Page 18 of The Pumpkin Pact
My heart punches a hole in my ribs. “That’s good,” I manage.
Cole clears his throat theatrically. “Well, I have to go look at a bridge and contemplate my life choices. Harper, it was a pleasure to meet you. Rowen, try not to fuck this up.”
I squint. “Which part?”
“All of it,” he says, backing toward the door. “The town, the cat monarchy, and the thing you’re not calling a thing.” He winks at Harper and then at me, a synchronized insult, and is gone in a whirl of leather jacket and overconfidence.
Silence blooms for a second in his wake. The shop hums. Outside, leaves scrape along the sidewalk like mice in tap shoes.
Harper toys with the edge of a bookmark. “Your friend is… a lot.”
“Yep,” I say. “He’s also not wrong very often.”
She looks up at me under her lashes; it’s lethal. “About what?”
I could lie. I could crack a joke about silica gel and pretend nothing’s buzzing between us, but the words stick in my throat. Instead, I let the truth settle heavy and real... there’s something here, and we both feel it. Harper drops her gaze to the bookmark, cheeks tinged pink, and Mr. Darcy flicks his tail like he’s bored with waiting for us to catch up.
Outside, the wind rattles the windows, and for the first time in a long time, I want the storm to last forever.
We work until the streetlights buzz. Harper finishes a last call to a vendor who insists he needs two outlets and emotionalsupport. I lock the till, flip the sign, and we step out into a night that smells like wood-smoke and wet leaves.
“I’ll walk you both home,” I say, pointing at Mr. Darcy. It’s not a question.
“It’s four blocks,” she says, but she tucks the strap of her tote higher on her shoulder like she’s already agreed.
We keep a steady pace down Main Street . The shop windows throw rectangles of light onto the sidewalk like a movie we can walk through. Harper talks with her hands when she’s tired; her fingers sketch little arcs that fade in the air. Every so often, our elbows brush, and I pretend it’s accidental. It’s not.
Her porch is a narrow rectangle with two pumpkins, a galvanized bucket of mums, and a crooked wind chime that sounds like someone trying to remember a song. She unlocks the door and pauses.
“Tea?” she asks.
“Always,” I say, and she rolls her eyes because she expected me to say no, and I didn’t.
Inside is soft. Books on the built-ins, blankets in a basket, a lamp that makes everything look gentler than it is. Mr. Darcy runs into the other room. He’s gracious enough to hate me mostly during business hours.
Harper fills a kettle. “Chamomile or mint?”
“Dealer’s choice,” I say, taking the mug she hands me a minute later. We carry them back to the porch and sit on the top step. The street is quiet except for a faraway laugh and tires crunching leaves. The quiet where truth feels possible.
She blows on her tea. “We never talked about the ‘almost’ in high school,” she says, like she’s commenting on the weather. “We orbited each other. Then you enlisted, and I left for college and ‘almost’ became a fossil.”
“You dated Greg,” I say.
She makes a face. “For six weeks. He took me to a chain restaurant and told me to ‘smile more’ when I said the breadsticks tasted like sadness.”
“I was not a great communicator,” I admit. “I was… loud in all the ways that didn’t help and quiet in the ways that mattered.”
She tips her head. “You were an excellent communicator to everyone but me.”
That lands hard, and I let it. “I thought if I said anything real it would be harder to leave. And I had already signed papers that didn’t care about my heart.”
The wind moves the mums. Somewhere a screen door squeaks. I hold my mug with both hands, letting the heat seep into the places that ache when the weather swings colder.
“My deployment rhythm was simple,” I say. “Train, go, come back, pretend the world didn’t tilt while you were gone. I came home on leave, and everything felt louder. She—” I don’t say my ex’s name; it doesn’t help “—liked me best when I was a story. When it was uniforms in frames and small-town parades. Not the part where I missed birthdays and funerals and came back with a knee that tells time when it rains.”
Harper is still. I’m not performing. I’m just… giving her the ugly and the ordinary truth.
“She asked me to pick,” I say. “Her or the uniform. Then the knee picked for me. Medical discharge. A ring on the table when I got home. The end.”
