Page 6 of Surrendering to the Grump

Did you pick up my prescription honey?

Jaylen's Mom:

Hi Miss Brooks! Jaylen wants to know if he can bring his leaf collection for show and tell Friday.

Three texts. Three people who need me. The familiar rush of being wanted pulls at my attention, tugs me toward the door.

"You should go," Rhett says. Quiet. Reading me without permission.

"I should." My feet don't move. "You know, I grew up here. Left for college in Chicago, came back because this town is home. Every Fall Fest since I was six, I've been here. Face painting when I was little. Corn maze volunteer in high school. Now I run the whole thing and I love it."

"Sounds exhausting."

"Sounds like a life."

He sets the plane down again. Leans both hands on the edge of the bench. His shoulders are wide enough to block the window behind him, and the silhouette he cuts against that autumn light is doing things to my pulse that have nothing to do with festival parking.

"Why do you care if I give you the lot? There's a church parking lot on Moss Street. The school's got space."

"Both are already committed. You're my last option."

"Then you're out of options."

"Rhett." I close the clipboard. Step forward. We're separated by three feet of workbench and about a million watts of something neither of us is acknowledging. "This festival matters to this town. Lina's cafe does thirty percent of its annual revenue during Fall Fest weekend. Hank books bands at his bar that people drive in from Rockford to see. Pistachio Sweets sells out of everything by Saturday noon. The Book Nook hosts a reading corner for kids whose parents want to actually browse the festival. These people are my people. This town is my town."

"And none of that requires my parking lot."

"All of it requires people being able to park and walk."

He holds my gaze. Seconds pass. The shop is so quiet I can hear the October wind pushing against the windows.

"I'll think about it," he says.

My heart does a full cartwheel. "Really?"

"Don't make it a thing."

"It's absolutely a thing."

"It's not. Go answer your texts. People are waiting for you."

That lands somewhere I don't expect. Accurate. Always accurate. People are always waiting for me. I'm always the next text, the next task, the next person who handles the gap.

"Nobody's waiting for you?" I don't mean for it to come out soft. It does anyway.

His jaw tightens. Those gray eyes go flat for a fraction of a second before he picks up the hand plane and angles the plank away from me. "Goodnight, Kennedy."

Dismissed.

My chest aches with something I can't name. Or won't. Not yet.

"Goodnight, Rhett."

I grab my clipboard, leave the caramels, and walk out into the October dusk. The string lights down Maple Lane are on, golden against the purple sky. My phone is still buzzing. Lisa. Mom. Jaylen's mom. The PTA group chat. The volunteer thread.

Everybody needs something from me.

The only person who doesn't is standing in a sawdust covered workshop telling me no over and over while his eyes say something completely different.