Page 37 of Snowflakes Over Starr's Fall
“I guess… I’m just a little sensitive,” Jenna began shakily. She couldn’t make herself look at him. “To, um, feeling… ignored.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and her toes curled up inside her hiking boots becausewhywas he not speaking?
“Are you saying I’ve been ignoring you?” he asked eventually, sounding incredulous.
“Well… kind of? In a way?” She snuck a glance at him; he looked completely bemused. “I mean, I know you’ve been helpful with the store, very helpful, but… that’s thestore.”
He shook his head slowly. “And yet you said you and the store were pretty much the same thing.”
“In myhead,” Jenna burst out in a well-duh tone. “Not in yours. And not in real life.”
“Okay.” Jack was now looking befuddled as well as bemused, and Jenna could hardly blame him. She barely made sense to herself, never mind another, far more reasonable person. “Can I ask… without inciting your ire… how I ignored you?”
Inwardly Jenna cringed. Jack’s level tone, his genuine confusion and curiosity, well… it made her feel ridiculous and childish, along with petty. Not a good combination. Not a good feeling. And did she really want to explain how she’d felt ignored?If you don’t see it then I can’t explain it to you.No, she couldn’t go there.
The coffee had finished brewing, and so she took a moment to pour them both mugs, conscious of Jack’s stare burning into her back as he waited for her to make sense of something she really wasn’t sure she could make sense of. Not, at least, without admitting some pretty humiliating truths.
And then, suddenly, like a lightning bolt to her heart, jolting her awake, Jenna suddenly thoughtwhy not? Why not lay it all out there, admit how she’d been feeling—a little bit ignored, yes, but also kind of hopeful that maybe something could happen between them one day? Bruised by past experiences, very much so, but also wanting to be different. Tochooseto live differently. Could she say all that to Jack?
Okay, yes, the risk of embarrassment was high, but there were worse things than embarrassment. There was heartbreak. There was the soul-deep disappointment of missing out because you weren’t brave enough to try. There was living alone for the rest of your life because you were a coward.
“I suppose…” she began slowly as she handed a mug to Jack, “I just thought… that things would feel…” Goodness, but this was hard. Her throat was dry, and her heart was starting to hammer. Memories of brokenly telling Ryan how much she loved him were rushing through her in a towering wave of remembered humiliation and hurt. And Jack was gazing at her with narrowed eyes and pursed lips; he looked a lot like he had the first time she’d met him, and suddenly she couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t lay herself out there, not again, not when the memory of telling Ryan in a trembling voice how much she loved him while he stared at her with the very same expression that was on Jack’s face right now…no! She was not a masochist. She wasnotdoing this. Not again. Whoever had said it was better to have loved and lost than never loved at all had not known what they were talking about. At all.
“It’s just the last week or so, you’ve been kind of MIA,” she said finally as she buried her nose in her coffee mug, unable to meet his gaze. “And I wondered if you were getting a little tired of the store or of—of me.” That was as far as she was willing to go with her confession. “And if you are,” she continued, trying now to sound briskly practical, “please just say so. We don’t have to organize the Winter Wonderland Weekend together. I don’t want you to be working with me on—on sufferance or something. And you’ve been so helpful already, I want you to know I really appreciate it.” The last was said in a rush, in case he thought she was ungrateful.
“I’m not tired of you,” Jack said after a moment. She couldn’t tell anything from his tone. “Or the store. I’ve really enjoyed working on it, to be honest. But… the last week was kind of busy with—various things.” He paused before continuing, “Maybe I should have told you what was going on, but my mom had a fall at her nursing home, and I had to take her to the doctor, as well as have a meeting with the care staff to discuss next steps in managing her decline. It was pretty intense, all things considered. And then I had a couple of doctor’s appointments of my own, in the city, to assess my recovery. And you know how I don’t like talking about my health stuff.” He smiled crookedly, which just about melted her heart.
“Oh.” Now she felt like a complete heel, complaining about him not showing up when he’d obviously had so much else to deal with. Why hadn’t she considered that? She’d been too wrapped up in her own pity party even to think about it. “I’m sorry,” she told him, heartfelt. “I should have thought about what you might be going through.” She gave a grimacing sort of smile. “How is your mom?”
“Well.” He glanced away, his jaw bunched, and she had the sorrowful sense that talking about personal stuff was difficult for him, which was probably why he hadn’t told her what was going on. He had emotional baggage too; hers had made her jump to conclusions while his had caused him to retreat. “There’s only one way this is going,” he said at last. “When you have Alzheimer’s. So any decline is not unexpected, but… it can be challenging.”
“I’m sorry,” Jenna said again, more softly.
“It’s the regret that is the hardest to deal with,” he admitted in a low voice, without looking at her. “I spent twenty years being too busy to see my own mother. And part of that was motivated by how I saw my dad live—stuck in some mid-level job he hated, counting down the days until retirement, and then he died of heart failure just three years into it. I was so dismissive of them both, of the choices they’d made, and yet… he and my mom were sohappytogether, that whole time.” His voice choked, and tears stung Jenna’s eyes. Slowly Jack shook his head. “I thought he’d missed out all these years, because of his job, and it wasn’t until I had the heart attack that I realized maybe I was the one missing out, all along.” He turned to give her a bleak, level stare that made Jenna ache with sympathy for him. “Do you know, I haven’t had a single serious or meaningful relationship in twenty years? I mean, a couple of dates, a few casual things, but nothing memorable. Nothingreal. I was just too damned busy.”
“Oh, Jack…” Jenna shook her head, her heart breaking for what he felt he’d missed. He’d been so painfully honest with her… how could she still hide from him what she’d been feeling? “I know what it feels like to worry you’ve missed out,” she said quietly. She hesitated, and then, compelled to an emotional honesty by his own, she confessed, “When I was twenty-six I fell in love with a guy who… who broke my heart, but worse than that, he crushed my confidence.” She swallowed, still unable to look at him as she continued, “And I’ve spent the last decade trying to get over it and also telling myself it isn’t worth it, to try again. Not that there have been a lot of options, but maybe there haven’t been because I haven’t been willing to look. To try, simply because I was too scared of getting hurt.” She fell silent, wondering if she should have said all that, and yet also strangely glad she had. “At least,” she tried to joke, “you’ve made millions in the process. I’m still broke.”
“They’re cold comfort sometimes,” Jack replied with a crooked smile. “They don’t keep you company, I’ve learned that much. I didn’t realize how lonely I was until I moved to Starr’s Fall.” Something in his tone made Jenna finally turn to risk looking at him. He was gazing at her with a new intentness that made her catch her breath.
In a single second, it felt as if the mood had completely shifted between them, from heartfelt and emotional to… exciting and expectant. It was a lot to take in.
“So this guy who broke your heart,” Jack said after a moment. “What was he like?”
Jenna smiled crookedly. “A rich city slicker.”
“Ah.” The single syllable held a wealth of understanding.
“We dated for nearly three years. I thought it was going somewhere. He just saw it as… I don’t know. A distraction?” She shook her head slowly. “Nothing serious, anyway. Nothing remotely what I’d thought it was. The night he broke up with me I thought he was going to propose. It turns out he’d actually gotten engaged to someone else… more suitable.”
Jack pressed his lips together, anger on her behalf flashing in his eyes, which was kind of a nice feeling. “He sounds like a total jerk.”
“He was, but I only realized that in retrospect. He could be very charming when he wanted to be. And I was heartbroken, but worse than that…” Jenna paused. She had thought she wasn’t brave enough to go into all this, but maybe she was, after all. Maybe Jack had helped her to be. “I was just somadat myself, both for convincing myself this guy was worth it and also for—for changing myself for him. I tried so hard to be what he wanted—this sophisticated city woman, and that just wasn’t me. So… when I came back to Starr’s Fall, I doubled down on being me. Country bumpkin who refuses to impress anyone. And that’s when I started to get personal about the store… and feel like it shouldn’t have to change, either. That no one should, and especially not for some rich jerk.” The words burst out of her, and she bowed her head.
“I understand why you would react that way,” Jack replied after a moment, his tone gentle. “No one should feel like they have to change to be loved.”
Loved. The word seemed to shimmer in the air between them, with possibility, with promise. Jenna was afraid to say anything, to break that golden silence. Words, any words, might spoil it, and even though she felt emotionally flayed right now, she wanted to enjoy the sense of hope and even expectation that Jack’s words had caused her for just a few seconds…
