Page 59 of Playing for Keeps in Starr's Fall
Zach couldn’t keep a huff of laughter from escaping him. “You didn’t value my opinion at all really, Jenna, but that’s okay. People can change, after all.” He grinned at her. “Even you.”
* * *
By late that afternoon, Zach had made a good start on organizing the furniture in the barn into stuff he could salvage and stuff he just needed to get rid of. He’d also tinkered with the start of a website and opened a few social media accounts. Miller’s Woodworking and Furniture Restoration was now in its nascent form, and when Jenna had stopped by the barn to see how it was all going, she’d been quietly approving in a way she never had when they’d been working on the store together.
As he drove down Main Street back toward his cabin, Zach felt good about everything that had happened—his conversation with his parents last night as well as the one with Jenna this morning. The start of his own business, the steps he’d taken toward following his dreams.
Inevitably, his gaze swung toward Your Turn Next as he drove past. It looked empty save for a lone figure curled up on one end of the big sofa, her dark head bent. Maggie. Impulsively he pulled into a parking space on the side of the street and got out of the truck. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, only that it felt important to see her now, after he’d made so many strides. He realized he wanted to tell her about them all.
Bells jingled as he opened the door of the café, and Penny, curled up in Maggie’s lap, looked up, her ears twitching. Maggie’s ears didn’t twitch but she looked almost as wary as the cat, even as she smiled. This was how it had been between them for the last month, Zach knew. Friendly but not the way it had been. The way he knew he still wanted it to be.
“Zach…” His name sounded like a question on her lips.
“I thought I’d stop by.” He glanced around the café and saw it was indeed empty, save for Maggie sitting on the sofa. “Where’s Ben?”
“Out with friends.” She said this with a wry sort of pride. “Two boys from Torrington High School are into RainQuest, it seems. They came into the café today and they got to chatting to Ben… It was all about stats and combat strategies and I don’t even know what.” She let out a shaky laugh. “You’d probably have known what they were talking about, but I felt like they were speaking a foreign language.”
“It kind of is,” Zach agreed, smiling.
“Anyway… they invited Ben out to The Latest Scoop for ice cream, and amazingly, he agreed.” She sounded both thrilled and fearful. “They’re there now, but I’m practically counting the minutes, worried something might go wrong.”
“That’s understandable,” he replied quietly, “after all you’ve both been through.”
She nodded, looking down at the cat in her lap. “I know I should have told you about all that before. I’m sorry I didn’t. It wasn’t fair to you… or Ben. Starting over doesn’t mean forgetting everything that went before.”
“No.” He thought of his own life. Maggie was right, change didn’t mean forgetting. It meant remembering and then being different. “Maggie,” he said sincerely, wanting to reach out and touch her hand but deciding not to, “that’s great to hear, about Ben.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded shaky, and she let out a self-deprecating laugh. “I know it doesn’t sound like that big a deal, but it feels huge.”
“It is huge,” Zach replied quietly. He sat on the opposite end of the sofa. “When did he last go out with kids his own age?”
“Honestly? Never. I mean, not since middle school, anyway, although I will say, Bella’s been coming by a fair bit.”
Zach’s mouth twitched in a smile. “Has she indeed?”
“I am definitelynotmaking a big deal of it.” She sank her fingers into Penny’s fur as a gusty sigh escaped her. “But… he never found his tribe in Greenwich, you know? I’m really hoping and praying he finds it here.”
“It sounds like he might be beginning to.”
“Maybe.” She glanced up at him, her eyes dark and luminous. “You’ve been such a good friend to him, Zach. I hope you know that.”
“I think I do,” he told her with a small smile.
She let out another laugh, this one even shakier. “Hope feels so hard sometimes. To do it in the first place, and then also to risk the disappointment. I tell myself to be realistic about everything but sometimes I just want tobelieve.”
She glanced at him again and then looked away quickly, and Zach wondered if they were talking about Ben—or something else, maybe even their own relationship… or lack of it. Did she miss him the way he missed her?
“Anyway,” Maggie said into the silence, before he could think how to approach that topic, or decide if now was really the right time. “How are things with you?”
“They’re… good.” She raised her eyebrows, waiting for more, and haltingly Zach began to explain about his hoped-for woodworking business, the log cabin he had decided to rent long-term, the life he wanted to build. He could hear the excitement in his voice, and he wasn’t embarrassed by it. This felt too important, toogood, not to be unabashedly glad of what he was finally doing. “It feels like I’m getting my life on track,” he confessed as he finished. “About time.”
“Well, you’re still so young,” Maggie replied after a moment, and Zach just blinked, because she sounded like she was his grandmother and he’d just left high school or something. Was she trying to put some distance between them? He felt like there was plenty already. He didn’t want more, and he hadn’t thought she did, either, but maybe he’d got it wrong.
“Youngish, maybe,” he finally replied lightly. Maggie didn’t reply, just lifted Penny off her lap and took her empty coffee cup to the back of the kitchen.
“I’m really glad for you, Zach,” she called back as she started tidying up, her movements brisk and decisive.
Slowly, Zach rose from the sofa and followed her back to the kitchen. He propped one shoulder against the doorframe as he watched her bustle about. What was going on here? He felt like the temperature in the room had gone down by about twenty degrees, and he wasn’t sure why.
