“Oh!” Winnie chuckled. “Well, I’m a historian so…”
“So totally yes?” Diana filled in.
“So totally no!” Winnie corrected. “Do you know what I love about living here and now? The absence of smallpox! The presence of indoor plumbing!” She pointed to her jeans. “Women getting to wear pants.”
“Hm,” Miriam said thoughtfully. “An intriguing perspective. You know how much bad stuff there was back in the seventeenth century.” This was the time period of the time-travel novel they had read for this book club session.
“I’ll stick to studying history from this side, thanks,” Winnie agreed with a smile.
The conversation drifted on from there, and Winnie’s worry rose back up like the tide. That had been fine, hadn’t it? She hadn’t said anything bad or strange or wrong, had she?
She was pretty sure it had been just fine, but still. Her anxiety remained.
“I’m going to go grab some snacks,” she murmured, suddenly needing a break. Diana, who was sitting closest to her, gave her a friendly, encouraging nod, and Winnie headed into the kitchen and set her hands to the task of assembling a few more fruit kebabs, which had been her contribution this evening and a huge hit.
The most frustrating part about her anxiety, Winnie decided as she indulged in some therapeutic stabbing of fruit onto skinny wooden stakes, was that sheknewwhat was happening. She knew that she was building up walls between herself and thesenew friends of hers, and she knew that wasn’t how you made friends. She didn’t need to have experience, but she knew that much.
But knowing it and doing something about it were two very different things, it turned out.
But every time Winnie tried to just let it all go, tried to unclench her shoulders and let down her walls, she heard this little voice in her head. And that voice pretty much just saidno, no, danger, don’t do it, nope, stop while you still can.
It didn’t matter that Winnie recognized that this voice was just a tad histrionic. After all, it was a rare thing to find any actualdangerat a book club.
She had used those walls to protect herself through all those miserable years when she’d been bullied as a kid, though. And she was starting to worry that she wouldn’t ever be able to move beyond being the “Ice Queen of Magnolia Shores.”
She had run out of kebabs to assemble, but she wasn’t quite ready to head back into the fray. Her nerves were too frazzled to sit and try to focus on having a productive conversation.
She poured herself a glass of wine, more so she could have something to do with her hands for a little while longer than anything else. If the winehappenedto help her feel calmer… well, so much the better, but she wasn’t going to count her chickens.
Winnie swirled her wine around in the glass as she snuck a peek back into the main room. The rest of the club was animatedly chatting about something that Winnie couldn’t quite make out. They didn’t seem to have noticed her absence. Winnie wasn’t certain whether she found that encouraging or disheartening. Shehadwanted to be unobtrusive when she had slipped away, but it also felt like a confirmation of her worst fears.
She wasn’t needed. She wasn’t wanted. She was just here because of… pity? Because they were all so nice? She didn’t know, but it didn’t really matter the reason.
Winnie Burnett, friendless again.
She took one sip of her wine before looking at the rest of the glass and deciding against it. What she wanted wasn’t really this glass of wine.
What she wanted was to get out of there.
She hovered near the kitchen door, trying to figure out if she could sneak back in to the main room and grab her coat without being noticed or if she should just “forget” her jacket and come back some other time. If she timed it right, maybe Eleanor would even be too busy with other customers to quiz her about why she’d ducked out without saying goodbye.
If she even cares, that critical voice needled her.
Winnie was so consumed with this scheming and consequent self-recrimination that she didn’t hear the key in the lock or the quiet clicking as the door began to open.
Which meant that, when a man stepped into the kitchen with a startled, “Oh, excuse me!” Winnie…
Well, she screamed.
Just a little.
The man yelped back.
And suddenly, they had the attention of the entire book club.
“I am… so sorry,” the man said politely.
Winnie barely processed his words, too busy staring in astonishment at this newcomer and the startled faces of her friends, such as they were, managed to stammer out only the most preliminary of responses.
