Page 7 of Fall Into Love

“I’ve got it.” A flicker of something crosses her face, then she smiles wearily. “I’ve got it, Caleb. I promise.”

The bell’s chime overhead a moment later and she’s gone. I stand in Molly’s bakery holding a tablet full of nothing, feeling like I kicked a puppy I was only trying to pet. “Fuck.”

Molly sighs. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

“…Both?”

“Bad news, you stepped in it.” She lifts the tablet out of my hands. “Good news, it wasn’t really your fault.”

“Sure as hell felt like it was.”

“I mean, it was a little you.” She sets the tablet down and levels me with a look that tells me I’d better listen. “Mostly it was the guy before you. He had a real gift for telling her how she ought to feel. Right up until she couldn’t fathom a single opinion of her own without him. Can you imagine not being able to think for yourself, then having to walk on eggshells the moment you do?” She shakes her head. “It took her a long time to stand up for herself. You said one thing that rhymed with his past motives. That’s all. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I grit my teeth. Hating that I made her feel that way, and hating this twat ex of hers even more. “How do I fix it?”

“You don’t.” She turns back toward her ovens, having to get back to work. “You keep being you.” A pause, and then, over her shoulder, with the faintest gleam of something I’m learning to distrust in this town, “She’ll figure out you’re not him. Eventually.”

I let myself out into the early grey morning. Next door, Marigold’s lights are on, an Emma-shaped shadow moving behind the glass—righting a rack all by herself. She’s got it, I remind myself, fighting like hell not to go in there and take the rack right from her soft hands.

I climb on my Harley, but I don’t take off. I just sit there a minute, engine idling under me, turning Molly’s words over and over like a bolt I can’t get seated.

Keep being you.

Problem is, I don’t know what that looks like anymore.

By Myself

Emma

It’s past nine by the time I admit I’m not brave enough to do this alone.

That’s the truth of it, ugly as it is. I closed at six, flipped the sign, and then I didn’t go home. I sat on my office chair in the dark stockroom with my keys threaded through my fingers the same way I saw in a women’s self-defense video I watched earlier to be used as a weapon. I told myself I was going to stay all night if that’s what it took to catch whoever is doing this to Marigold’s.

I lasted three hours.

The furnace kicked on with a bang and I was on my feet with my heart in my throat. The shame of standing in my own store shaking, ready to bolt from a furnace, was somehow worse than the fear of Derek harassing me. So I locked up. Jiggled the handle twice. And I walked home, promising myself I’d be braver tomorrow.

The six blocks home are cold and dark, and because I’ve got nothing to do but walk and think, I think about Caleb.

It may not be him, darlin’.

I’ve replayed it a dozen times and I can hear now what he was actually saying—don’t let the fear eat you; I’m on your side. He was trying to make me feel better.

Derek, however, could make me doubt whether it was raining while I stood there dripping. You’re overreacting, Em. You always make everything a bigger deal than it is. Two years of that wired something into me so deep that a good man simply trying to help had me wanting to shut him out completely.

And I did.

I hate that I walked away from his help. And I hate more that I want to undo it.

I just don’t know how.

By the time I push through the doors of Ivory Heights, I’m so far into my mental spiral I nearly walk straight into a cornstalk.

“Woah there!” Danny catches the stalk before it topples, beaming down at me from a step-stool with a string of autumn leaves in one hand. The whole lobby’s mid-transformation—cornstalks lashed to the columns, mini pumpkins and colorful gourds, and now a light dusting of Halloween on top: paper bats, ghosts taped to the doors with little speech bubbles reading BOO Y’ALL. “Evening, Emma. You’re home awful late.”

“Long day,” I manage. Even Danny’s decorating obsession and need to celebrate every single season and holiday isn’t cheering me up like it usually does.

He looks at me the way Danny always does, like he’s reading his tenants in a way no one else can, and his round face goes soft. He steps down off the stool. “I heard about this morning. A second break-in.” He shakes his head. “You poor thing. How are you holding up?”