All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story)

by Helm, Nicole

  “Which is?”

  “A gift.” Dell slid off the railing. “One you have to be brave enough to give and accept.” He was silent for a beat before he clapped Charlie companionably on the shoulder. “And if you tell anyone I said that, especially my wife, I’ll end you.”

  Charlie only grunted, and he sat there on the porch, long after Dell left, long after the night went cool.

  And he tried to figure out how to give a gift that Meg had every right to reject, and accept a gift he didn’t deserve.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MEG STRUGGLED TO force herself out of bed. It was a market day, and she had a million things to do.

  Elsie’s words about fighting had stuck with her all night, and she hadn’t slept well at all. But she felt...strong. Physically exhausted, wrung out, but powerful. She’d suffered something of a heartbreak, and she hadn’t reached for anything to numb the pain.

  She’d talked to a friend. She’d talked to her goats. She’d talked to the growing baby inside her. All of that added up to trusting the people—and animals—in her life with her pain, and it had made a world of difference.

  She was clean, not broken. Strong for getting this far, not weak for falling in the first place. A work in progress and a success. Struggling and overcoming.

  She made mistakes, inevitably would again. But she wasn’t one.

  Which was somehow terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. Like pregnancy. Like love. Heart-stopping fear. Heart-soaring amazement.

  With renewed energy and strength, she pushed through her chores and getting ready for the market. Exhaustion threatened, a slight headache pulsed along her temples, but as she clambered into her truck—soaps stowed safely in the back—a giddiness wrapped around her.

  Would Charlie be at the market?

  Would he be miserable? Would he be apologetic? Would he avoid the market simply because he knew she’d be there?

  She all but vibrated with the questions. With trying to figure out what she would do in the face of each possibility. Mixed with trying to navigate the desire to go home and hide under her covers.

  But she was a fighter. A fighter. She’d come too far to give up now. If he wasn’t there, she would darn well find him. She would take Elsie’s advice and let him know that she would be there, standing right there, when he was ready to put himself back together.

  Because that was what they’d been doing. Putting together the pieces of themselves side by side, together, and it had been silly to ever think that would be easy or smooth sailing. There would be bumps and stumbles and setbacks, and they had to stand with each other through them. Even when they’d rather throttle each other.

  She parked her truck behind her usual booth at the market, nerves dancing along every surface of her skin. Fear burrowing deep inside her.

  But business came first; she couldn’t look for Charlie until she was certain she was ready to face the morning of customers. Setting up her table and her soaps, pretty and inviting. Not throwing up from nausea or nerves or whatever was currently battling its way out in her stomach. Probably both.

  The market opened and the crowd was a little thin, though it would no doubt pick up soon.

  Despite that, she couldn’t see the Pruitt Morning Sun booth from her stand without maneuvering around her table, and that seemed far too obvious.

  “What are you so afraid of?” she muttered to herself, craning her neck to try to catch a glimpse. It was a rhetorical question, obviously, and yet she wondered if she shouldn’t consider that.

  What was she so afraid of? She knew she had to fight, she knew she had to give. She understood those things in her bones, and yet...

  She didn’t want to. It sounded hard, and more... What had her grandmother gone through sticking by her? Seeing her fail over and over again. What would that have been like to keep standing there, supporting her?

  Awful. It had to be awful. To watch someone fail and promise and fail and lie and...

  And you were an addict, not a guy having a hard time with his pride.

  Why did this have to be so hard? She gave herself a second to sulk and pout, and then she straightened, placing her hand on her belly for strength. Stepping out on a limb, obvious or otherwise, it wasn’t just for her.

  It was for Charlie, and it was for their child.

  It’s for you.

  Yes, it was important enough to put on that list. She wouldn’t ignore trying to find some kind of acceptance and forgiveness for something when said things would be so good for all of them.

  Determined, and customerless, she took a step to skirt the table and march right down the line to Mia and Dell’s booth and see if he was there and—

  There he was. Nowhere near the Pruitt Morning Sun booth. Almost looking like he was purposefully trying to blend in with the sparse crowd and avoid her.

  It was like that first day she’d laid eyes on him all over again. Heartsick over Grandma, pouring it all into this job, this thing that had kept her afloat. And there he walked, a little across the way, but right in front of her booth.

  As though she didn’t exist. She wanted to throw something at him, but all she had within reach was soap and she wouldn’t waste her product that way. So she yelled something he couldn’t walk away from.

  “Columbus Day is just around the corner!”

  He stopped dead in his tracks, though his head and gaze stayed forward for a few humming seconds. Then he shook his head faintly and turned. “Columbus Day. Really?”

  “Well, what else is there?”

  “Fourth of July, Labor Day, possibly—”

  “Oh, shut up and come over here.”

  “I’m—”

  “Move your feet over here. Now.”

  He scowled, but he did as ordered, taking a visible deep breath and presumably steeling himself.

  Jerk.

  “I’m not buying any soap today,” he said gravely, grave enough she wanted to laugh. “Last time I checked, people don’t give gifts for Columbus Day.”

  “I don’t want you to buy any soap.” I want you. That was...it. The bottom line. Under all the insecurities and the fear. She wanted him. They couldn’t both exist—having him and giving in to that fear. Not happily.

  So she had to trust. And she had to believe.

  You have to fight.

  “I saw your father last night,” he announced, so completely out of nowhere she could only blink at him for a humming few seconds.

  Then she went cold. “I thought you had an interview in Chicago. I thought—”

  “He called when I was in the airport. Asked to meet me for dinner.”

  She couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t the flatness of the other night when he’d blown everything up, but it wasn’t love either.

  “I apologize for anything remotely not negative I said about him or his presence in our child’s life.”

  “Oh, Charlie.” She stepped forward, nearly forgetting all the reasons she was mad at him. She reached out, figuring he’d need to feel supported after a dinner with her father. A soft place to land. Reassurance. Those things she’d always wished for and never received. “What did he say? Are you all right?”

  “You would...” He shook his head and ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Why should you care after I’ve been such a...”

  “Heartless jerk?”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Because I love you.” Simple as that. Strong as that. She loved him, and she would always care that he was all right.

  “Meg.” Finally, finally his expression evolved. It crumpled a little, looked hurt, baffled, frustrated—but at least it was real. Nothing blank or cold about it.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  His gaze met hers, his eyes looking h
aunted. Like a man who’d made many mistakes and didn’t know how to fix them.

  Well, she’d give him some time to fix them; she’d give him support. Just like Grandma had done for her once upon a time, like Elsie had done all these months. This time she was going to be the one to stand up, to be someone else’s foundation.

  “I shook your father’s hand, and I realized something very humbling and simple. I don’t want that life. It’s comfortable, it might even suit me, but I don’t want it.”

  It was her turn to be humbled. Humbled that he’d figured it all out on his own.

  “Then come home, Charlie. You know it’s home.”

  * * *

  THIS WASN’T GOING according to plan. He had been trying to sneak over to the flower booth, and King Bread. He had a whole plan, but she’d seen him and started yelling about Columbus Day of all things, and just like it had been in the beginning, Meg had busted his plans all to hell.

  Now she wanted him to come home. Simple as that.

  But before he could take that leap of faith, give her the apologies he’d practiced all morning, before he could get down on his knees and beg her to forgive him, some woman stepped up to Meg’s table and began chatting away about soap.

  Soap.

  Charlie frowned at the woman and her terrible timing. He repeated the expression for the woman who lined up behind her.

  “Stop hovering and scowling and scaring away my customers,” Meg hissed under her breath after the first woman vacated her spot, pounds of soap in a bag, and before the second woman stepped up to the table.

  “You’re the one who insisted I come over when I—”

  She reached across the table and jerked his arm so he had to either sidestep the table or crash right into it.

  He sidestepped and she pointed to the back of her truck, which faced the back of the table. “Sit.”

  The customer giggled. “Well, you have that one on a leash,” she said cheerfully.

  “Not nearly as much as I’d like,” Meg replied pleasantly before she and the woman had an interminable discussion about the merits of goat milk, and how much Meg enjoyed caring for her goats.

  Charlie didn’t want to sit. He didn’t want to be ordered around. He wouldn’t be. Except he could see all of Meg now, no table hid that slightest of slight curve where his child was slowly, slowly growing. Day by day.

  Their child. Their life. Home.

  The customer finally left and Meg turned around to face him, hands fisted on her hips. Her hair was pulled back, but strands fell out around her face, and her pale eyebrows drew together to nearly form a V.

  It wasn’t so much that love slammed into him, because he always loved her—every second of every day, with every breath—whether he wanted to or not. Love was this constant thing in his chest. Always present and beating just as his actual heart, but there were moments when it could hit so clearly, so distinctly it was overwhelmingly, painfully there.

  Painful because he knew, no matter how he fixed it, there would still be mistakes and disagreements ahead of them. Fights and anger and hurt. Always. Love meant people could be forever hurting you, missing all the things you didn’t know how to tell them. And it meant always wanting more.

  She straightened and glared down at him. “All right. Now...”

  She trailed off as he stood up. He had no doubt he looked angry and menacing. He felt angry and menacing as he closed the distance between them. He wanted to punish the both of them for being so stupid for falling into this trap that would only hurt them forever. Over and over again.

  And he wanted to thank her forever for opening this up inside him.

  So he kissed her. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t have the words, a way to fix things. He just wanted...her.

  * * *

  EVERYTHING IN HER went limp. She wanted to be stronger than a girl who’d melt the second a guy touched her, but the guy was Charlie and there was such relief that he would touch her, kiss her, before they’d figured anything out. Before he’d agreed to come home. But this was agreement, wasn’t it?

  He held her up, his mouth crushed to hers, his arms banded around her like he would always be that strong pillar to hold her up. She found her footing because she wanted to be that for him too, to stand with him to be that for their child.

  “Oh, Charlie. I missed you. I miss you,” she murmured when he ended the kiss, each of them leaning against the other a little breathless.

  “Meg.” He said it with an exasperated sigh, but his palm smoothed down her spine—a physical I miss you too.

  “I don’t know what we’re doing,” she muttered into his chest, wishing she could bury herself there. But she had a stand to run. She had things to do. They didn’t have time for this.

  Because this was so much more complicated than kiss and make up—no matter how much she wished otherwise.

  “It’s quite a club we’ve got here, then.”

  She wanted to laugh, but she heard the sounds of the market buzzing around her. This was her livelihood. One hour off won’t kill you.

  Then Charlie let her go, and she thought that might.

  “I have...customers,” she said weakly.

  But he strode over to her table and pulled the little cord that kept the front flap of the tent up. “You’re closed for a little bit.”

  “Charlie, I—”

  “I’ll buy all the soap you want. Let’s just have this out. You called me over here.”

  “You walked by as though you didn’t know this was exactly where I’d be.”

  They squared off, and she was certain by the way his mouth firmed and he didn’t say anything that it had not been accidental.

  “Can we go back to kissing?” Meg asked hopefully.

  His mouth quirked, his stance softened. “I don’t even know how we got away from that.”

  “You turned into a zombie businessman Charlie jerk?”

  “The goats made me do it?”

  Why his ridiculous joke made her want to cry was absolutely beyond her, but tears formed. Even as she laughed.

  “I was going to buy you flowers. I was going to buy you bread. I was going to...shower you with every token of affection I could find.”

  “I only want you.”

  He closed his eyes as though she’d hurt him, and when he opened his eyes, there was a whole mix of emotions in them and Meg didn’t feel so much like joking or kissing anymore. She wanted to take away all the hurt, all the confusion.

  “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to put it right. How do we...?” He shook his head. “You know, my brother keeps saying these obnoxiously insightful things.”

  “Terrible man.”

  His lips quirked just a hair. “He said that sometimes people use love like a weapon, or a shield, and I’ve done both. With my family. With you. It always comes with caveats and carefulness. And fear. I never knew how to let that protective shield down, not until I met you. I didn’t know how to trust that, not when I thought, well, I thought I’d finally found all the things I wanted, and I had, but the process to get here was so...different, so alien to me, I didn’t know how to trust the results. I didn’t know how to not be hurt. I don’t know how to hurt.”

  “If love can be a weapon, and a shield, it can also be a comfort. A salve for all that hurt. I didn’t know how to hurt either, Charlie. Not for the longest time. I had to numb it, and I had to use something outside myself to do it, but love was always the thing I could count on instead of drugs or alcohol. It just took me some time to trust that love, wholeheartedly. Because love can be a foundation too. The thing we stand on when we don’t understand each other, or the world. When we’re hurt or afraid. It’s the thing we’re supposed to lean on, to believe in. Most especially when it hurts.”

  “De
ll said love was a gift—that you have to give, and receive.”

  Meg smiled. “I like that. I think...maybe, it’s all those things. I know it’s the thing I’ve been missing. And I know it’s what I feel when I’m with you. Sometimes it will be as perfect and easy as the past month, and sometimes it will suck as hard and awful as the past few days, but we have to keep getting back up.”

  “Keep giving.”

  “And receiving,” she said pointedly.

  He crossed to her then, took her face between his palms. “I love you, Meg.” He looked so grimly serious a tear slipped over her cheek, then another. “I’m sorry for everything I said. It was fear and it was... It was wrong. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and you did so much of that on your own. I’ve been jealous of people so much of my life without realizing it, but I think I finally get that leaning on those people, loving those people, is a lot better than wishing I could be them.”

  She placed her hands over his, trying to blink back the tears and failing.

  His thumb brushed one off her cheek. “You’re the only person I’ve so gladly put my heart on the line for. It was jarring how easily it came, how good it seemed. I’ve never been very trusting of things that seem too good to be true, because, quite honestly, my life has been easy. I can handle easy. It makes hard stuff seem that much more...insurmountable. So, I never put myself or my heart on the line. I never invested in what I knew would be a gamble, because I didn’t want to lose.”

  “Love isn’t ever going to be easy, maybe not even a sure thing. It can’t be. Plus, we have a baby. Which makes things even harder. But it also means you’re going to have to surmount it. And if you’re scared, or unsure, I’ll stand here being brave and sure. Because I love you. And I know—I know you’re going to do the same when I falter.”

  “What if we both falter at the same time?”

  Somehow that only made her feel stronger. She wasn’t the only one who was scared, unsure. She wasn’t the only one who might screw up. In fact, screwing up was a given, but the couple that screwed up together...stayed together? She could hope.