Page 78 of A Novel Love Story

So I nodded. Once.

She threw up her hands in victory. “I knew it!” she cried, reaching the foyer on the first floor again, and spun back to face me. “Was there tongue? Did you get to second base? Does he really taste like old books and dust?”

I cleared my throat. That Iwasn’tgoing to answer. “I don’t—”

“Old books and dust? You gotta be talking about Anders,” said Will as he came in from the porch, where he’d deposited the ladder. His cap was on backward, paint smeared over him like a Rorschach painting.

From the parlor, Jake yelled, “Did you get a paper cut?”

“Did you hear something? I could’ve sworn I heard a dudewho painted himself into a corner.”

Jake rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. “I technically painted myself into the middle of the room. Get it right.” He left the parlor, and went through the foyer and hallway to get to us in the kitchen. “Thanks for helping … I just realized I don’t know your name,” he added to me.

I held out a hand. “Elsy.”

“Elsy.” He took my hand and shook it. His grip was strong, his fingers scarred from all the years working at the café. “Sorry you had to help rescue me. The stuff with Ruby’s got me in a twist.”

“Nah, I told you not to worry, man,” Will replied, slapping his friend on the back.

“How can I not? Just out of the blue she …”

“Called it quits?” Junie offered, to Will’s utter dismay.

“I don’t get it!” Jake cried, throwing his hands in the air, and she patted his shoulder comfortingly. Junie suggested that everyone take a break and drink some fresh-made lemonade, and Will agreed that it was a good idea, and I wasn’t about to pass up Junie’s lemonade. No one did. With a glass of lemonade in him, he seemed to be a little less frustrated, and a little more morose.

“She just broke up with me,” he said, shaking his head. “I dunno what I did.”

“You had to have done something, bro,” Will said, pouring himself another glass.

Junie rolled her eyes. “Hush, you don’t know that.”

“You wouldn’t break up with me for no reason, Junebug, and neither would Ruby.”

Jake said, “That’s the thing! I can’t think of anything.” But then he fell quiet, and scratched his chin in thought. “Well … I guess that’s not super true. We haven’t really been able to see each other that much. She works the mornings, I work the nights. I’ve been trying to get new people trained on those shifts, but it’s been slow going. But she’s perfectly cool with that.”

Junie and Will exchanged a look, as if they knew there was something wrong with the math problem and they weren’t all that positive of the answer. I guessed I just found the limits of authorial intent. I took a long sip of my lemonade. It was so sweet, I felt the grains of sugar crunch between my teeth. Well, Junie and Will certainly weren’t going to be of any help.

“Have you asked her about it?” I asked, dipping my proverbial toes in the water, hoping it wouldn’t scald me.

“We haven’t really had much time to talk,” he admitted.

Junie said, “That might be the first step.”

Or just asking her what’s wrong, I thought, a little frustrated, and sipped on my lemonade again.“Maybe she feels like your life would be the same with or without her, so what is the point?”

He gave me a baffled look. “Why’d she think that? She’s my everything.”

“When was the last time you told her that?” I asked.

Jake frowned. He thought about it and then, very quietly, muttered, “Shit.Shit.” He threw back the rest of his lemonade and pushed himself to his feet, kissing Junie on the cheek. “Thanks for the drink, I gotta go fix this. Wish me luck!”

Then he was out of the kitchen and running down the hall and out the door.

Junie and Will exchanged another look. “How did you know?” she finally asked, looking at me strangely.

The simple answer? The starlings this morning had given me a lot of time to think and realize that Ruby wasn’t the one I needed to talk to.

The harder answer was one I didn’t like to think about—because recently, I realized, in my effort to be fine, to be good, to be absolutely copacetic, I wished I had told my best friend how I really felt about the cabin week being canceled. How I felt about feeling left behind, and the world spinning on without me. It was silly, because in hindsight I knew she’d understand. When it came down to it, though I adored Liam, in an effort to be right for him, I hadn’t let him in. Just like I hadn’t let Pru in, either. I hadn’t told her so many things, like how much I loved her, and how much I appreciated that she kept me grounded. And the longer I stayed in Eloraton, the more I missed her. I wished I could text her, reply to her big news. This was the longest we’d ever gone without talking in … as long as I could remember.

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