Page 4 of Beg, Borrow, or Steal

A tour would mean at least a year where she and Noah won’t see each other much. They were only dating during her last one, and Noah didn’t get to visit a lot because he didn’t want to be away too much from our grandma, who had been living with Alzheimer’s. We all shared a rotating care schedule for checking in and visiting with her at the nursing home, and Noah rarely wanted to miss a single visit.

Although…she’s gone now.

There’s nothing left here holding him to the town.

My heart does that thing where it hurts, and hurts, and hurts and I can’t stop it. The feeling scares me. I’ve been outrunning it ever since Grandma died and all four of us siblings were standing in the church’s gymnasium after the funeral, shoveling various casseroles that none of us would take a single bite of onto our plates. We were all prepared for her death in theory, but when it really comes down to losing your last parental figure, it turns out there’s really no such thing as preparation.

I think that was the first day things started changing for us. I’ve always been able to fix everything for them—a Band-Aid on a skinned knee, a pep talk after a breakup, late-night study sessions before a big test—but now they don’t lean on me like they used to. They don’t need me. Noah was so broken after losing Grandma, but he had Amelia to turn to. And Annie had Will, and Madison had culinary school and her life in New York to focus on. It was clear that grief was swallowing us all, but whereas we used to all huddle together in hard times, this time everyone turned in different directions.

And that was when I started my romance novel. It was basically a desperate attempt to distract myself from that hurt clawing its way through my heart. Everything was changing, no one needed me, and I needed…to just be okay. I’ve always loved reading, and writing seemed like the most incredible thing in the world. So for the first time, I let myself get lost every night in a completely made-up world. A world set in the Regency era where a kilt-wearing Highlander and a virginal youngest daughter of a duke fall in love and escape the pain of reality in each other’s arms.

What started as a silly idea quickly became important to me. Meaningful. It felt like stepping into my skin for the first time. There’s this unexplainable buzzing joy in my head while typing and plotting and even just daydreaming about my story. It’s the one place I have full, bright, and unwavering control. I had no idea what I had been missing out on all my life. And now I’m nearing the end of this story that no one around me knows exists and I’m not sure what to do with it. Delete it? Print it out and burn it in a fire? Those feel like the only two options since I think I might die before letting anyone else read it.

“Does she want to do the tour?” I bring myself to ask Noah in a level, casual tone even though my urge is to bite out something likeBut you won’t go with her, right?Because this is what I’ve gotten great at these days. Pretending I’m okay with everything.

He shrugs a shoulder. “She hasn’t made up her mind yet. I told her I’ll support her no matter her decision.”

“And we’ll support you.” I use my hands to smooth a stack of paper napkins into a perfect square beside the register. “You know that, right? If Amelia wants to go and you want to visit her…we’ll make sure the pie shop runs smoothly while you’re gone. Just like last time.”

This technically may be his pie shop after inheriting it from ourgrandma several years ago when the first signs of Alzheimer’s started presenting themselves, but it also belongs to all of us in the sense that we all grew up in here. Grandma always had a soft spot for Noah, though, and he had one for her. They shared a bond that the rest of us didn’t feel as strongly. Not for any real reason other than it’s just how some people gravitate more to certain people in this life than others. After my parents passed, Noah needed my grandma, and the girls needed me.

Neededbeing the key word.

A few minutes later, with the pie shop’s ledger in my tote bag and a great idea in mind for how to finish the last chapter of my novel, I’m in front of the coffee shop. It’ll be so good to focus on—

Wait. Is that…?

My stomach bottoms out. Because right there in the town’s communal parking lot beside the coffee shop is an all too familiar blacked-out Land Rover. It’s parked directly beside my red-and-white ’85 Ford pickup truck in a move that couldn’t be anything besides intentional. The sleek SUV stands out like a sore thumb among the other rust buckets. Or like a snooty thumb—reigning supreme over all the other trucks and trying to assert dominance.Thisis the SUV of my nemesis. My nemesis who apparently isn’t married.

What the hell is Jack Bennett doing back in Rome, Kentucky?

Ignoring the weird flock of butterflies storming my stomach, I fling open the doors of the coffee shop like Aragorn entering the great hall in that oneLord of the Ringsmovie. I don’t have to even look around to find Jack. There he is, sitting at my favorite corner table with a streak of sunlight slashing over his chiseled face as if he’s the hero instead of the villain.

He’s wearing a vintage-looking shirt. Notice I said vintage-looking.Because it isn’t actually vintage. Jack would never thrift apiece of clothing. Everything he owns is new and expensive—and most likely custom made. (Which is wild to me considering his teacher salary matches mine.)

Take for instance the shirt he’s wearing. I’m sure if I were to look it up online, I’d find that it easily retails for over a hundred dollars. It’s a camp collar button-up with thick sage-and-cream stripes that run vertically down what looks like butter-soft material. On his lower half is an impeccable pair of mustard-colored trousers, rolled once, maybe twice at the hem, and casual brown boots. The only contradiction to his luxury style is the tacky, colorful, plastic-candy beaded necklace he’s wearing. He owns a handful of them in different forms. Oh, and he has several tattoos. But they’re all cute sticker-style designs of things like a smiley face, a cartoony Polaroid of an adorable worm with glasses popping out of an apple, a swirly ice cream cone, a tiger in a cardigan with a thought bubble that saysrawr…you name an adorable design, and he hasit.

Thisis Jack’s hook. His style is whimsical yet so charming, and dapper, and well done. It’s part of his tactic to win people over immediately with colors and textures and designs that the average man wouldn’t normally be caught dead in. Not me, though. I don’t fall for his fashion façade. Or his nice hair that is neither blond nor brown but lives in an undefinable middle that changes without rhyme or reason. It is, however, classically, and predictably mussed. His bone structure is one that most people would considerexceptionally niceand sometimes he has scruff on his face and sometimes he doesn’t. I don’t keep close enough tabs to know for certain if there’s a pattern to it or not. But today, he’s clean-shaven.

Across from him sits not his fiancée but his leather laptop bag. One light brown, rustic boot is propped up on the foot of the table leg and his attention is focused on his laptop open in front of himlike he’s someone important.He’s not.He’s a seat stealer, that’s what he is.

As if Jack can feel the cold wind blowing off my heart, his eyes rise to where I’m fuming in the doorway. It’s now I remember I look like a…what did she call me?…a wet goat. I can see my bangs curling up oddly around my brows, and the rest of my hair is a damp mass pressing down like a muggy bog on my shoulders.

He lifts a taunting eyebrow as if to sayDo you need something?

Oh, that damn expression. I’ve had to see it since Jackson and I attended the same private college just outside Rome, Kentucky. We got off on the wrong foot immediately. As the story goes, it was our first day, and I was already running late after waking up to a flat tire. I was hurrying to English Composition 101, and when I turned the corner, I was barreled into by Jack, who had been looking down at his phone while practically jogging with a coffee. The lid popped off and the drink drenched my shirt.

Jack had the audacity to try and spin the moment into some kind of meet-cute, flashing his charming smile and offering to take me out for a coffee after class to make up for it. But (A) I was fresh out of a breakup that had destroyed me and left me with zero desire to interact with anyone in possession of a penis, and (B) showing up late to class and with a huge coffee stain was what my nightmares were made of. I remember saying something to him along the lines ofYou think hitting on me is an appropriate apology for dumping coffee all over me?

As it turned out, we were headed to the same class. We stumbled inside and both made a beeline for the last available seat near the front, and we fought over it. The bickering match started in a heated whisper (where he said he would offer the seat to me but wouldn’t want to risk me thinking he was hitting on me) and escalated to a crescendo that disrupted the entire class, earning us botha glare from the professor and a sharp retort about how this was college, and if we were going to act like children, we should return to high school. I was humiliated.

The absolute worst of it, though, is that Jack immediately smiled at the professor, apologized, and then cracked a joke about how we had heard that the lectures were so incredible we were willing to fight to get a good seat. The professor ate it up hook, line, and sinker. He waved us off, then told Jack to take the seat and pointed to one in the back for me.

The rest is history.

Jack and I competed our way through college, and since we were after the same degree, we had frustratingly similar course schedules. Everywhere I turned, Jack seemed to be there with a smile and self-deprecating jokes that earned him the love of everyone in the room. Even when I got a job at the smoothie shop by campus, I walked in on my first day only to find Jack already behind the counter wearing theGo Bananashat. He got the manager job a few weeks later because the customers loved him, whereas I got complaints forbeing too rudewhen they’d ask me to remake a smoothie (that was made perfectly the first time but really they were just gaming the system for a free smoothie).

Everything became an opportunity to beat the other person, from jobs, to grades, to friend groups—everything all the way down to parking spaces. Anyone unlucky enough to share the same air as us had to endure our constant bickering and power grabs. The last straw for me was when Jack managed to get placed at Rome Elementary for his student teaching. I had been begging to be placed in my hometown public school but was instead sent to a private school a few towns over. I know he somehow managed to snag it just to spite me. Because admittedly Jack is better at one thing than me: getting people to like him.

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