Page 64 of Make Mine Sweet
I want to trust her. I just don’t know how anymore. “Easier said than done.”
Tess watches August secure a cape around Dutch. It matches the one he’s wearing, and when they take off, the capes billow in their wake like superheroes. I want to take a picture and preserve this memory to make sure I never forget it.
“My father left us when I was twelve,” she tells me. “Mom, Wren, and I banded together. Maybe too tightly. Wren and I didn’t go away to college. We went to culinary school right here and worked with Mom in the bakery. I like to think it’s what we both wanted, but I was still that timid girl, afraid of making the wrong choice.
“When I was twenty-five, I decided I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. I wanted out of Sunshine, out of the house I still lived in with my mother and sister. I thought I could reinvent myself. So I got a job at an inn in Lake Tahoe and set off on an adventure. A small one, maybe, but it would be mine.”
“Leaving everything you know takes a lot of courage.” Clearly, she came back, but trying takes guts.
She shakes her head at that. “I wasn’t brave. I was naive. I came home six months later, pregnant and alone.”
“The father…?” I have to ask even though I can tell already I won’t like the answer.
“Uninterested in ever being called that.”
I want to track the guy down and punch him in the face on her behalf. And August’s. And one just for me.
“It must be tough to do it all alone.” The small glimpses I get show she’s a dedicated parent who puts her child ahead of herself. Some kids don’t give half so much attention even when there’s two parents on the team.
“I have Mom and Wren. But I’ll admit, being an unwed mother in a small town isn’t for the faint of heart.”
“Do people make it hard on you?”
“Some do. The first thing I had to let go of was worrying over what everyone thought about me. I’m not perfect at it, but that’s the goal.” A genuine smile touches her mouth. “And I got August in the end. No matter what anyone says about me, I could never regret that.”
Her positive attitude in the face of public scrutiny puts my pity party in a harsh new light. She’s not mired in feeling sorry that people are judging her in the first place, and she’s sure not losing sleep over her choices or their results. Not like I have been.
“I haven’t worn shorts in public since my accident. Eighty degrees out today, and I’m in sweatpants.” I tug at the fleece over my prosthesis’s socket. I went to the grocery store this afternoon, covered up as usual.
“Can’t be comfortable.”
“Nope.” The sweat on my leg itches like mad as we speak.
“Are people weird about your prosthetic leg?”
“Sometimes. Mostly, they ask too many questions. Give me too many condolences for all the things they assume I can’t do anymore.”
Tess scoffs. “As thoughyouare remotely incapable.”
Kind of loving the way she said that. Like the thought of me not being able to do something is inconceivable to her.
“Maybe I need to take a lesson from you and not worry about what anyone else thinks.”
Pretty sure the person I’m actually afraid of judging me for all my failings is me.
“For the record, I like how you look in shorts.” She holds my gaze. “All of you.”
My chest turns molten, the warmth of her praise seeping through my limbs down to my fingers and toes. There’s nothing timid about Tess in this moment.
Even if, in the very next one, she scoops August up and takes him inside with a flurry of rushed goodnights.
TWENTY-TWO
TESS
I haven’t been soafraid of dropping something since the day I brought August home from the hospital in his baby carrier. I’m eighty-five percent certain I’m going to somehow lose my grip and send the carefully crafted confection in my arms flying all over Moonlight Lodge’s pristine lobby.
Several people taking up the comfy chairs and sofas in here are on their phones, so something like that would definitely wind up on social media.
