Of course, it’s Thursday. Maybe they’re just at work.
Which reminds me…
“What do you do?” I ask him.
He glances over at me. “My sons and I customize dirt bikes,” he tells me. “ATVs, dune buggies…”
“You have a shop here?”
“Huh?”
I clear my throat. “You have a… a shop here?” I say again, louder.
“No. We take orders, build them from our garage at home, and then ship off the finished product,” he explains, and I can’t help but take another look over at him. He fills up the driver’s seat, the sun-kissed muscles in his forearm tight as he holds the wheel.
So different from my father, who hated being outside and never went without a long-sleeved shirt, unless he was going to bed.
Jake meets my eyes. “We’ll be getting a lot of orders in soon,” he says. “It keeps us pretty busy throughout the winter, and then we send them off in the spring, just in time for the season to start.”
So they worked from home. The three of them.
They’ll be around all the time.
I absently rub my palms together as I stare ahead, hearing my pulse quicken in my ears.
Even at Brynmor my parents had arranged for me to have a single room with no roommate. I prefer being alone.
I wasn’t a hermit. I could talk to my teachers and have discussions, and I love seeing the world and doing things, but I need space to breathe. A quiet place of my own to decompress, and men are noisy. Especially young ones. We’ll all be on top of each other all the time if they work from home.
I close my eyes for a moment, suddenly regretting doing this. Why did I do this?
My classmates hated me, because they took my silence for snobbishness.
But it’s not that. I just need time. That’s all.
Unfortunately, not many are patient enough to give me a chance. These guys are going to see me as rude, just like the girls at school do. Why would I purposely put myself in a situation to be forced to get to know new people?
I clench my jaw and swallow, seeing him out of the corner of my eye. He’s staring at me. How long has he been watching me?
I instantly force my face to relax and my breathing to slow, but before I can bury my face in my phone to cover up my near panic attack, he’s swerving the truck to the left and coming full circle, heading back in the direction we just came.
Great. He’s taking me back to the airport. I freaked him out already.
But as he speeds back down the main street, and I grip the seatbelt strap across my chest to steady myself, I watch as he passes back through two lights and jerks the wheel to the left, sliding into a parking spot on the side of the street.
My body lurches forward as he stops short, and before I have a chance to consider what’s going on, he kills the engine and hops out of the truck.
Huh…
“Come on,” he tells me, casting me a look before he slams the door closed.
I look out the front windshield and see Rebel’s Pebbles etched in gold on the black Victorian-style sign.
He brought us back to the candy shop.
Keeping my small travel purse hooked across my chest, I climb out of the truck and follow him up onto the sidewalk. He opens the door, the tinkle of a little bell ringing, and ushers me inside before he follows me.
The heady scent of chocolate and caramel hits me, and I immediately start salivating. I haven’t eaten since the handful of blueberries I forced down this morning before my flight.
“Yo, Spencer!” Jake shouts.
I hear the clutter of a pan from somewhere in the back, and something—like an oven door—falls closed.
“Jake Van der Bong!” a man strolls out from behind a glass wall, wiping his hands as he heads toward us. “How the hell are you?”
Van Der Bong? I dart my eyes up to Jake.
He grins down at me. “Ignore him,” he says. “I never smoked. I mean, I don’t smoke anymore. That’s old shit.” He smiles at the other guy. “The old me. The evil me.”
They both laugh and shake hands, and I gaze at the man who just came out. Looks about the same age as Jake, although a few inches shorter, and dressed in a red and blue flannel shirt with unkept brown hair.
“Spence, this is my niece, Tiernan,” Jake tells him.
Mr. Spencer turns his eyes on me, finishes wiping off his hand, and holds it out to me. “Niece, huh?” His gaze is curious. “Tiernan. That’s a pretty name. How are you?”
I nod once, taking his hand.
“Let her have whatever she wants,” Jake tells him.
“No, that’s okay.” I shake my head.
But Jake cocks an eyebrow, warning me, “If you don’t fill up a bag, he’ll fill it up for you, and it’ll be black licorice and peppermint sticks.”
I scrunch up my nose on reflex. The other man snorts. Black licorice can go to hell.
Jake walks off, grabbing a plastic bag, and proceeds to start filling it with taffy as I stand there, my pride keeping me planted in place. It’s always the heaviest chip on my shoulder. I don’t like giving people what they want.
But then I smell the sugar and the salt, and the warm chocolate scent from the stoves hits the back of my throat and goes straight to my head. I’d love a taste.
“Whatchya waitin’ for, de Haas?” I hear my uncle call out.
I blink.
He caps the taffy jar and moves to the gummy worms as he tosses a look over at me. I stare back. Calling me by my last name seems like it should feel playful. With him, it’s…brusque.
I let out a breath and move toward the bags, taking one for myself. “I’ll pay for it,” I inform him.
He doesn’t look at me. “Whatever you want.”
Opening the bag, I instinctively pass the chocolates and veer toward the less caloric gummy candies, loading in some peach rings, watermelon wedges, and blue sharks. I toss in some jelly beans and Sour Patch Kids, knowing I won’t eat any of this.
Absently drifting to the next cannister, I dig in the scoop and pull out a little pile of red.
Swedish Fish are filled with corn syrup, food dyes, and additives, my mother once said. I look down at the candy, once loving the way they felt between my teeth but hadn’t tasted since I was thirteen. Back when I started being willing to give up anything to make her value me. Maybe if I ate like her, wore my make-up like her, bought Prada and Chanel purses like her, and wore any garish monstrosity Versace designed, she’d…
But I shake my head, not finishing the thought. I load in two heaping scoops of the candy into my bag. Jake appears next to me, digging his hand right into the jar. “These are my favorite, too,” he says and pops two into his mouth.
“Yo, dirtbag!” I hear Spencer shout.
But Jake just laughs. I look back down, recapping the jar and twisting my bag shut.
“The bag is seven-ninety-five no matter what, so fill it up,” Jake tells me and moves around me, down the line of candy containers.
Seven ninety-five. Almost as expensive as the bottles of Swiss water my mother bathed in. How did he end up so different than them?
I trailed down the two aisles, passing the chocolate confection case and my mouth watering a little at how good I knew everything tasted.
“Ready?” Jake walks past me.
I follow him to the register, and I toss my bag on the counter, afraid he’ll try to go first and pay for me.