Carpentry and Cocktails

by Smartypants Romance

  "Well, it’s a favor my brother called in. I never, ever thought they'd even want more than a first interview."

  Her eyes were bright with pride and excitement, her mouth spread in a wide smile. "Of course they did. You're amazing."

  "It's an assistant trainer position for a football team."

  "Oh my gosh," she breathed, slapping my shoulder. "It's exactly what you wanted. For who? High school? College?"

  I held my breath. "Pro, actually."

  "What?" she screeched. I saw her mentally rifle through teams, her smile drop just a little. "Nashville?"

  I shook my head, and her smile dropped just a little bit more. Her face lost some of its color.

  "The Washington Wolves."

  She blinked. Her mouth popped open. I took my hand from her thigh and wrapped my fingers around hers.

  "Th-that's in Seattle," she said when she finally spoke. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. "Seattle. Holy shit."

  "I know. It's insane to me too." I tightened my fingers even though she hadn't tried to pull away. "He called me last night after you left."

  "Did you," she swallowed, "did you take it?"

  Her eyes were wide as she looked at me, and I saw the fear in them. The shock.

  "I told him I'd call him back today or tomorrow with my final decision."

  "T-today or tomorrow?"

  Shifting closer to her on the bench, I carefully took her face in my hands. "Come with me."

  "What?" she whispered, face going sheet white.

  "Come with me to Washington." I kissed her, but her lips only barely nudged mine in return. "I never, ever thought they'd offer me this job, Joss, and yes, it's a huge shock, but I only want to go there if I can go with you."

  She pulled her face back, eyes searching mine. "You'd give it up? Are you crazy?"

  "I'm crazy about you," I clarified. "I couldn't move across the country from you, not now, not after this."

  Joss raised a shaking hand to her mouth and stared out the windshield. "What the hell is it about this truck?" she said, almost to herself.

  "What do you mean?"

  She laughed under her breath and shook her head. "You kiss me for the first time and then tell clueless me that you've wanted to be more than friends for the entire time you've known me."

  I closed my eyes.

  "We have sex, and now you've got this whole future planned across the country that clueless me had no idea about."

  "Hang on, I don't have a whole future planned there." When she wouldn't meet my eyes, I felt a quick stab of panic. "I want to plan that future together. And if your heart is here, if Green Valley is the only place you can imagine yourself, then I'll beat the pavement as long as I need to in order to stay right here with you."

  Her breathing got faster and faster as I spoke. "Great, so I can be the dream crusher. Always a role I've wanted for myself."

  "There will be other jobs, Joss," I said, and my voice was sharp enough that she finally gave those eyes back to me. But the shuttered emotion I saw there had my chest squeezing tight. "You are the dream I've had longer than any work I might do."

  "You can say that after a couple of weeks," she said quietly.

  "It's not about the length of time, and you know it."

  Her face turned away, but she didn't argue.

  "When did you go?" she asked.

  I inhaled slowly. "They flew me out a couple of days after … after you asked for time to think."

  She nodded, turning her chin back toward me. "You are asking a lot of me, no matter what I say. You know that, right?"

  "I know." I took her hands again, and she let me. "I know."

  "Did you like Seattle?" Her tentative voice was so unlike her. She was scared of my answer, and I could hear it, plain as day.

  "Will you look at me?"

  "Just answer the question, Levi." She sniffed quietly.

  I lifted our hands and kissed her fingers, breathing in the scent of her skin.

  "I loved it," I told her, my lips brushing against her knuckles.

  "And you could see yourself living there?"

  "Without you? Not happily," I answered immediately.

  Her face turned to mine. There was a shine in her eyes, but she wasn't crying. "That's not what I asked."

  "I feel like I'm being baited here, Sonic."

  "Really? Because I'm the one who's always tossed into these conversations right before everything changes. You feel like you're being baited, Levi, when you've known about this for weeks and didn't tell me." Her voice rose, and her eyes flashed. She pulled her fingers from mine.

  I had two worst-case scenarios, and this was one of them. I bit down on every defense I could've conjured and let her unload. It was better than her leaving, shutting down.

  "You had how many interviews? Two? Three?" she guessed. "I'm your best friend, and you didn't tell me shit. And all of a sudden, I get one or two days to either decide to uproot my life or tell you to give up an amazing opportunity. How the hell do you expect me to react to that? We've been dating for like, five minutes, Levi."

  "Don't," I interjected. "Don't diminish it because you're pissed at me. One I'm fine with, and the other I'll call bullshit every time."

  "Great," she said back, straightening her legs and unlocking the door. "I have school. I have a job."

  "You can get another bakery job," I told her.

  "Don't diminish it because you're pissed at me," she repeated my words dangerously. Her hand yanked on the door handle.

  "You're actually leaving?"

  Her eyes flashed hot as she paused in the open door. "Yeah, because sometimes other people get to decide when big things get talked about, Levi."

  "That's not what I'm doing."

  "Bullshit." She grabbed the handle and slid off the seat.

  "Give me a break, Joss. How are we ever supposed to discuss things if you bolt every single time it makes you uncomfortable? This is what a relationship is, working on things together."

  "Working on things?" she scoffed. "That's not what this is. This isn't our first fight over something like Christmases with families or who made dinner last or why you forgot my birthday. This is me, once again, being the person in the really shitty position. I either give Levi the thing that will make him happiest, or I break his heart."

  I dropped my head to my chest and struggled to breathe evenly.

  "You can't even deny it."

  "I'm not trying to," I told her. "But you're not being fair either. I got the call last night, and this is the first I'm seeing you, so here we are, ready to discuss it, like normal, rational adults in a relationship."

  She narrowed her eyes, framed in the open doorway, gripping the seat as she leaned toward me. "Except I'm deciding that I'm not ready to discuss it right now. You can't spring this shit on me and expect that I'll be ready to make a massive life decision in the course of five frickin' minutes."

  Joss turned her back to me.

  I got out of the truck, slammed my door, and marched around, good and pissed now. "Great, so now I can wait a week or two until you've deemed the topic safe? 'Sorry about that, Brian, I couldn't answer you about the job because my girlfriend shut down on me.'"

  She glared, still holding the truck door where she stood. "You're such an asshole when you don't get your way." She paused and tapped her chin. "Oh wait, you always get your way. Everything gets dropped in your stupid, golden boy lap."

  I laughed under my breath. "Lashing out unnecessarily. Mature choice, Joss."

  "I'm twenty-one fucking years old," she yelled, head tilted back as her words echoed off the trees. "I get to be immature sometimes. Now get out of my way."

  "We are not done talking about this," I said, even as I did what she asked. She took two even steps to her car, yanking open the door after her other arm was braced on the roof, all without so much as looking at me again.

  "Right now?" she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. "Yeah, we are."

  Chapter 25

/>   Jocelyn

  There was a crack in the concrete in front of the bakery. I never noticed it until I pushed over it the next morning. For a second, I stopped and stared down at that crack. An imperfection that escaped my notice. Not because it would hurt me, or make it hard for me to get where I needed to go, but it was there all the same.

  Someone might trip over it. Stub their toe. Stumble a little on their way in to buy a banana cake for their grandma's birthday party.

  I found myself noticing those types of imperfections everywhere for the next twenty-four hours. All over town.

  Daisy's Nut House needed to replace one of the lights on their sign. It flickered a little bit.

  A member of the Iron Wraiths rode his bike down the middle of the road, whistling and hooting at me. I flipped him my middle finger when he passed in the thundering rumble.

  I guess I had blinders on, too, in my own way.

  Go about my day. Do what I needed to do.

  Not focus on the bad because it was too easy to feel like your head was submerged under murky water. I'd learned that lesson too many years ago. Allowing the bad, the inadequacies, the defects to take center stage was an invitation to a life of misery.

  But over those short hours, I made sure to look for the good stuff too.

  A neighbor who I never talked to fixing the way our mailbox leaned to the side. He waved as I pulled my car down the long driveway. I lifted my hand in return.

  Joy scooping change out of her apron when one of the little kids who came in after school didn't have quite enough for a treat and slipping it into the cash register when she thought no one was looking.

  Cletus fixing the big mixer before Jennifer came in without her asking.

  Good people doing good things for the people who lived and worked with them.

  Every little thing I saw, good or bad, felt like an item added to a list. Two columns written in indelible black ink.

  If your heart is here, Levi had said, if Green Valley is the only place you can imagine yourself, then I'll beat the pavement as long as I need to in order to stay right here with you.

  It was the scariest possible thing he could have ever said to me. Because as I drove home, bubbling and full to the brim with righteous indignation, I'd desperately tried to ignore the realization that I'd never thought about it.

  How dare he, I'd thought.

  I'm always catching up.

  Can't I ever just feel things in my own time?

  That's not fair, came right on the heels of that one. If I didn't own up to the fact that Levi never pushed me to cross a line until I'd indicated that the line might be flexible and flimsy, then I probably wasn't deserving of the love that he'd held on to for so long.

  When I approached hour twenty-five, my phone silent and my heart heavy, I pulled into the driveway and saw my mom's car. When I had something to discuss, something to work through and untangle, she was never the person I went to. She never had been, even before I got sick.

  I let myself in quietly, in case she was still asleep, but when Nero came running to me from the kitchen, I knew she was up.

  "Hey, bub," I whispered as he attacked me with pink tongue and waggling butt. The effusive greeting made me laugh, and I instructed him to drop his paws from my lap, which he did immediately.

  "In here," my mom called. "I'm just making some eggs if you're hungry."

  "I'm okay, thanks."

  She was in blue scrubs with her dark hair twisted into a low knot. She told me once that I looked like my father, and it wasn't hard to imagine because there was nothing familiar in her face, nothing I could match to mine. Her face was tired, her movements slow.

  "Long night?"

  Over her shoulder, she nodded, then looked back at the eggs she was scrambling on the stovetop. "Lots of babies last night. If it wasn't a full moon, I'd wonder what was going on."

  "You're up early."

  It was midday, a time she would normally be sound asleep.

  "I took some overtime. Figured the extra money wouldn't hurt."

  I was quiet, watching her move the spatula around the pan. Nero nudged my hand, and I scratched his head.

  "What's wrong?" she asked without looking at me. "Was it work?"

  I shook my head. "No, work was fine. I like it there."

  Mom didn't say anything for a second, sliding her eggs from the pan onto a waiting plate. "Is it Levi?"

  My head snapped up. "How did you know?"

  "Oh honey, you've been floating around here on a cloud. Plus, that boy has looked at you like you hung the moon for years; you're the only one who didn't see it."

  Great. Another thing that I could add to the list.

  What Was Joss Wearing Blinders To: #47

  "He got a job offer."

  "That's great. Something he wants?"

  I smiled sadly. "With his degree? It's like hitting the jackpot."

  Her eyes searched my face briefly, then focused on her food. Between her fingers, she twirled the fork before digging it into the eggs. "So why the face?" she asked after she swallowed her first bite.

  "It's in Seattle."

  "Ohhh."

  "Yeah."

  "When does he leave?" she asked carefully.

  I dragged my finger along the top of Nero's muzzle when he laid his head on my leg. "He needs to give them an answer today or tomorrow."

  My mom nodded.

  "He asked me to come with him," I said once I screwed up enough courage to get the words out. I couldn't look at her face, almost afraid of what I'd see there. "But … that's crazy. I can't just, you know, move with him."

  The sound of her fork sliding across the plate was the only thing punctuating the silence. I had to grit my teeth from yelling something insane like, can't you just be a mom and tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do! For once!

  Raising a self-sufficient child, wheelchair or not, was great and all, but sometimes you just wanted your parent to tell you which direction would benefit you most.

  "Can't you?" she asked quietly.

  When I lifted my eyes, she was watching me.

  "Don't get me wrong," she continued, holding up her hands at whatever she saw in my face. "I'd miss you, Jocelyn, I would. I know I'm not the best mom. I raised you the way my momma raised me. To do things myself, pick myself up by the bootstraps, and not rely on anyone to fix what was wrong." She blinked rapidly. "Maybe that wasn't right, but I can't undo it now."

  "I don't think you did anything wrong," I told her. "It's not like you abandoned me or anything. I know I'm fine to take care of myself, and that's important, especially for me. Plus, I wasn't alone. I had … Levi."

  She smiled. "I'd wager you still do."

  "He said he'd give up the job and stay here if that's what I wanted, if this is where my heart is."

  Mom whistled. "Goodness."

  "Yeah."

  She stood slowly, then picked up her chair and set it down in front of me. "I'm going to say something to you that your grandma said to me when I was around eighteen."

  My chest rose and fell rapidly because she didn't talk about Grandma much. Nero whined, pushing his nose into me when he felt the pitch and roll of my emotions.

  "When you left Green Valley?" I whispered.

  She nodded. "I can tell you right now that your heart isn't in this town, Joss."

  I sucked in a breath. "And that means I have to pick up my life and move across the country?"

  "Course not," she said easily. "I think you like it here, just as I did. I think if you stayed, you'd be just fine, just as I would've been. But if your heart was here, you'd know the names of everyone you passed on the street. You'd feel like your insides were splintering apart at the thought of leaving every imperfect, wonderful little part of this town." My mom looked down and sighed heavily, shaking her head as she did. "That's what your grandma said to me. Because she did know every name and every story of every person in this town. And I didn't because I wanted something else in my life."
<
br />   My nose burned as I watched her impart more advice than she'd given me in over five years. The thought of leaving Green Valley caused no splinters. No splitting. No heartache. I viewed it with a strange sort of detachment, like the idea was simply too big to contemplate, but not because I couldn't imagine myself elsewhere.

  It was the differences.

  Little to big. Mountains and backroads and country to city and ocean and boats and wealth. But when I set those things aside, the thought of leaving Green Valley caused me no pain.

  My mom took my hand and gripped it tight in hers. Her eyes were straight on mine when she asked, "What makes your heart break when you try to imagine life without it? Is it this town? Or something else?"

  She knew the answer. So did I.

  I dashed a hand at my cheek to stem an errant tear and looked away.

  Imagining a life without Levi made my heart crack.

  That was the splinter, the knife down the middle, the inconceivable thing that made my brain reject the very notion.

  I sucked in a watery breath. "Oh my gosh, I'm in love with that stubborn ass, aren't I?"

  My mom smiled and set my hand down. "I reckon so."

  "So now what?" I sighed.

  "Honey"—she laughed—"now you get to figure out what comes next. Maybe this job offer is hitting the jackpot for him, but you just had a whole different part of the world open up to you too, you know? What comes next is whatever you want, and that's the biggest, scariest, most beautiful part of living."

  Chapter 26

  Levi

  Another text came through as I left Piggly Wiggly.

  Mom: Can you stop at Daisy's and get a dozen of those maple Long Johns your dad likes?

  "Seriously?" I whispered. Throwing the truck in reverse, I turned away toward Daisy's Nut House. I pulled into the first open spot and tapped out a reply. This was the fourth errand I'd run for her today, each one more random than the last.

  Me: I thought you said Dad needed to stop eating so many sweets.

  * * *

  Mom: I know you're not sassing me about something I asked you to do. It's for the office tomorrow, NOT that I need to explain myself to you.