Page 15 of Fall for You (Second Chances #7)
Alana
W e were just finishing loading the dishwasher from dinner when we heard a knock at the door.
“Alana, it’s for you!” Chloe called.
When I walked to the foyer I was surprised to see Ronnie there. We hadn’t made plans, and based on the pinched look on her face, something bad had happened.
“What’s the matter?” I asked quickly.
“Can I talk to you outside?” she asked, avoiding my eyes.
“Sure.” I grabbed my jacket off the rack and followed her out to the porch.
Ronnie leaned against the railing, her silhouette flanked by the ridiculous sight of skeletons and turkeys sharing a Thanksgiving dinner in my mother’s yard display.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “You seem upset.”
Ronnie took a deep breath. “I think it’s time to put an end to our arrangement.”
Her voice was dull, almost robotic. I studied her carefully, trying to figure out what was going on.
“What? What arrangement?”
“This… friends with benefits thing. To be honest, I figured we’d be done by the time Halloween came, so there’s no reason to let it drag on any longer.”
“Let it drag on?” I repeated, as if she was speaking in a language I didn’t quite understand.
Everything inside me stiffened in a kind of panic.
Just last night we’d made each other come so many times I lost count. Everything had been fine when she kissed me goodbye this morning. She’d even left me a cup of coffee in a travel mug on the counter with a little sticky note telling me to have a good day. She’d signed it with a heart.
What could have possibly happened to make her want to break up with me out of the blue like this? Sure, technically we weren’t dating but we had some kind of unspoken arrangement. Or at least I thought we had.
“It feels like this is coming out of left field,” I finally said. “We’ve been having a lot of fun together, haven’t we?”
I paused. I hadn’t imagined all this, had I? She’d seemed to be enjoying our time together as much as I was. But it felt like more than just the physical. We’d developed a sense of intimacy and companionship in addition to the incredible sex we’d shared. She had to feel it too.
“Let’s not make this harder than it is, Alana,” Ronnie said, her voice colder than I’d ever heard it. “You’re leaving soon, and I’ve got some good prospects on the dating app so it’s best we cut ties now and have a clean break.”
“You’ve still been talking to women on the apps?” Betrayal hit me with the force of a slap to the face. “While we were sleeping together?”
We hadn’t explicitly discussed not seeing other people, it was true, but given that we were spending most nights together, I thought it was assumed.
“We agreed at the beginning that were keeping things casual,” Ronnie said, still not meeting my eyes. “Look, I’d better go. If I don’t see you before you head back to New York, have a good trip.”
Before I could tell her that I wasn’t going back to New York, she took off down the steps at a fast pace, kicking a pumpkin in her haste. It went flying across the lawn, landing with a splat next to a cardboard cut-out of a pumpkin pie.
I sat on the porch until the cold seeped into my bones and my mother came out to check on me.
“Are you okay honey?” she asked, putting her arm around my shoulder. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll make you some hot chocolate with marshmallows.”
In Mom’s view, hot chocolate cured everything, especially if it had marshmallows.
“I’ll put some whiskey in it.”
Oh, that was new. There’d been no whiskey in my hot chocolate when I was younger.
Fifteen minutes later I’d poured out the whole story including our first break-up, cried my way through several tissues, and was working on my second cup of ‘adult’ hot chocolate.
“I just don’t understand,” I said for about the tenth time.
“Everything was fine this morning. I was planning to tell her tonight about my new business and ask if we could date officially. I have no idea what could have happened between this morning and now to make Ronnie angry with me, and she didn’t want to talk to me about it.
She just kept saying it was casual. But it didn’t feel casual, Mom. Not at all.”
I spent a restless night, half drunk and fully heartbroken as I tried to figure out what was going on with Ronnie.
I convinced myself several times to go over there and demand an explanation, but then I’d think maybe I was the one who got too serious and since she was following our original agreement, who was I to complain?
All I knew was that it was going to suck running into her now that I’d decided to stay in Hayword.
Since Chloe first suggested starting my own business, I’d set up an LLC here in Illinois, opened a business bank account, designed a simple website with Chloe’s help, and picked up six clients.
If things kept going like this, I could move out of my childhood bedroom and into my own place in another month or two.
I’d thought maybe I’d be moving to that little cottage on Patterson Farm, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen now.
On Saturday morning my sister convinced me to go for a run with her.
I was pretty sure it was a pity invite, but I figured it was a good way to get out of the house and start getting back in shape.
It wasn’t like I was burning calories having sex anymore.
Chloe and I agreed to stop at the diner for pancakes after our run though. We weren’t total health nuts.
Because we’d gotten a late start to our run, we arrived at the diner right between the breakfast and lunch rushes when the place was mostly empty. Chloe and I grabbed a booth, and her friend Skyler came over a few minutes later with a pot of coffee and an order pad.
“When are you going to New York?” Skyler asked as she poured my coffee.
“I’m not going to New York,” I told her. “I’m staying in Hayword.”
Chloe gave me a big smile. I knew she was as happy about my staying in town as my parents were.
“I thought you got a new job in New York or something?” Skyler asked.
I shook my head. “No, where did you hear that?”
Skyler’s eyes slid over to my sister. “Chloe, isn’t that what you said? She got a new job?”
Chloe shook her head. “No I said she got a new client and was starting a business.”
“Oh, okay.” Skyler shrugged. “Everyone said your sister was planning to go back to New York after the Fall Festival was over, so I just assumed that’s what you meant. Anyway, what do you guys want to order?”
After we placed our order, Chloe leaned forward. “Do you think that’s why Ronnie broke up with you? She heard people talking about you moving back to New York and jumped to conclusions?”
“How did you know Ronnie broke up with me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Duh, Dad and I were listening from the living room when you poured your heart out to Mom. We even muted the TV so we could hear better.”
I shook my head at my family’s antics. “I don’t remember Dad being so nosy.”
“He’s nosier than the rest of us put together,” Chloe said confidently. “He acts like he doesn’t care but he’s an expert eavesdropper. He’s a vault though, you can’t get a thing out of him. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
As Chloe and I ate our pancakes and bacon, I considered my sister’s theory.
Gossip was a popular pastime here in Hayword, and my mysterious reappearance after so many years in New York had been a hot topic.
It would have been easy for ‘starting a business’ to be twisted to ‘got a job far away’, especially since it was something different for me.
If that gossip had gotten to Ronnie, she might have believed it.
She might have even assumed that I was waiting for the last possible minute to tell her.
After all, that’s how I’d handled things last time.
As a teenager, I thought I was saving her more pain.
As an adult, I realized that it was an incredibly shitty thing to do.
I didn’t blame her for believing the worst of me.
Not after getting burned by our first break up.
The question was, how could I show her that her assumptions were wrong and that I’d changed?
I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Ronnie. I wanted us to have a family together and grow old together, right here in Hayword. That was a big deal for me. I’d never once considered settling down before. I was ready. I just needed to figure out a plan.
I needed to call in the big guns. I needed to talk to Vera. If anyone could help me come up with a plan, it was my bestie.
“What are you thinking?” Chloe asked.
“I need a plan.”
My sister nodded. “Yeah, you need a grand gesture, like they do in the movies.”
“Really she’s the one who messed up, she should do the grand gesture,” I said sullenly.
“Do you want to get back together with the woman you love, or do you want to be right?” Chloe asked impatiently. My sister was wise beyond her years.
“I want to get Ronnie back.”
“Great, let’s strategize as we walk back home.”
I gave my sister an amused look. “What do you know about grand gestures?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “More than you apparently.”