night, making sure everything was perfect, cleaning, stocking shelves, placing orders, and doing whatever else needed to be done. They couldn’t afford to hire employees to help for the longest time. And, even once they could, it was all on them, always.”
He pauses for so long I think he’s done talking. When I open my mouth to respond—though I have no idea what I’ll be saying—he goes on, “And when they died last year, two months apart from two completely separate, random things, it all fell on me. I always knew the store would be mine someday, but I wasn’t ready. I’m still not ready. And I know if it doesn’t work out, if I fail, I’ll have screwed up their entire legacy.”
He glances down. “So that’s why the coffee and the early alarm. That’s why I couldn’t chance hiring you just to do something stupid and let my feelings get involved and screw everything up. I don’t have the luxury of sleeping in or letting my emotions make decisions for me because everything my parents worked for is firmly on my shoulders. I don’t have time for vacations, for…for any of this…”
“That’s a lot of pressure,” I say gently. I can’t imagine if I didn’t have my parents to fall back on after my divorce. My safety net. If they hadn’t offered up their spare room, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to me. Though it’s been my greatest embarrassment, I’m incredibly thankful it was an option.
“Yeah, well…it is what it is. I came because Austin is a friend, and he said you guys wouldn’t be able to come without splitting the cost six ways. He’s had a rough few years. He gets losing parents the way most people our age don’t, so…here I am. But that doesn’t make it easy.”
