I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Which is how we ended up three across on the carriage seat, Tom and Joe and me, with Honey panting on the load behind us. The horse-drawn cart plodded slowly up the hill, my thigh touching Joe’s, his shoulder hard against mine, while my heart sped at a million miles an hour. My head filled with the clop of hooves—Tellme, tell me—and the jingle of harness—Now, now.
“What I’ve got to say, I wanted to say in person.”
Probably not in front of Tom, though.
He pulled the wagon around back, close to the workshop. We off-loaded in the shelter of the overhang. Inside, I was dancing with impatience.
“Thank you!” I called.
Tom raised his hand in salute and flicked the reins.
Joe hefted a carton. “Where do you want these?”
“Oh. Inside. In the workshop. Did I thank you for cleaning up Dad’s mess?” I flushed. “Well, my mess, really. I was trying to—”
“You need to show me where this goes,” Joe said.
“Now?” I swallowed. “Don’t you have something you wanted to say first?”
“No, yeah.” He shifted the box in his arms. Ran a hand through his messy brown hair.
I held my breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You…What?”
“What you said the other night…I should’ve…” He looked away and then back, his eyes dark and direct. “You were right. When you told me I need to move on. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” I said faintly.
He frowned. Not the reaction he was hoping for, apparently. Well, that made us even.
“I can grovel,” he said. “If you want.”
I gaped. “Sorry, what?”
His jaw set. “Hailey said you’d like it. Because of that book. It’s a—what did you call it?—romance trope.”
A smile bubbled up inside me. “Well, I do.” It sounded like a vow. I bit my lip. “Like it, I mean.”
“Anne, I…” He cleared his throat. Hefted the box in his arms. “I should get this inside.”
Like a man who’d lost his nerve or had something better to do. I sighed and followed him into my dad’s workshop, flipping on the lights.
And there, illuminated in the light from the windows, was a desk. A new desk. My father’s bench top with my name carved into one leg, but resized, reimagined, repurposed into a graceful sweep of finished wood with a curve to hold a computer and drawers supporting one side.
I let my hands drift over the polished surface, as if to prove to myself it was real. Touched the place where Dad had carved my name.anne.
It was everything I wanted. But it was better, more, because of Joe. Tears blurred my eyes and thickened my throat. “How did you know?” I whispered.
He shrugged and set down the box of my books on the floor. “You’re a writer.”
“Not much of a writer yet.”
He tucked his hands under his arms. “You’ve got to have the right tools. You told me you needed a desk. Your own space. Enough room.”
