Page 79 of The Friendly Fall

“Thank you,” she says as I shut the tailgate. “You’re the best.”

I chuckle. “Nah, but it was really good to see you today.”

“You too.” She beams, her eyes bright as they meet mine. There’s something there—something that I can’t quite figure out. “I’ll see ya.”

“Yeah, see ya,” I say, watching her walk to the driver’s side door and fire up the truck. She gives me a wave as she pulls down the street and my heart sinks.

Yeah, there’s no way I’ll ever get over her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Eliza

I hum to myself as I lay out my plans on the table in the workshop. Thankfully, Pops put a nice heater in it, keeping me toasty as I work on the gift for Nick. He was more than helpful at the store, and it took everything I had not to blurt out my plans for him. I’m so ready for it to be done; mostly because it feels like our future is hanging in the balance…

Reaching over, I click the radio on, turning it to a station that’s playing holiday music. There’s a lot of static in the background, and I chalk it up to the radio being older than me. I take a deep breath, and turn my attention back to the task at hand.

It’s going to be a tough project—well, for me, anyway.

My eyes flicker to the stack of wood in the corner and then to the table saw. I havenoidea what I’m doing, but I did make sure to buy all the safety gear. I donotwant to have to make another call to the fire department.

Talk about areallyawkward way to tell Nick that I’m in love with him.

Laughter spills from my lips as I get started. I realize quickly that it’s tedious work, and I find myself looking uphowto run the tools more than I want to admit. However, I do manage to cut all the pieces needed over the span of about three hours. And by the time I’ve finished that step, I’m sitting on the stool next to the table, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“How’s it going in here?” Granny peeks her head in the door.

“Good … I think,” I say, smiling. “All the pieces are cut, I just have to put it together; which might be the hardest part.”

“It depends on how exact your cuts are.” Granny laughs, stepping the rest of the way inside of the workshop. She’s carrying a plate of chicken and broccoli casserole and a chocolate chip cookie. “But I figured you probably worked up an appetite, no matter how well you cut those boards.”

“I actually did.” I laugh. “No wonder men eat so much.”

Granny shakes her head and sets the plate down on the workshop table as I reach over and turn the radio down, “Jingle Bells” fading to near silence. I breathe in the aroma of the freshly baked food, my stomach growling.

“How did the trip to the hardware store go?”

I stab my fork into the casserole and load up some cheesy chicken and rice. “Um, I think it went well. It was really hard not to tell him what I was working on, because obviously, he was interested in it.”

She nods. “I figured he’d be his usual self.”

My eyes stay on my food as I shrug. “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Nick rarely shows when something is wrong. I don’t think he’d tell me even if there was.”

“Your pops was like that,” Granny says, sighing heavily as she takes a seat on a second stool. “I remember us going round and round when we were young. There was one time that I just swore he was over me.”

I raise a brow, finally putting the delicious goodness into my mouth. “What happened?” I say through my full mouth of food. I never have to worry about manners with Granny.

“Well…” Her voice trails off as she laughs. “You may or may not believe it, but I was young once. It happened about a month before we got married, too. I was seventeen.”

“There’s no way I could’ve gotten married when I was seventeen,” I comment, swallowing my bite. The casserole warms my stomach in all the right ways.

“Yeah, well, things were much different back then, but you know, even still, I don’t know that I wasreadyto get married. It’s just how things were. But anyway.” She chuckles. “We’d gone to get a malt down at Bill’s—can you believe it was there back then?”

I smile, shaking my head. “I really can’t.”

The nostalgia on her face is touching. “We got a malt, and he was talking about the wedding coming up. I think he was nervous about it. He didn’t have a great job at the time, and for some reason, he assumed that we were gonna have babies as soon as we saidI do.”

“Babies having babies,” I comment, trying to imagine myself having a child back when I was seventeen. I have nothing but respect for the women who do such a thing, because it would’ve been a disaster for me.

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