Page 49 of A Gingerbread Romance

“Well, everyone missed you yesterday.”

“Thanks. And, uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to make you all worry. I’m fine. How was it?” Jonathan wasn’t sure what to say next if he wanted to keep Wade from asking too many questions. He wasn’t exactly ready to talk about it yet, and his brothers had a way of getting right to the point.

“It was great.” Wade explained how Christmas dinner at Tim’s had been a lot of fun. “Is something going on?” said Wade quietly.

Sigh. They also had a sixth sense for gauging when Jonathan wasn’t himself.

“Nah. Just, I’ve, uh, got a lot on my plate in the next few weeks.” It wasn’t a complete lie. He had afewthings on his plate, and he’d have more work soon.

“Cut the bull,” said Wade. “I can read you like a billboard. What’s going on? Did you and Greta have a fight?”

Jonathan paused. “Way to cut to the chase, bro’,” said Jonathan. “But no, for your information, we didn’t.”

“Then why’d you leave so suddenly? I thought you were staying out here through New Year’s?”

“I’ll be back this week for work, and I might still come out for New Year’s.”

“Come out?” Jonathan could hear the questions in his brother’s tone.

“Yeah, I came home, to Baltimore. Just for a few days.”

He heard Wade’s heavy sigh. “And this new thing you’ve got going with Greta—what about that?”

His brother could be so nosy at times.

“It’s, uh…” Jonathan tried to find a way to tell him without alarming him. “It’s not really a thing. Anymore.”

“What are you talking about? It was quite a thing the other night, as far as I could tell.”

Jonathan frowned into the phone.

“Dude, what did you do?”

Jonathan turned a corner past a coffee shop and inhaled the rich smell as the door was opened. All it reminded him of was Greta and her new undertaking. He shuttered his eyes. When would he be able to stop thinking of her? “Why do you always have to assume I did something wrong?”

“Because you were head over heels for her two days ago, and now you won’t even tell me if you broke up.”

Jonathan lowered his voice as he passed a few other people on the sidewalk. “Okay. Fine. Yes, we broke up.” Not that Greta knew it yet, but he’d leave her a voicemail today. He still couldn’t take the chance of actually talking to her, though. He’d take her back in a heartbeat if he had an actual conversation with her about it at this point.

“What the heck for?” asked Wade, his voice rising. This had come out of left field, as far as Wade knew. Things would’ve seemed fine to everyone else, of course, when Jonathan and Greta had left the party on Christmas Eve.

“Look, she got mad that I was the one who hired Berg. She found out on Christmas Eve, and she sent me packing. I went over there to talk it out the next day—on Christmas—and your buddy, Berg, himself, was there, moving in on her. And she seemed pretty receptive to it, from where I was sitting.” He hoped it didn’t sound as ridiculous to Wade as it did to his own ears.

Wade was silent for a moment. “And what, did you forget your binder in your locker this weekend, too? Because it sounds like you went straight back to Junior High.”

Jonathan huffed. Okay, so it did sound as ridiculous to Wade as it did to himself. Still, it was how he felt: a gnawing, anxiety-producing feeling in his gut that had to be suppressed, and breaking things off with her and leaving town had been his first response.

“She lives there, dude, and I live here. I told you it would be a problem. And Berg lives right down the street from her, more or less. They’ll be perfect for each other.”

Wade was silent a minute, but dropped the sarcasm. “Now, see, that sounds to me like someone who’s given up.”

Did it? Jonathan thought about it. Okay, yes, he had given up. “The writing’s on the wall, little brother, and I’m getting out while I still can.”

He could hear Wade’s frustration growing. Not that he blamed him. “Look, Jonathan, I could see it all over Greta’s face the other night—she’s crazy about you. That woman is not picking up whatever Henry Berg is throwing down. Don’t even worry about it.”

Jonathan knew, somehow, that Wade was right, but it wasn’t enough. On the surface, sure, he could imagine things going well with Greta if he went back to her now. “But that’s not even it,” he said.

“It’s not?”

---