“What are these?” Clara asks, poking the bag of cinnamon rolls that are still on the counter as I’ve been too busy to move them.
“Reece brought them,” I drop in as casually as I can.
“Reece was here?” Her voice is sharp and I’m glad the store’s currently empty. “What did he want? Tell me all about it.”
“He was here to apologize.”
“For being an asshole.”
“Yeah,” I chuckle.
“Wait, you didn’t forgive him, did you?” Her voice is suspicious.
“No, of course not,” I protest and turn to look at her. “In fact, I told him to go away.”
I watch as her jaw actually drops for three full seconds and then her mouth spreads into a wide smile and she whoops.
“Way to go. I knew you could do it, you got rid of that creep.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure I’d call him a creep, but I do feel good about it.”
She looks at the bag. “He did bring cinnamon rolls.”
“Yes he did.”
“Hmmm,” she muses.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“As a peace offering it’s a good start.” She pulls the bag toward us and I laugh.
“I’ll make the coffee, shall I?” I go into the small kitchen area at the side of the stockroom and start the coffee machine. The cinnamon rolls are delicious and Clara’s words echo around in my head. Were they meant as a peace offering? Did I dismiss him too abruptly? Well, no point dwelling on that now. If he truly does want to apologize, he’ll try again.
“You’d better get going,” Clara says, licking her fingers to remove the last of the stickiness from the roll. I glance at the clock.
“Hells yes.”
Clara arranged to finish her shift early at the hotel so she can manage the store for me this afternoon while I go to the reunionevent. She’s good in the store, almost as good as me, and I hope to be able to offer her a permanent position one day if my plans to open a second store work out.
“Are you going like that?” she asks, and I look down at myself and the sweater I have on. It’s not bad, and it suited my mood this morning, but we’ve been told they’ll be taking photographs today. I peel off the sweater and replace it with a blue sweater vest that matches the soft-blue plaid button down I have on.
“Better?” I enquire.
“Perfect,” she declares. “Now go, and I’ll see you later.” She shoos me towards the door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I laugh. That doesn’t leave a lot of scope so I think I’ll be safe, but the laughter does release some tension and I head toward the high school, determined to enjoy myself.
CHAPTER NINE
Reece
“If you could just squeeze in a bit more,” the photographer calls, and we all shuffle sideways a little while still trying to keep some distance. I didn’t want to be this close to most of the people I went to school with twenty years ago; I certainly don’t now.
“Just a few more minutes,” he says, and several people around me groan. I understand exactly. Eventually we’re released from the group photo of our whole year and I hear people take some deep breaths as the large group breaks up. They’ll start doing the class photos next, and they’re doing it alphabetically so it’ll be a while until mine is called. I look round for Holden but I can’t see him. Maybe he’s not coming. He was very dismissive of me this morning. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly... anger maybe. Anger I could understand, I can deal with. I’ve been angry with myself a lot over the last twenty years. But he wasn’t angry, he was just cold, like he didn’t care, and that was worse. Ever since I found myself back outside the store on the sidewalk, I’ve had a tightnessacross my chest. Now, as I glance around again and still can’t see him, it changes into a fluttering that makes me uneasy. I know the feeling well, though it took me a long time and several therapy sessions to understand what it was.
It actually started back in high school, when my parents were going through their divorce. I thought they were a tight-knit unit, unshakeable, but it seems they were both just very good at keeping things from me. When I learned the truth, the world as I knew it fell apart. Everything was moving so quickly—they started to argue and then my dad moved out. It was all spiraling and at no point did anyone tell me the truth or even ask what I wanted. I thought it was my fault. I thought my dad didn’t want to be around us because of me. A couple of times when I’d heard them arguing—late at night after they thought I’d gone to bed but I’d snuck back down to sit on the stairs and listen—he’d said I was too soft, that I had no backbone, and that no son of his was going to grow up gutless and weak.
A couple of days later, my dad was going to fetch some wood and I begged to go with him. On the journey I asked him to teach me to be more like him, to be strong. I thought it would bring my parents back together, but of course it didn’t, as I learned later that it was my dad’s inability to keep his hands and other parts off other women that was the cause. It took me much longer to understand that strength isn’t about not being soft, and being gentle has its own strength. But for a few months I tried to be like my dad, I tried to emulate him, and ended up being the worst of him. That gave me a situation I could control, and that was what I craved even if I hurt Holden in the process.
