Truly(29)
Deep breath. Calm.
He visualized Lake Superior, but it didn’t do much for him.
“Stupid fuckers,” he muttered.
“And I tried to change my ticket at the airport, but—”
“But she wouldn’t let you do it without a credit card. And if you’d let me give you five hundred bucks in cash, you wouldn’t be here right now, but you wouldn’t take it, so here you are.”
“Kind of.”
She sounded chastened, which made him feel guilty because he’d been hassling her and it wasn’t her fault. He knew what it was like not to want to be indebted to people.
“The airline policy is horseshit. I hope you reported that woman to management.”
“She was only doing her job.”
How like May to be understanding about the airport employee who’d kept her from going home to her family. He bet she’d never mouthed off in public to anyone in her life.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Putting away the honey.”
“Is the market over soon?”
“Not until six, but as soon as Amanda gets back from lunch, we’re leaving.”
Her forehead furrowed.
“Amanda runs the booth. I just kind of squat here and sell soup and honey.”
“We don’t have to leave because I’m wet. I’ll dry.” She shoveled another spoonful of soup into her mouth. “This is warming me up already. It’s wonderful.”
“Thanks. It’s no big deal to leave early. There aren’t many customers anyway.”
“But that means every sale matters even more.” She reached for a jar of his honey and turned it over. “Especially when the honey costs thirty-five dollars.”
She surveyed the rows of honey still left on the table. “Did you ever think you might sell more if you charged less for it?”
“It’s special honey.”
“I guess so.”
“I get a lot of repeat customers.”
“I’m sure you know what you’re doing, then.”
But the set of her mouth told him she didn’t believe it. He made a mental note to try to change her mind later on. After he got her dry.
When he finally found the cracked jar and lifted it out of the box, she was staring into her soup bowl, stirring around a chunk of potato with her plastic spoon.
“You have a game plan?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Like I said. I can change the ticket online and do it all over again. Or I could take a bus home.”
“You’re not taking the fucking bus. Are you kidding? Have you ever been on a bus going cross-country?”
“They can’t be that bad.”
“Yeah. They can.”
He squatted down next to her, trying to read her reluctance and make all the impulses inside him align with whatever it was she wanted him to do.
Trying to ignore his gut, which was telling him to keep her here, whatever it took.
He couldn’t go by what his gut told him. His gut was a Neanderthal. All it wanted was to eat and fuck and win at things. If he wanted May to stay, he had to figure out what someone else would do in this situation. Someone with better instincts.
Don’t put your arm around her.
He braced his palm against the back of her chair. “You thinking about going back to Thor?”
“No way.”
There was anger in her voice. Buried hurt.
Ben needed to see her expression, so he reached over and tipped her chin up with one finger.
There it was. Those eyes, just like they’d been at Pulvermacher’s. Full of sharp intelligence and fury.
She bottled everything up. You had to pay close attention to see the signs—how quiet she got when she was well and truly upset. How cheerful she acted in the face of a disaster that was gutting her.
What would it take to get her to let go? To uncork that bottle and say what she really felt?
He wondered why he needed to find out.
“You know what I think?” he asked. Because he had no fucking idea what someone else would say in this situation.
“What?”
“I think maybe you’re not in a big hurry to get up to that cabin and have to explain yourself to a bunch of busybody family members.”
“You do, huh?”
“I think you’re not the kind of person who ordinarily forks quarterbacks, so they’re all going to want to know what happened, and you don’t feel like talking about it yet.”
She gave him a little smile. “You might be right.”
“I think you need a vacation.”
“I’m trying to take one. At the cabin.”
“Yeah, well, apparently New York has other ideas. New York thinks you need a vacation here, and it’s not letting you go until you give it a few more days to change your mind about it.”