“My dad and brother, mainly. They couldn’t have coped on their own. They needed me to stay, and that’s okay. I made the right decision. I don’t regret it. I don’t want them to carry any guilt about it. I did what was best for my family and I stand by it.”
“You can’t tell them that?”
“I think Dad would have tried to pack me off to New York, and if I’d let him, the farm would have gone under.”
“Maybe,” Stephanie says. “But time has moved on.”
“Right. And any hope I had of making dance my career has passed. So what’s the point in dredging it up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your dad and brother deserve you to be open with them. Maybe they want to comfort you because it must be hard to give up something you cared so passionately about. It must still hurt if you go back to New York to relivethat every year. Maybe they won’t want to turn back the clock, but perhaps they’d just want to hug you. Like I want to do right now.”
Tears gather in my throat. I came here to make a fruit delivery, not spill my guts to a woman I haven’t seen since high school.
She pulls me into a hug, and I hug her back.
“I missed you when we left,” she whispers as she hugs me.
“Me too,” I say. I don’t add that it didn’t last long because the grief of losing my best friend was soon overshadowed by the grief of losing my mother. It’s hard to care about anything when one minute your mom still comes and kisses you good night before bed, and then you’re standing over her grave.
But it feels good to have Stephanie back.
She pulls back and holds my shoulders with both hands. “I’m absolutely frantic at the moment because we’ve got some VIP arrivals, but we should meet up. Go to Grizzly’s or something.”
“Don’t you always have VIP arrivals?”
She laughs. “Yeah, but everyone’s freaking out about this particular party. But once they’ve left, let’s hang out. Catch up. Honestly, chatting like this, it feels like I saw you a couple of months ago, not over a decade.”
It’s true. It’s easy between us. Maybe because she knew me when I was a teenager before I bore the scars of becoming an adult and all that has entailed for me. “Maybe I’ve been manifesting our connection by pretending I’d visit you.”
She grins at me. “That manifesting shit works, man.”
“Well, I hope it goes well with your VIPs. I’ll probably run into you in the meantime. I’m doing the deliveries up here at the moment three times a week because Bray broke his leg.”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course he did.”
Her reaction isn’t surprising. Bray was a true daredevil as a kid. He was always coming home from the end of theday covered in bumps and scratches. And more than once he dislocated his shoulder on the hockey rink. A broken toe was a weekly occurrence.
“He’s not as bad as he used to be. This time he just toppled off a tractor.”
She blushes and lowers her voice. “I don’t think I ever told you that we kissed back in the day.”
“You and Bray? I didn’t know that.”
“I swore him to secrecy. I knew my best friend’s brother was strictly off-limits.”
I laugh. I would have probably hated the idea of Stephanie and Bray together. Mainly because I would have felt left out. Now the idea feels oddly comforting.
“Let’s swap numbers and we can get a night a Grizzly’s in the calendar.”
Once we’ve exchanged our details, we have another hug, and I get back into the truck. I only expected to drop off some fruit this morning. The last thing I was expecting was to get my best friend back. For the first time since New York, I feel a little lighter.
TEN
Jack
I don’t like to complain, but if we’re traveling on a private plane, I don’t understand why we have to leave so early. I haven’t slept well since I met Iris. I wonder if I ever will again.
“Leaving so early means we get the entire Friday to enjoy at the Club,” Fisher says as we come into view of the airport. “This was great planning, Bennett.”
