by Jenni Moen
“Why are you drinking it, if it’s so bad?” he asked when I’d finally stopped barking like an asthmatic seal.
“It’s sort of medicinal.”
“Does it cure more than it hurts?” he asked with a wince on his face.
“Let’s hope so.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me and clinked my glass with his bottle. “Down the hatch then. I hope it makes you feel better.”
“If it doesn’t kill me first,” I muttered.
We stood in my kitchen and tipped our drinks up like a couple of college freshman, finishing about the same time. “Another?”
I grimaced and shook my head. “How did it go here today?”
His mood was suddenly a bright blushing pink. “Excellent. I made some real progress on the big bathroom.”
“I can drink to that.” He returned to the refrigerator, and I began to unpack the food. “I took some liberties with dinner based on your proclamation last night that you’ll eat pretty much anything.” I popped open a container. “Mongolian beef seemed manly enough for you.”
He grinned and pounded on his chest, causing me to giggle. “And what’s the lady having?”
“Orange chicken but I’ll switch with you if you prefer.”
“Nah, you eat your froufrou chicken. I’ll keep my manly beef. You know what I find even more interesting than your gender-specific selections?” He slipped a pair of chopsticks out of the paper wrapper and pointed them at me.
“What?”
“This is two nights in a row you’ve eaten takeout.”
“So?”
“It just surprises me. Obviously, you know how to cook. But when you’re at home, you don’t even bother to get out a plate.”
I pushed my chicken around the Styrofoam container and laughed. “We ate on plates last night, and you’ve seen my refrigerator. It’s not like my cupboards are completely bare,” I added, even though they were a bit of an embarrassment. All I really had was what I needed to make the lasagnas for tomorrow. “The thing is, I serve food to people for eight hours every single day, seven days a week. Tonight, I have to put the lasagnas together for tomorrow’s special, and I have to get up at the crack of dawn to throw together some desserts.”
He nodded. “I get it. The last thing you want to do is cook for yourself.”
“Right. They say the best tasting food is anything cooked by someone else. I make my living based on that principle. I live by it too, I guess.”
“No judgment from me, lady. That’s a pretty tough schedule.”
We ate in a comfortable silence, the awkwardness permeating the room when I’d first gotten home gone. After a few minutes, Quinn finally spoke. “So last night you said you inherited the diner because of a debt. I’ve been wondering about that all day.”
I nodded and swallowed. “I really shouldn’t have said that. I think Janice felt like she owed me, but it’s not exactly true.”
I weighed my next words carefully. How much was I willing to share with this man I barely knew? How much did I want to know about him? The answer to both questions, I feared, was everything. As a teenager, he’d been the most outgoing, gregarious guy I knew. For me, he’d been a positive light in a world of muddled emotional upheaval. I knew he now battled a darker side, but there were still traces of the boy I remembered in there. Maybe if I opened up to him, he’d open up to me. “Do you want hear the story?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“I do, but nobody knows this but Ryan and my parents, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets, Willow.” His forehead furrowed with sincerity. It wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of secrets he’d kept during his fifteen years in the military.
“Okay, well, Janice was a bit of a free spirit.” He nodded and set his chopsticks down to give me his undivided attention. “She went through a phase where she didn’t agree with the direction our country’s politics were headed. As a conscientious objector, she exercised what she believed was her right not to fund the government in endeavors she didn't support.”
He visibly bristled. “What does that mean?”
“She didn’t pay her taxes.”
“At all?” Disgust colored the air a russet brown.
Quinn was a patriot. After devoting his life to protecting the same government Janice had disavowed, he was not okay with what she’d done. I didn’t actually agree with her decisions either, but Janice was Janice. I loved her regardless.
“Not at all. For about four years.”
“What four years was that?”
“The Reagan administration. She was unhappy with the Iran-Contra affair.”
He shook his head. His disapproval had the effect of amplifying my own feelings about it. “But see that’s not really the way it works.”
“I know, but Janice was different,” I continued. “Right or wrong, she operated under her own set of rules. She did start paying them again when the first Bush was elected but then began rethinking things again with the Clinton disaster.”
Quinn let a tiny smile slip. “I guess she wasn't partial to one party then was she?”
“Nope and she wasn’t much of a money manager either. When the taxman came in 2003, she couldn’t pay the fines. The diner wasn’t doing all that well at the time, and she nearly lost it.”
“But?” he asked.
“But someone stepped up and paid them.”
His jaw fell. “You paid her back taxes? How? You were, what? Eighteen?”
“I had a nice little college fund my grandmother had set aside for me. I used that.”
“I can’t believe your parents let you do that, Willow. You were the smartest girl I knew. You could’ve gone to any college you wanted.”
I’d heard all of this before. A million times over. And that was from my parents alone. It was one of the reasons I’d never told anyone. “I didn’t really give them a say in it. It was my money. That was the real reason I moved out of their house and in with Janice. Unfortunately, for a while, moving in with her only made things worse. They thought I was under her spell or something. It took them a few years to realize that it was my choice and I made the right one.”
“I also can’t believe Janice let you do that.”
“She didn’t know. She didn’t find out until a few years later. Believe me, when she did, she wasn’t very happy with me, and Janice was not someone you wanted to piss off.”
“That’s one of the most generous things I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe you gave up college to help her out.”
“She was like a grandmother to me. To me she was no different than family.”
Quinn shook his head in awe. “You’re one of the most quietly amazing people I’ve ever met.” Red-hot adoration poured out of Quinn, warming me all the way to the tips of my toes. Better than any tea, I wanted to bottle it so I wouldn’t forget what it felt like.
“When I was young, I didn’t have a lot of friends. For many reasons, I was different than most of the girls in my class. Dorky. Quiet. I loved reading and animals and was happy to play by myself.”
Sorrow fell over me, but it wasn’t mine. “Don’t look so sad, Quinn. I had Ryan and Janice. I had a couple of cousins. And—” I said, pointing a teasing finger at him, “once upon a time, there was this really cute and popular boy who was nice to me and really liked my pie. I even heard that he almost asked me to a dance once.”
“The chocolate pie is your pie?”
I laughed. “Surprised?”
“I always thought it was Janice’s pie. Wait, wasn’t it called Janice’s Chocolate Mousse Pie?”
“Yeah. Because she ate every leftover piece of it.”
“Hard to believe there were leftovers. How’d you meet Janice anyway?” It wasn’t an unusual question.
I pointed at the window above the kitchen sink, which looked out over the backyard. The property line ran along the creek. “I used to walk along the creek and play in the woods on the other side. She had an her
b garden over there no one knew about.” Even though I’d already divulged a little about Janice’s penchant for illegal behavior, I decided not to get into what she’d grown in her little garden. I didn’t need to tell him all of my secrets in one day. “It didn’t matter that she was so much older than me or that she was even stranger than I was. She taught me life’s about quality, not quantity.”
“So when she was in trouble, you bailed her out.”
“That’s what friends do.”
“I need friends like that.” A faint smile played at his mouth.
“You have friends like that.”
He looked skeptical. “I did.”
A cloud of sapphire settled between us. I fought to ignore it and picked up my chopsticks. “Well, that’s my story. What’s yours?” I looked at him pointedly, practically daring him to divulge something—anything—about himself.
He chewed slowly and swallowed heavily. I felt his reluctance slip away. “The athletic department lost my paperwork for the physical I’d gotten the summer of my senior year. I had to get it redone or I wouldn’t be able to play football that season.” His eyes sparkled in a way that grabbed my full attention. “I was in the waiting room of Dr. Parker’s office when the first tower fell. I could take you there now and show you the exact spot where I was standing when my life changed. For the next few months, all I could think about was that. All those families destroyed by a few well-orchestrated and barbaric acts. I knew I had to do something.”
My eyes watered at the passion in his voice. “So you joined the Army?”
“Right before Christmas. I was already eighteen. My mom couldn’t do anything to stop me. I didn’t even tell her until Spring Break.”
“Well, weren’t we a couple of headstrong eighteen-year-olds.”
“Like your parents, she was not happy. She chewed my ass until I walked out the door the last time.” He laughed at the memory of it.
“It takes a pretty special kid to give up his dreams for such a noble cause.”
“I didn’t give up my dreams, Willow. I changed them. But it doesn’t make me special. Almost everybody who’s joined the armed forces since 9/11 can tie their decision to what happened that day. All of my boys were there for the same reason.” There was a softness in his eyes when he said ‘my boys.’ I knew without him telling me that they were his family.
I reached across the table and touched his arm. “Then you were all special. You chose to do something most people can’t even imagine. That’s incredibly honorable.”
He shook his head. “No more honorable than what you did.”
I leaned back in my chair, wishing I had an excuse to keep my hand on his arm. “Uhh, not even close to being the same thing. I gave up college for a few years. You risked your life for what you believed in.”
He sighed heavily. “I’d still be over there if I could. Coming home isn’t what I thought it would be.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Maybe it’s because I didn’t come home on my terms. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t have anything to come home to. Most of us have two lives. One over here and one over there.” He closed his eyes for a second and then continued. “They have wives, kids … something to fight and live for. I didn’t … don’t. Aside from my mom, my platoon was my only family.”
The melancholy blue cloud seemed to pulse between us, growing in intensity until it threatened to engulf us both. “Now, I’m home, living with my mom again, as if you can just erase fifteen years. It’s not good for either of us.”
“I’m sorry, Quinn.”
He’d slipped into an almost trance-like state while he’d been talking—almost as if he had to distance himself from the story to be able to tell it—but in a flash of a second, he was back. He sat up straighter, annoyed and on the verge of angry. “I need to get on with it, I guess.”
He tossed his chopsticks on the table, and I flinched at the sound of the chair dragging across the floor. He pulled another beer out of the refrigerator and popped the top off. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to rip out the sink in the big bath before I go.”
“Sure.”
His heavy boots clomped up each step of the staircase. I shoved my dinner away and laid my head down on the cool tabletop. I banged my head on the wood surface in time with his footsteps and internally argued with the voice whispering the beginnings of a plan in my ear. He’s helping you, the nagging voice said. Hadn’t I just told him he had the kind of friends who would help him out if he needed it? Who had I been talking about? Tim? The thought made me snort.
Was it really such a bad idea? I sat up and took stock of my current state, realizing I felt fine. Mentally, Quinn always worked a number on me, but physically, I felt okay. No nausea. No headache. I looked at my empty glass sitting on the counter where I’d left it. Maybe the tea actually worked. Maybe I’d found a way to combat at least the worst parts of the Dearborn Effect.
That hypothesis would require further testing, and my heart pounded at the prospect of it. I was going to do this.
“Quinn,” I yelled, taking the stairs two at a time. “I have an idea.”
“Hang on,” he yelled back. A few bangs, a plethora of four-letter words, and the unmistakable whoosh of flowing water followed. Way too much flowing water.
I flew around the stairway railing. When I reached the bathroom, I gaped at Quinn, who was lying on the bathroom floor. Water poured out from under the sink as he sputtered and grunted beneath it. The bathroom cabinet hid his head and chest while his lower body extended out into the room. He shifted and his shirt hiked up a little, showing just enough of his abs to get my heart racing for a whole new reason. I gaped openly at him and momentarily forgot about my wet feet.
After a few more curse words and pounds, he groaned. “I’m sorry, Willow. My mind was elsewhere, and I forgot to turn off the valve. Can you get some towels?”
I ran back down the stairs and grabbed as many as I could from my bathroom. When I got back, I found a dry spot for the stack of towels and then got down on all fours to begin mopping up the water around him. When the first towel was soaked through, I leaned over him to reach for another one. He chose that moment to emerge from under the sink and sat up so we were practically nose-to-nose. Wet tendrils stuck to the side of his face, giving him what would have been a sweet, boyish look were it not for the fuzz all over his jaw. The combination was like pouring fuel on my already racing heart. A bead of water fell from his beard and onto his already drenched shirt. It was plastered to him, no longer concealing the broad chest and curved shoulders beneath. My heart officially went up in flames.
“You’re all w-w-w-wet,” I stammered.
He chuckled, low and throaty. “Yeah.”
When I forced my eyes back to his face, I found him carefully watching me as if he was trying to gauge what I was thinking. A small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“Let me help.” My voice was breathless. I needed to get a grip. He was just a man.
A very wet, very handsome, very sexy man. But still just a man. It wasn’t as if I’d never been around a man before.
I blotted at his face with the dry towel, taking care to get the water out of the fuzzies of his beard. The towel slipped from my fingers, but they remained on his face, brushing lightly against the coarse bristly hair. The feel of them against my fingertips was as if someone defibrillated my already racing heart.
I stared at the lips he’d denied me the night before.
They twitched as desire coiled around us, begging one of us to make the first move.
It would have to be him. After last night, I wouldn’t make the first move.
Kiss me, Quinn. Kiss me so I’ll know. Don’t turn away again.
He sat still as a tree, and I held my breath, waiting for him to bend. My hand slipped from his beard and trailed down his neck. Apparently, it hadn’t gotten the memo that we were waiting for Quinn to make the first move.
“Willow?” he muttered.<
br />
It was only my name, but it held every question I didn’t want him to ask, every doubt I didn’t want him to acknowledge.
“No.” I wouldn’t let him go there.
“You had an idea?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?” He looked confused. “I thought when you came up the stairs you said you had an idea.”
I did? I couldn’t think. He’d muddled my mind with his proximity. I racked my brain finally coming up with the answer. Ahhh, yes. It was sounding better and better, so I went for it. “Move in with me.”
“What?” He scrambled away from me, the spell between us broken, and hit his head on the edge of the cabinet.
Wincing, I sat back on my heels and rubbed my own head. “Ouch. That had to hurt,” I said to cover for myself.
He cocked his head at me curiously. “I may have a concussion, but I swear you just asked me to move in with you …” his voice trailed off.
“Yes, that’s what I said. Move in here.” He looked at me as if I was speaking Greek. “What you said downstairs got me thinking. If it’s not working out at your mom’s, then move in here until you’re finished working on the house or until you find something better. There’s plenty of room.”
He looked around at the destroyed bathroom. “No, there’s not. I’ve torn everything apart. I haven’t even begun putting it back together.”
“The garage apartment is in good shape. No one’s stayed out there since I moved to the house a few years ago. It needs a good cleaning, but it has a bathroom and a small kitchen. You don’t even have to see me if you don’t want to.”
He looked wary. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
My heart tore apart. Two nights in a row, he’d come close to kissing me but hadn’t. I’d all but thrown myself at him. Now, he was turning down my offer to move into an apartment where he wouldn’t even have to see me if he didn’t want to. To cover my disappointment and shame, I returned to the task of soaking up the water all over the floor. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, grabbing my arm. I looked at his hand until he dropped it. “It’s not you, Willow. I have zero hesitations when it comes to you.”
