Page 30 of Gumdrops and Garland

I trailed a finger down her cheek and smiled when she glanced up at me. “You’re something else, sweetheart. If I were you, I wouldn’t give my sorry butt the time of day.”

“Good thing you’re not me then. I’ve wanted to give you the time of day since the fifth grade, you just never asked. Are you asking now, Lance?”

“I don’t deserve or have that right, Indie,” I whispered sadly. I was glad the sun had set and the garage was filled with shadows. I didn’t want my expression to tell her what I was thinking.

“You deserve a lot more than you think you do, Lance. I’m going to prove it to you by Christmas.”

“I like your spunk,” I teased, bopping her nose, but she didn’t smile, she just gazed at me with a look of sad contemplation.

“And I like you, but for some reason you’re constantly hot and then cold and then hot and then cold. I don’t know what to believe anymore, Lance. You say you want to date, but then you say you don’t have that right. As for not deserving it, I have zero idea what you’re talking about because if we’re talking about who deserves who, it’s me who doesn’t deserve you.” She stepped out of my embrace, picked up her bag, and climbed the steps to the back door.

“Indie, wait.”

“I need to start dinner,” she said, turning the doorknob and pushing it open. “I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

Then she disappeared inside the house and closed the door behind her with a thud. I swore softly and kicked the concrete step with my boot. Looked like my track record of disappointing her was still going strong.

Everything was awkward with Lance after our exchange in the garage, so I left a note in the kitchen on a loaf of bakery bread that he could eat the soup in the fridge. I went to my room and slept off and on for the next few hours, but I was restless and couldn’t stay asleep. Could be because I didn’t eat dinner. I wasn’t hungry then, but my stomach was telling me it was hungry now. I checked the clock, and it was after midnight, so it was safe for me to get up and get a midnight snack. He had to work at four a.m., which always meant an early bedtime for him.

I climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of leggings and a long sweatshirt before I slid my feet into my fluffy slippers. His house felt like home, which was comforting and painful at the same time. Living here was only temporary, so to know the feeling of acceptance in a home only to lose it, was going to be hard. I cracked my door open and glanced both ways, relieved to see his door shut. The house was silent other than the ticking of the grandfather clock. It was a soothing, comforting sound to hear whenever I was in the house. It reminded me that time marches on, but there is always hope in a new day.

On this new day, I was discouraged and a little bit sad. Okay, a lot sad. What was so wrong with me that Lance didn’t want to date me? Why did it hurt me so much when he snubbed me? Apparently, I should have read the room better and realized his attitude toward me had everything to do with his grief. He was feeling vulnerable and cycled through stages of needing someone to be with and wanting to be alone. Understandable, I suppose, but hard on me at the same time.

I flipped the light on over the stove and noticed the bread and note were still on the counter. I checked the fridge and the chicken and wild rice soup from the diner sat untouched as well. I lifted it out and set it on the counter, then stuck my head back in for the butter. When I turned around with it, Lance stood in the doorway of the kitchen. He wore a waffle-weave pajama top and a pair of sleep pants that made me take notice. His thighs were incredibly muscular, something I didn’t see when he hid them away in his work jeans all the time. What a shame. It made me wonder if his calves were equally as ripped. I did love a man with a nice set of calves. Did that make me weird? Probably.

“Indie? What are you doing up already?” he asked, his hair askew from running his hands through it.

“I was hungry,” I answered simply. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t.” He lowered himself to a chair and leaned back. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Probably not since you didn’t eat dinner, or did you make something else? The note was still on the bread.”

He glanced down at his pants and brushed off imaginary lint from his leg. “I wasn’t hungry, so I turned in early.”

I cracked the lid on the soup and put the container in the microwave, setting it to warm while I sliced the bread and slid it into the toaster oven. Since he was up, I figured he might as well eat too.

“I have to go to work in a few hours, so I guess I’ll call this my breakfast,” I joked, buttering the bread, and setting it on plates before I lifted down bowls from the cupboard. “I’ll probably just stay up and go into work early.”

“You said you didn’t have to work,” he reminded me as I lifted the soup down and stirred it.

“I don’t, but you know I always check in at some point. I’ll run in and make sure Mel and Cecily don’t need anything and then I’ll come back and nap while you’re at work.”

I set a plate in front of him and grabbed him a pop from the fridge. “I might do the same,” he agreed. “Go into work early I mean. I would get out earlier then, so we’d have more time to decorate. That is if you still want to.”

I sat down with my plate and stirred the soup with my spoon. “I promised I’d help you and I stand by my promises, Lance.”

I said nothing else, just dipped the bread into the soup and took a bite. I moaned a little bit in my throat at how good it was while he took a bite of his own. I was hungrier than I thought, and he looked to be on the same page, so we ate in silence. By the time we spoke again, most of our meal was gone.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” he said, tapping his spoon in the bottom of his bowl.

“You don’t have to apologize,” I jumped in. “You didn’t do anything that requires one.”

“Except that I clearly upset you, and that bothers me. It’s not that I don’t like you, Indigo. It’s that I like you too much and I know, when all the chips fall, you’re not going to stay. That’s why I never asked you for the time of day. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I knew it wasn’t fair to ask you to be my clock.”

I set my spoon down and leaned my chin on my palm. “What chips are going to fall and why wouldn’t I stay?”

His lips thinned and he shook his head once before he spoke. “It doesn’t matter. I just don’t want you to keep thinking this has something to do with you. It doesn’t.”

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