Page 19 of When I Should’ve Stayed (Red Bridge #2)

Josie

After two years of Red Bridge Fall Farmers Markets selling my grandma’s candles, you’d think I’d be used to getting up at the crack of dawn to load them, but I’m not. Especially on nights like last night when I stayed way too late at Clay’s and drove home in the wee hours of the morning.

I yawn and cover my mouth with a palm, fighting for my life.

“Come on, Josie,” Grandma Rose calls from the front door. “You’d better pick up the pace, or that hag Betty is gonna get the table I like again.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, at least Betty Bagley actually home-bakes her pies instead of scamming people with ones from Amazon , but it’s not a good idea to get on Grandma Rose’s bad side this early in the morning.

Grandma’s candle scheme is a secret from the whole town, and until the end of the market last year, it was a secret from me too. As it turns out, my surprisingly internet-savvy grandma has been ordering candles from Amazon in bulk, de-labeling them, and then slapping on her own sticker of lies.

“ Made with Love by Rose Ellis,” my asshole. These things are mass-produced in a factory somewhere by people making way less than they should be and then upcharged for small-town consumption in the con of the century.

“I’m coming,” I say as I lift the final box of candles with a heave, balancing it on my knee until I can get both hands under it in a good grip.

“Be careful, Josie,” Grandma chastises as I toddle out the front door. “You know those candles are one of Red Bridge’s hottest commodities. Certainly better than those inedible things Betty tries to pass off as pies.”

If I had to describe my grandma and Betty Bagley’s ongoing rivalry, I’d compare it to Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston circa 2005. Only, instead of fighting over Brad Pitt, they’re fighting over table space and farmers market customers.

It’s straight fact that Betty’s putting a hell of a lot more effort into the game.

The woman bakes her pies from scratch. Grandma one-clicks candles in bulk.

Though I’d never say that to my grandma.

She’d ream my ass. Hell, I’ve yet to try one of Betty’s pies—even though they smell like heaven—because the risk of being on Grandma Rose’s bad side isn’t worth the reward.

Ignoring my grandmother’s badgering about being gentle with her precious candles, I walk down the steps to the trunk of her Buick, setting the box inside with the others before she hurries behind me and slams the trunk down with a slap.

“Put your seat belt on, dear,” she says as I climb into the passenger’s seat. “I’m gonna have to gun it the whole way there.”

She fires up the engine, and driving thirty in a twenty-five, we “gun” our way down the street and head for town.

The sun is bright through the window and feels warm on my face while I let memories of how good it felt to sleep in Clay’s arms last night run through my mind.

I’m half tempted to text him, even pulling my phone out of my purse to look at the screen, but I decide at least one of us deserves to get some sleep this morning.

Almost two years together, and I still feel like I’m floating on a cloud—even if he did stupidly run for a city council position last year and win it.

His phone rings constantly, and there’s never not someone trying to bend his ear at the bar, but he listens with the patience of a saint and genuinely tries to fix everyone’s problems. He’s a good fit for the role; I just wish it didn’t come at the expense of spending some of our date nights hearing Eileen Martin bitch about Mayor Wallace proposing to use city funds to paint Red Bridge’s red bridge a different color or Peggy wanting to find a way to get an additional two parking spots in front of her pawn shop.

It should be noted that the bridge is still red, and if they added more parking spots in front of Peggy’s shop, the only people who could park in her small lot would have to be driving one of those tiny smart cars.

Small towns are great in the fact that they create a community where everyone in town feels like they have a say.

And small towns are also bad for that very reason, too.

Especially when your boyfriend is on the city council.

Last week alone, he must’ve received a hundred text messages about the graffiti that appeared on one of the stop signs near the center of town.

A teeny-tiny sketch of a penis and balls really threw everyone into a tizzy.

Truthfully, you’d just about need a magnifying glass to see it from your car, but that’s neither here nor there.

“I saw your sketchbook last night, you know,” Grandma Rose says, startling my attention away from the window. “While you were still at Clay’s.”

I chew at my lip. “Yeah?”

My sketchbook is something I’ve had for years, and every time I get a new idea that revolves around my big dream of opening my own coffee shop, I keep tabs on it in there.

“One day, you’re gonna have to grab yourself by the cojones, tell Harold Metcalf you’re done workin’ for him, and open the coffee shop you want to.”

I look back out the window. “I’m not ready yet. I don’t have the savings.”

Grandma laughs. “You think I was ever ready for any of the stuff I did? For your dad? For him to get diagnosed with that horrible brain tumor and pass less than a year later? For losing Jezzy so tragically? For your witch of a mother taking you and Norah away from me? For you to be so grown on me?” She shakes her head.

“Biggest lesson in this world is that you’re never ready.

Now, a bad feeling, that’s different—you listen when you have those because that’s your intuition speaking.

But not ready? That’s just the fear of the unknown talking. ”

I wish it were as easy as she says. I wish I could just follow my heart to start my own coffee shop in the same way I followed my heart to Clay. But I don’t know. The dream feels almost too big to achieve.

Grandma pulls into the parking lot behind the market pavilion and turns off the car without another word. I follow her lead and climb out too, stacking our boxes onto one of the carts they keep for vendors and wheeling the load into our booth.

Grandma puts out her signature purple tablecloth, and I start unloading candles into their normal display.

“Hold down the fort, hun,” she says, stepping around the table and tapping the surface with her fingers. “I gotta go talk to Melba before Betty gets here. Tell her about bingo last week while she was out of town.”

I chortle. “You think you and Betty Bagley will ever bury the hatchet and get along?”

Grandma’s face is disgusted. “Not even when I’m dead, hun. That little schemer can rot.”

“Grandma!”

She shrugs. “There’s a whole history there with me and her and your grandpa, all right?”

“Was she his mistress?” I ask, instantly intrigued.

“She wishes.” She scoffs. “Let’s just say she tried her best to be his mistress, but he wasn’t taking the bait.” She nods knowingly toward the candles. A silent, You just focus on that, dear . “Be back in a jiffy.”

“Okay.” I laugh and make a show of taking another candle out of the box. “I’ll keep unloading candles.”

Grandma winks and scoots off at a near jog to find Melba. I look around at the booths and people around us inconspicuously, but I’m not much in the mood to talk to anyone for real. I don’t want to have to answer questions about the candle-making process or if Rose has a special batch today.

And trust me, everyone in this damn town wants to know how Rose makes her amazing candles.

I still can’t believe the con she’s managed to run without anyone ever finding out. Most of the time, she leaves the manufacturer stickers on half the damn things, and I have to find them and peel them off when I go through them.

I guess no one suspects a sweet old lady like her to be running such an elaborate scheme.

I bend over to grab more candles from a box, and a warm hand glides across my ass in a deliciously familiar way. Thankfully, I’ve gotten a lot less gun-shy and a lot more familiar with Clay’s touch in the last couple of years, and I have exactly zero doubt it’s him from the first sensation.

I stand up and back into his arms, and he wraps me in a hug that makes everything in the world feel right. “You know, baby, I’m really starting to hate how you sneak out of my bed in the mornings without saying a proper hello or goodbye.”

I smile and turn to face him, placing a gentle kiss on his lips to make the frown go away. “I know. But I didn’t want to wake you when you didn’t even get done closing everything down downstairs until three.”

“Don’t matter to me. Wake me up.” He gets quiet and waggles his eyebrows. “Wake me up in a special way, and it really won’t matter. Come to think of it, that’s how I want to wake up every morning, no matter the time.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not an alarm clock, Clay.”

“You should be. You work ten times better and sound a whole lot sweeter.”

“That’s nice.”

“That’s nice?” He narrows his eyes, even though he’s still smiling at me. “Babe, it’s a whole lot better than that. Have you had a chance to think more about what we talked about last week?”

“Last week?” I question innocently, even though I know damn well what he means.

Clay wants me to move in with him, and while there’s nothing more I would love, I also feel incredibly torn.

I like living with Grandma Rose. We have a routine and a dynamic that works.

Plus, she’s not exactly a spring chicken anymore, and I like the thought of being close to help if she needs me.

“You know what I’m talking about, Jose.”

I nod and admit, “I do.”

“Sooo…what do you say?” He squeezes my hips affectionately. “I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up with you every morning. I’m tired of missing you.”

At that, I melt a little, relenting enough to agree. “I’m tired of missing you too. I just… It’s more complicated than that.”

I kiss him on the lips again, hoping to put an end to the conversation as Grandma Rose comes back to the table and opens up her cash drawer to get ready. The market officially opens in five minutes, and if the past is anything to go by, we’ll be flooded in no time.

“Hi, Grandma,” Clay greets, still holding on to me but leaning around to give her one of his biggest smiles.

The two of them are chummy, a bond built between them immediately when he came out into the kitchen in his underwear to her in her nightgown one night about a year and a half ago.

I guess sharing space in your skivvies is a level of personal you can’t come back from.

“Hi, Clay sweetheart,” Grandma says, her voice kind and loving in the way it always is with him. “Are you here to help or just loiter?”

My grandma, ladies and gentlemen, the sweet little ballbuster.

A chuckle escapes Clay’s throat. “I’m completely ready and willing to help.” He sets me aside and walks around me, but when he looks back with a twinkle in his eye, I start to get worried. He turns back to Grandma and keeps talking. “And there’s something I could use your help on, too.”

“Clay, what are you doing?” I ask, but he ignores me.

“Is that right?” Grandma replies.

“Yep. See, I’ve been trying to convince your beautiful granddaughter to move out of your house and in with me, but she’s concerned—”

“Clay!” I snap.

He keeps going, even repeating the words I interrupted more slowly. “She’s concerned that it’s not good timing for you. That what you have going is too good to give up, you know?”

Grandma glances at me and then back at Clay, narrowing her eyes. “And what makes you think she actually wants to live with you in the first place, dear?”

Clay smiles, and I swear the little flicker of confidence from him is enough to fall in love with him all over again.

I’m annoyed with his tactics, but this is him .

Loud and unbothered and blunt. Unabashedly, this is the guy I love—even when he’s a pain in my ass—and his doing this shouldn’t come as a surprise. “Because she loves me.”

Grandma scoffs. “She loves me too.”

I have to bite my lips to keep myself from spewing humor-filled spit all over Clay’s face, but when the curve of his mouth softens without malice or offense, so does mine.

The way he looks at her.

The way he looks at me.

It’s not very funny at all.

Grandma leans forward, around Clay, to talk directly to me, even as customers start to consume the entire front of the table.

Hilga Hofmyer tries to ask her a question, one candle in each hand, while a burgeoning crowd pushes at her back, but Grandma Rose holds out a hand, palm out. A silent order to shut up.

Her wise eyes study my face closely. “Josie, do you want to live with this young man?”

“Well, yes. I mean, of course. But I also want to live with—”

Grandma swings her silencing hand from Hilga to me, and I stop talking immediately. When Rose Ellis gives you the hand, you obey it. “You’ll move in with him at the end of the month, then.”

“Grandma!”

“That gives us enough time to have some girl time, but it’s like I was telling you in the car, Jose.”

Not ready? That’s just the fear of the unknown talking.

“So, what? This is you giving me a shove across the metaphorical street? What if there’s a car coming?” I ask with a laugh.

She smiles back. “Don’t trip.”