Deeper

by Megan Hart

  By the end of her senior year, Bess wanted Andy to love her.

  They’d dated through the mail, infrequent phone calls and even more infrequent school breaks during her senior year. Looking back, she realized it was that distance that had made it all seem so great. The less she saw him, the more important it became to do so.

  She’d looked at half a dozen schools because she knew her parents wanted her to explore all her options, but there was no other choice for Bess than Millersville University, where Andy was entering his junior year.

  The relationship had stepped up quickly after that. Away from home for the first time, she’d found nothing seemed as scary or intimidating as it might have, with Andy there to ease her way. She’d lost her virginity to him within the first week of her freshman year, in the narrow single bed in his dorm room while his roommate studied down the hall.

  Part of her had been afraid things would crumble when they saw each other so often. They’d spent more time together in the first month of school than they had for the entire first year they’d dated. Andy seemed to think nothing of it, though, accepting her into his circle of friends and his routine as easily as if she’d always been part of them. He’d told her he loved her before she said it to him, and had played the part of the doting boyfriend so convincingly she’d never doubted him.

  So what had changed?

  “Bess?” Eddie poked his head out of the back door. “Brian needs some h-help up front.”

  “Be right there.” She spat her gum into the garbage and went back inside with a sigh.

  Brian was getting slammed, but diva that he was, had managed to get the crowd mostly under control. They milled around the small seating area, but nobody was kicking up much of a fuss. Nick still reigned from his corner chair, though the ice cream had vanished. He wasn’t in the way or anything, but seeing him there put a frown on Bess’s face, anyway. He was a distraction she still didn’t have time to deal with.

  She and Brian served the customers as fast as they could, but it was another forty minutes before the last of them left the bell jangling as the door closed behind them. Brian collapsed against the counter with an exaggerated sigh and begged a break, which Bess had no choice but to give him. With Brian gone out the back faster than a frat boy chugging a beer, Bess was once more left alone with Nick.

  “So,” he said with a grin as sweet as the sundae he’d finished. “Party. My place. Tonight.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Now

  “Hi, Kara. Is your dad here?” Bess leaned on the counter to talk to Eddie’s look-alike daughter.

  “Hey.” Kara lifted a hand but barely glanced up from the tabloid paper spread out in front of her. “Nope. I think he ran to the coffee shop or something. You want me to call him?”

  Bess didn’t take the girl’s lack of enthusiasm as an insult. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  Kara shot her a grin. “Nah. He told me if you stopped by I had to let him know, like, right away.”

  This scrap of information might have made Bess feel self-conscious, but for the fact that she stood in Sugarland, where years ago Eddie Denver had had a crush on her. There was something comforting in thinking he still might. She laughed and drew a chair up to the counter.

  “Thanks.”

  Kara shrugged, already pulling a bright pink cell phone from her pocket and keying in a number. “No prob. Dad? She’s here. Where are you? Want me to ask her to wait?”

  Kara held the phone away from her face to turn to Bess. “He’s not at the coffee shop, he ran to the office supply store. Can you wait for him? He says it’ll be about half an hour.”

  “Sure.” Half an hour was longer than she’d planned to spend, and Bess’s thoughts went at once to home and Nick waiting for her. But she really needed to talk to Eddie.

  “She’ll wait. Yeah, whatever.” With a roll of her eyes, Kara disconnected the call and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “He says he’s hurrying. Do you want anything while you wait?”

  “Lemonade,” Bess said. She was already salivating at the thought of the tart liquid.

  She looked around the small shop while Kara cut the lemons and used the press to squeeze the juice, adding it to the sugar and water and shaking it. Eddie had changed the decor a little, but not much. The equipment looked newer, the menu a little more extensive, but so much was the same that Bess felt she was sitting on the wrong side of the counter.

  The season hadn’t really begun, which made the sudden swell of customers a surprise. Kara blinked as the bell over the door jangled and a crowd surged inside, all of them lining up at the counter, jostling, to point out what they wanted from the menu board.

  The line was long enough and the customers boisterous enough to fluster anyone, but Kara kept her cool. She took orders and filled them as fast as she could, while the noise and heat level inside the small shop grew to oppressive levels.

  “Bus tour,” explained one of the women to Bess.

  Five minutes passed while Bess sipped her lemonade, with no sign of any decrease in the crowd. Despite the nose ring and blasé attitude, Kara had an easy way with the customers that kept them from getting too rambunctious. Bess saw a lot of Eddie in Kara’s efficiency, but even so, it was clear the girl was getting overwhelmed, after all. Bess recognized the clenched jaw and clumsiness as Kara tried to take orders faster than one person could do alone.

  “You need a hand,” Bess observed when Kara came her way to grab the last soft pretzel from the warmer.

  Kara paused to flash her a grin so much like Eddie’s Bess had to return it. “Think you can handle it?”

  “I think I remember how.” Bess flipped up the hinged counter—God, the same squeak!—and stepped behind the counter.

  “You run the register,” she told Kara, after a glance showed her there was no way she’d figure out how to operate it in the next five minutes. “I’ll take orders.”

  They worked together with only the most minor of mistakes, until the crowd, with food and drink in hand, at last disappeared. As the door jangled behind the last customer, Bess saw Eddie watching them through the front window. Then he ducked inside.

  “How long were you standing out there?” Bess laughed.

  Kara gave a disgusted snort. “Gee, Dad, thanks so much for helping!”

  “You two had it under control.” Eddie grinned. “Not so easy to forget, huh, Bess?”

  She shook her head and gave him a rueful smile. “No, apparently not.”

  “You were doing great.”

  “Dad,” Kara interjected. “Enough with the goggle eyes, okay? It’s creeping me out!”

  Eddie laughed but didn’t duck his head. “Bess, you wanna grab a cup of coffee?”

  “You’re going to leave me here all alone again?” Kara crossed her arms and huffed.

  Eddie looked out the front of the shop, where there were more empty parking spots than full. “We’re just going across the street. If you get swamped, call me.”

  Kara grumbled a little, but sighed. “Fine. Whatever.”

  “It’s why I pay you the big bucks, remember?”

  At this, she burst into laughter that completely unraveled her carefully woven persona of rebellious teenager. “Oh, sure, Dad. Suuure!”

  He blew her a kiss. “Be back in a few. Bess? Ready?”

  He held the door open for her as she came around the counter. On the street, she squinted against the bright sunshine. The breeze tangled her hair across her face and she pushed it back.

  “Summer’s here,” she said as they crossed the dual one-way streets. “I wasn’t sure it was ever going to come, with all the storms we’d been having.”

  “It always gets here, sooner or later.” Eddie held open the coffee-shop door for her and Bess scooted through. “And it always ends, too.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “That’s pretty deep.”

  Eddie laughed. “Oh, yeah. That’s me. Deep as the ocean.”

  She shook her head a littl
e, smiling, but his words made her think again of Nick, and she glanced at her watch. Eddie saw the look, but led her to the counter. He waited until they’d both ordered and taken seats at a table before asking, “Do you have someplace to be?”

  “Oh…not really.” Bess shrugged off his scrutiny. “It’s a habit, I guess.”

  Eddie held up both his wrists, bare except for the dark hair of his arms. “That’s why I don’t wear a watch. I used to always be checking, checking. I didn’t pay enough attention to where I was. I was too worried about where I was going.”

  Bess got up to grab the coffees before Eddie could, and she brought them over to the table. “See what I mean? That’s deep.”

  “Yeah. Who knew?” Eddie dented the foam on his coffee with a breath.

  “I mean it.” Bess didn’t bother trying to sip her drink. Too many burned tongues had taught her patience. At least when it came to coffee.

  Eddie looked up at her. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  His smile grew slowly but was all the more powerful for it. “Thanks.”

  “You shouldn’t sound so surprised,” Bess said. “I always knew you had a lot going on inside.”

  “Had a lot going on outside,” he said. “All over my face.”

  She didn’t act as if what he said wasn’t true. “Everyone has an awkward stage.”

  “Yeah. Mine lasted, oh, nineteen years.” Eddie chuckled and sipped his drink.

  Bess braved a taste of hers. The barista hadn’t used enough syrup, but otherwise it was good. Still a little too hot. “But look at you now.”

  Eddie didn’t say anything at first, and Bess thought maybe she’d hurt his feelings somehow. Meaning to apologize, she gazed at him. Eddie was staring out the window to the sidewalk.

  “You know,” he said quietly, “no matter what else happens, a big part of me is always going to be that shy, terrified kid with the pimples.”

  “Lots of people feel that way, Eddie.”

  He looked at her. “Do you?”

  Bess opened her mouth to say no. Time had changed her. She understood, but didn’t share his sentiment. “Yes. I do. I swear to you, the face in the mirror surprises the hell out of me some days.”

  “You weren’t a big geek, though.” Eddie smiled. “What do you see? What do you remember yourself as?”

  It had been Eddie who told her Nick wasn’t good for her. That being with him made her doubt herself. “I still see a woman who doubts herself.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “You—” she pointed at him “—shouldn’t think of yourself as a big nerd, either.”

  Eddie held up both hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”

  Bess looked outside at a passing couple, each holding a funnel cake. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of the fried dough topped with powdered sugar. One of them even had a glop of syrupy cherries on top.

  “God, that looks good.” She sighed.

  “So go get one.” Eddie swirled his coffee, the foam now gone. “The first one of the season’s the best.”

  Bess shook her head. “The last thing I need is a funnel cake. Besides, I don’t really want the whole thing. I just want a bite.”

  “That’s it?” He laughed, craning his head to stare after the couple outside.

  “Yes. That’s enough. You’re right, that first bite is always the best.” She glanced across the street at Sugarland. She couldn’t see Swarovsky’s from here, but she’d passed it on the way into town. Original Secret Recipe! screamed the sign in front, and she’d wanted to throw cotton candy at it, just for Eddie’s sake.

  “Mini funnel cakes,” Eddie said thoughtfully.

  They looked at each other for two beats of silence, then both began talking at once.

  “What if you sold miniature funnel cakes!”

  “We could do all kinds of good stuff…”

  “Fried candy bars,” Bess said, with a shiver at the thought of such decadent sweetness. “And Oreos! I mean, those things are killers and you really only need one!”

  “If you kept the prices reasonable enough so that people wouldn’t feel like they were getting ripped off—” Eddie interrupted himself. “Fried pickles!”

  Bess made a face. “Ew.”

  “They’re delicious,” he insisted. “What about mini corn dogs?”

  “Soft pretzel eggs!” Bess cried, so loudly everyone in the coffee shop turned to look at them.

  “What the heck are soft pretzel eggs?” Eddie asked.

  “It’s something I used to make for my boys. You take a soft pretzel and crack two eggs into the holes. It’s kind of like a breakfast sandwich. They love them.” Eddie gaped at her until Bess ducked her head. “What?”

  “It’s brilliant.”

  “Oh, stop it.” She laughed.

  He shook his head. “No, I mean it. This coffee shop and the burrito joint are the only two places serving breakfasty type stuff. I’m always at the shop early, anyway. It wouldn’t be hard to have an early shift. We could get a new piece of the market.”

  “Do you think so?” Bess gulped her coffee, now the perfect temperature.

  “I really think so. And we won’t need Swarovsky’s caramel corn anymore. We’ll make our own niche.” Eddie grinned and slapped the table hard enough to bounce the napkin holder.

  “You could call it Just a Bite,” Bess offered.

  “We,” Eddie said.

  Bess didn’t get it, at first. “Hmm?”

  “We,” he repeated. He leaned forward slightly. “We’ll call it Just A Bite. You have to be in on it.”

  Bess held up her hands and shook her head. “Oh, no. No, that’s not what I meant—”

  “C’mon, Bess. Do you have a better offer? Are you going back to work?”

  “I’d thought about it, but…”

  “You’d be great. You always were full of great ideas. And you really know how to keep up with a business like the one we’re talking about. Hey, I saw you today. You were having fun.”

  “Sure I was. I knew I could leave whenever I wanted.”

  Eddie charmed her with a tilted smile. “That’s the best part of being the boss, Bess. You get to leave whenever you want.”

  She knew that wasn’t really true. A business like Sugarland was a lot of hard work. Long hours. The food industry was a tough one in which to succeed. “It’s not really what I envisioned myself doing with my life, Eddie.”

  “Right.” He sat back in his chair, the gleam in his eyes undimmed. “What do you see yourself doing with your life?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “So think about this. If I want to make Sugarland into Just A Bite, I’m going to need more than what I’ve got. I’m going to need an ideas partner, at the very least.”

  She suspected he was flattering her. “You’re going to need money, is my guess.”

  “That, too.” Eddie didn’t look daunted. “But that, I can get. Someone with real creative vision and the skills to put it to work is harder to find.”

  “You’re serious about this.” Bess finished her coffee. The last dregs of it were cold and a little bitter.

  “I’m serious.”

  “A partnership is a lot of work! We could hate working with each other!”

  “I never hated working with you.”

  Bess had to look away from the intensity of Eddie’s gaze. “I never hated working with you, either, Eddie, but that was a long time ago.”

  “Don’t forget, I’m still the same crater-faced geek underneath, Bess.”

  She stopped herself just in time from chewing at the inside of her lip, a bad habit she’d worked hard to break. “And I’m that girl who doubts herself.”

  Eddie leaned toward her again. Bess was glad for the barrier the table and their cups made between them. She thought if there’d been nothing keeping them apart, Eddie might have reached for her hand, or shoulder. She wasn’t sure what she’d have done.

  “Think about it,” he said s
olemnly. “Promise me you’ll think about it?”

  Bess dipped her head to give him a tilted grin of her own. “You don’t take no for an answer, huh?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Not usually.”

  “See? You’re not the same, after all.”

  He got up to gather their garbage and toss it into the can next to their table. “If I’m not, maybe you’re not, either.”

  Bess stood and looked at her watch again. Time had once again flown while she talked with Eddie. “I really have to get going.”

  He nodded. “I have to get back to the shop. Thanks for stopping by, though.”

  She was already outside when she remembered she hadn’t had a purely social reason for visiting him. “Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to tell you that my husband’s not taking the boys on the trip they’d planned. So they’ll be able to start sooner than I thought. They’re coming the thirteenth of June now instead of the beginning of July.”

  “Great.” He grinned. “I’ll need new helpers.”

  “Even if you decide to change Sugarland into a mini funnel cake paradise?” she teased.

  “Especially if I do.”

  They stood across from each other at her car. Bess held the keys tight in her fist and had already used the remote to unlock the driver’s door. Yet she lingered, not getting in right away, though by now the ticking of passing time had become as noticeable to her as the beat of her heart.

  “We’ll have to do this again. Coffee, I mean.” Eddie shoved his hands deep into his khakis, a stance Bess recognized from when he was younger. Now, though, even with hunched shoulders, he towered over her.

  “Yes. It was nice.”

  “And think about Just A Bite,” he said, backing up without looking away. “You promised.”

  Bess cringed, waiting for him to trip and go sprawling, but Eddie managed to get all the way to the curb of the concrete island and the forest of parking meters without incident.