Page 90 of Make it Real
“Oh yeah. Ten out of ten. I’d totally fake date you again.”No, no, Callie, too far.“I’ll tell all my friends.”
He laughed, too, but there wasn’t much heart to it. “When can I expect to get dumped?”
The reminder we’d have to officially end things at some point put a chill in the summer air. I couldn’t even start thinking about that right now. I needed…something. Time. Clarity. Him. I could hope for two of the three.
I flashed a smile that felt so brittle it might crack at any second. “I can’t give you fair warning, that’s not realistic.”
His mouth curved. “That’s cruel, Callie Lou.”
I could say the same of him, using his sweet nickname for me in this awful moment. I had to look away from his hazel eyes before I said something stupid. Pretty much everything in my heart qualified. But if he didn’t know how I felt about him already, he didn’t ever need to.
“Granny won’t even get to their condo for a few days. They’re taking the slow road and stopping at every interesting roadside attraction. Then she’ll need some time to settle in. Maybe things will start to go south between us in a couple of weeks?”
“Text me whatever you decide.”
His eyes stayed intent on me, but I couldn’t figure out what he was waiting for. He’d gotten everything we’d agreed on, right?
“You let me know if you need me for anything else,” he said. “With the house, the yard, or just…anything.”
Right. Because he’d done this to help me. I appreciated it, but I only wanted one thing from him, and he wasn’t offering. I couldn’t ask, either. Asking for his heart when he’d told me from the beginning not to hope for more? I couldn’t bear it.
“I can take care of myself.”
He took a step back. “Okay. Well…I’ve got peaches to harvest. I’ll see you around, Callie.”
“See you.”
He turned and walked away, headed for his truck. I shut myself up in the house before he reached it. I didn’t want to see him drive away one last time.
Inside, I leaned my back against the front door, listening to the quiet. I’d never had to move on after a broken heart before, and I’d sure never had to go through something like this alone. But like he’d said, I would be okay. I could do this.
I just didn’t know how.
THIRTY-ONE
jed
Times like these,I wished I’d become a lumberjack instead of a peach farmer. Chopping down trees would have been a lot more satisfying than carefully pulling fruit off of branches. I’d spent extra hours in the orchards these last three days, working myself like a demon, trying not to think. Mostly, trying not to feel.
I’d done the right thing, but it sure felt wrong. Everything did. Couldn’t sleep at night. Tried to paint, but I just wound up making a mess. Even being out here in the trees felt off, like I might bruise all the fruit just from being too close. Something inside me had shifted out of place, but if I looked at it too hard, I had a feeling it’d just wreck me more completely.
I set a full box of peaches I’d picked on the ground and grabbed an empty from the ATV’s trailer. Off in the distance, Wade walked toward me through the trees. I sighed so hard, it rattled my teeth. This was not the day.
Pop had been relentless since the wedding, dropping hints about Callie and asking when she’d come to dinner next. Hadn’t anticipated this part, after we’d gone our separate ways, but I couldn’t act like we’d broken up.
Could you call it a break up if you’d never really been together? Whatever it was, I hated it. The smiling and pretending, coyly putting off Pop’s questions as if every one didn’t rake over my skin like razor blades. I’d finally convinced him he should take Marilyn to dinner and sent him off to town. But just when I’d got a minute to myself, my brother showed up. Late enough in the day he couldn’t possibly have expected to get any work done, which meant he wanted to talk.
I didnotwant to talk.
“You should have left one of the ATVs at Pop’s,” he said when he reached me. “I had to walk out here.”
He raked an arm across his forehead to prove his point.
I climbed a ladder, balancing the box on my hip. “How was I supposed to know you were going to show up?”
He stilled, his eyes heavy on me. Wasn’t fair of me to say, I knew that. But I could get snippy when I hadn’t slept well, and I’d had nothing but rough nights since things had fallen apart with Callie.
“What crawled up your butt?” He grabbed one of the empty boxes and climbed the ladder close to mine.
