“There’s always college, right?”
She nodded again, then looked up at me. “I shouldn’t have said that I’ll be stuck in this town. At least I’ll have you here.”
I began to speak, but my voice caught in my throat. My mom’s words came thundering back to haunt me: It could mean changing the menu. It could mean shutting down and finding a new job here. Or it could mean moving back to Chicago and taking my old job back.
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked.
“Nothing,” I replied.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked at me. “Do we want to play that game again?”
She was right. “Well, it might be nothing, it might not. Too soon to tell. I guess the café is struggling a bit. My mom mentioned . . . It’s possible we may have to move back to Chicago.” I’d been looking at the floor while speaking but glanced up to see Rose’s reaction. She was looking at the floor as well, nodding her head. Then she snorted and laughed.
“What?” I said.
Rose laughed harder. “It’s kind of funny when you think about it.”
“It is?”
“I find out I’m staying here, and now you may be the one leaving. It’s probably your spiritual blockage messing everything up.”
I laughed too. “Yeah, I still need to work on that.”
“So what do we do?” she asked.
I thought for a moment. “Well, maybe it’s like Letty says: ‘Enjoy today, you might be dead tomorrow.’”
“She might be onto something,” Rose said, “though it’s a tad morbid.”
“Maybe we could just leave it at ‘enjoy today.’”
“Deal.”
“Shake on it?”
We shook hands, and then Rose pulled out a brownie and offered the other one to me. She took a bite, and her eyes rolled back in her head, like a shark gorging on a hapless surfer. “I’m telling you,” she said as specks of brownie went flying, “this is the best item on the menu, hands down.”
“I think you’re right.”
“If your mom opened a bakery, I’d be there every day.” Rose finished the brownie and chased it down with a swig of cold coffee. “Zeus, I should have let you know what I was thinking at that Open Mic thing. It was just . . . I felt so uncomfortable and didn’t want to be there. I thought our Sundays were supposed to be about you and me, and I felt like you were ignoring me for your friends . . . like it wasn’t about us anymore, it was about you and them. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”
I shook my head at the irony, at myself for not seeing it before now. “The thing is, Rose, the Open Mic was all about us.”
Rose looked confused. “Really? How?”
“I was going to play you a song. But all I could think about was how nervous I felt. I should have realized how uncomfortable it would be for you. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
Rose’s eyes flew open. “You were going to play me a song?”
“Yeah,” I said softly.
“Zeus, I feel horrible now!”
“Don’t,” I said. “I should have planned it better. It was my fault. I never should have done it there, in front of everyone. The song was meant to be for you, anyway, not a bunch of Beauty Saloon regulars.”
“What song were you going to play?”
“Do you still want to hear it?”
“Of course I do!”
I smiled mysteriously. “Want to hear it right now?”
“Well, yeah! But you didn’t bring your guitar,” said Rose.
“One minute.” I walked outside and grabbed my guitar, which rested right where I’d left it: ten feet away, below the window. Strands of twine still hung from it, which I’d used to strap it to my back for the ride across town. I’d hidden it behind the bushes, just in case my apology backfired, or I chickened out, which both seemed likely scenarios.
I walked inside. “How’d this get here?” I asked, looking as if it had fallen out of the sky.
Rose grinned from ear to ear.
“Let’s see,” I strummed a chord to make sure it was in tune. It wasn’t. It didn’t matter. I began to play. And then, because it was just her—just us—I decided to sing, too.
“To lead a better life . . . I need my love to be here.”
Rose covered a smile with both hands.
As I sang, I could tell my face had flushed red, but I didn’t care. A quick glance at Rose was all it took to keep me going. I had almost made it through the entire song. It certainly wasn’t great, but I was giving it my best effort.
“I will be there and everywhere . . . here, there, and everywhere.” I strummed the last chord and made a ta-da motion with my picking hand.
Rose jumped off the couch, threw her arms around me, and kissed me on the cheek, sandwiching the guitar between us. “I knew you’d figure it out!”
It was the Beatles song Rose had played the first time I’d seen her at Hilltop. The melody had haunted me ever since that afternoon, the wordless soundtrack to my summer with Rose. “Sorry it took me so long.”
“Worth the wait,” she said. “Thank you. That was perfect.”
It had been far from perfect.
But mission accomplished.
TWENTY-FOUR
THOUGH I HADN’T REALIZED IT AT THE TIME, A SEED HAD BEEN PLANTED in my head while at Rose’s house. Over the next few weeks, it germinated, took root, and grew into a fully formed idea—possibly my best Sunday surprise yet. Meanwhile, I had a few other Sundays to fill.
The week after the Open Mic, I took Rose to the local farmers’ market. I’d learned from Mom that it was a weekly occurrence held on a side street near the park downtown. I’d joked to Rose that it would probably be a handful of locals selling corn and beans out of their pickup trucks, but it was nothing of the sort. Well, there were people selling fresh-picked fruits and vegetables from their flatbeds, but there was so much more.
One family sold handmade soaps and candles. A husband-and-wife team displayed glazed pottery and blown-glass art. At another tent, a man offered venison, duck, geese, and free-range chicken from an assortment of large coolers. Other vendors touted organic cheeses, wild mushrooms, flowers, and coffee beans. After spending nearly an hour there, Rose walked away with a shiny jeweled bracelet made from guitar strings, and I picked up fresh-baked bread, homemade peanut butter, and rhubarb strawberry jam, which made for some killer sandwiches afterward.
The next week Dylan helped by lending me an old canoe his parents had in the garage. It looked ridiculous strapped to the top of the Lego as we drove to the park. Then again, it didn’t look a whole lot better in the water, like a piece of driftwood in need of a paint job. But Rose was a good sport, as usual, and we did our best not to capsize our borrowed vessel in the Stone River. We only tipped once, which we considered a grand success.
Finally, the big day came. My biggest surprise yet.