Page 32 of Save the Last Dance
She hadn’t realized her cupcake bakery was so well-known in Heartache. She shouldn’t be surprised; news traveled fast in a small town.
“I’m not sure if people would want a cupcake calledHeartache.” Although it wasn’t a bad idea. It could be fun for the festival.
“Why not?” He straightened and shrugged his wiry shoulders. “It’s not like you’re calling it the ‘heartburn cupcake.’”
He chuckled and teased her some more, but in the end agreed to supply three kinds of sandwiches at his booth during the festival. Nina made some notes with his contact information and stood to leave when a waitress burst through the open door to Rodney’s office.
“Ms. Spencer, your grandmother fell?—”
Nina didn’t wait to hear the rest. She sprinted through the kitchen, darting past a busboy with a tray of dirty glasses.
“Gram!” she called, shoving through swinging double doors that led into the restaurant.
“I’m fine,” her grandmother’s voice came from behind a wall of concerned diner patrons and wait staff who crowded around a booth. “Just took a little spill, is all.”
“Excuse me.” Nina edged by a young woman to see for herself. “What happened?” She circled Gram’s shoulders with one arm, searching her face to see if the older woman was in pain and trying to hide it.
Gram was pale as she rubbed her good knee. “I wanted to grab a dessert menu from the next table over?—”
“Oh, Gram—” Nina began.
“We can bring you one,” Rodney Baker said at the same time.
“I know.” Gram shook her head. “I just put a little too much weight on the wrong foot and then I twisted my good knee—” She stopped, blinking fast, the expression on her face uncharacteristically defeated. “Sometimes I forget that I shouldn’t do those things. Inside, I still feel eighteen.”
“Me, too, Daisy,” Rodney assured her, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “But you look a lot closer to eighteen than me.” He made an exaggerated frown that made his wrinkles more pronounced. “Aren’t you glad you’re not all craggy-faced like this?”
The two of them laughed while a couple of the younger men offered to help Gram out to Nina’s truck. Nina carried her walker while Gram protested all the help, but she could see her grandmother leaned heavily on the extra arms.
Half the diner ended up in the parking lot. The couple from the table beside Gram’s carried her purse and a doggy bag for Taz the cat. A waitress carried a makeshift bag of ice and ran ahead to open the truck door. Rodney and Mrs. Baker wanted to be sure their friend got to the truck safely. Then, there were the well-wishers who just wanted to tell Gram to get better before the Harvest Fest.
As she watched them all settle Gram in her truck, Nina felt touched. She’d met many wonderful friends in New York. But there was something special about a hometown, where your classmate owned the business down the street and you had history with everyone. Good and bad, the people around her had shared a lot with each other. Climbing into the driver’s seat behind her grandmother, she was more than a little grateful.
“Give me a shout if you need anything,” Rodney Baker told Nina as he waved. “Take care of our girl.”
“Thank you. I will,” she called through the window.
And she would.
Glancing over at her grandmother in the passenger seat, Nina knew now she needed to be more of a consistent presence in her grandmother’s life. Heartache was her home. Her grandmother was her family. So if spending more time herewould help Gram, Nina would find a way to make that happen. And after seeing the way the town turned out to give her a hand just now, maybe Heartache wouldn’t be so bad.
If she could really put the past to rest with Mack like he’d suggested, if they could have the same kind of friendship they’d had once, Nina could learn to like it here just fine. She pulled out her phone.
The next night, Nina sat in the bleachers of her old high school and watched the Crestwood band and color guard practice. She’d asked Mack to meet her here, hoping sitting on these bleachers where so much of her life had started to unravel they could put some of the bad memories behind them. It had never occurred to her that band and guard would be practicing under the lights at seven o’clock on a Monday evening.
With the color guard’s purple-and-white flags twirling and the sound system blaring a recording of the band’s music, it wasn’t exactly an evening of quiet reflection.
A movement on the steps nearby pulled her attention from the high-stepping twirlers. Mack climbed the steps toward the top of the bleachers, a white foam cup in each hand. He wore a dark down vest over a lightweight sweater, the collar of a crisp white shirt just visible enough underneath to contrast with his tanned face and the hint of five o’clock shadow along his jaw.
Would she ever look at him and not be tripped up by old memories and desire?
“Thanks for coming.” She tucked her arms tighter around herself and slid down on the cold metal bench, thescent of autumn in the air. “I didn’t realize there would be a practice tonight.”
He passed her a foam cup.
“I don’t mind. The band sounds good.” Taking a seat beside her, he leaned back on the high fence behind the bleachers. “I don’t know if the spiced cider is still hot, but I thought you might want to try it. A local family opened a farm stand just off the highway a few years ago, and they agreed to provide some cider for the Harvest Fest this year.”
Nina breathed in the spicy scent still steaming from the cup and leaned back on the fence a hand’s span away from Mack. She wore a short trench coat that ended mid-thigh, but she’d also brought a throw blanket from the pickup truck. She tucked it around her thighs now to keep herself from brushing against Mack. She told herself it was just because she was cold that she wanted to lean into him.
