Butternut Summer (20 page)

T
he next day, after closing time at Pearl's, it was Jessica who was crying.

“Daisy, what are you doing?” she asked, sniffing loudly as she wiped her tearstained face with a napkin.

“I'm making you a root beer float,” Daisy said, standing behind the counter and scooping vanilla ice cream into a tall glass of root beer. “Remember how much you used to love these when we were kids?”

“I remember,” Jessica said, and another sob escaped her.

Daisy brought the glass, a spoon, and a straw over to Jessica and set it down in front of her on the counter. “Here, drink this. Or eat it or whatever. I promise it'll make you feel better.”

“You think so?” Jessica said doubtfully. “You think it can cure a broken heart?”

“Why not?” she said, thinking that the only upside to Jessica's heart being broken so often was that it had learned to repair itself so quickly. Daisy poured herself a Diet Coke from the soda dispenser, came around from behind the counter, and slid onto the stool next to Jessica's.

“Come on, Jessica,” she coaxed when her friend only stared at her root beer float. “Just try it.”

Jessica sighed, but she picked up her spoon and dipped it tentatively into her glass. “I thought it would last this time, Daisy,” she said, lifting a spoonful of ice cream to her mouth. “I really did. I thought this was it; I thought we'd be together forever.”

But you always think that, about everyone you date
, Daisy wanted to say. Instead, she reminded herself that her role as Jessica's friend was to support her, not to judge her.

So she patted her on the back and listened patiently while Jessica recounted, again, her brief, tumultuous relationship with Steve Owen, which had ended the same night that Will had come over to Daisy's for their first date.

“God, I really know how to pick them,” Jessica said, depositing another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “But he seemed like such a nice guy.”

No
,
he seemed like a jerk
, Daisy thought, but she nodded sympathetically.

“Daisy, seriously, why can't I meet a
real
nice guy?” Jessica asked, using her spoon to fish around in the root beer float for some more ice cream. “Just one?”

Because you have lousy taste in men
, Daisy said to herself, but to Jessica she said, “I don't know why you haven't met one yet, Jessica. But you will. Just . . . just be selective, okay? Try . . . try not to jump into things too quickly.” Even as she said it, Daisy knew this advice was lost on Jessica. She was a true romantic, falling in love as often as she did her nails.

“But it's not only that,” Jessica said, putting a straw into the root beer float where the melted ice cream was puddling on top and taking a long pull on it. “Nothing else is going well for me this summer. I mean, I'm not getting the hang of this whole waitressing thing, for one. Your mom was so mad at me this morning, Daisy, I thought she was going to fire me on the spot.”

“Yeah, about that, Jessica,” Daisy said worriedly. “You're going to have to be on your toes for the next couple of days. No more mistakes, all right? Or at least as few of them as possible. Because my mom's mood this morning might be the new norm around here for a while.”

“You think so, Daisy? Because your mom's bad moods usually blow over pretty quickly.”

“Well, not this one.” Daisy sighed. “My mom and Buster broke up last night.”

Jessica's mouth dropped open. “They did?”

Daisy nodded.

Jessica thought about that, and then asked, “Who broke up with who?”

“My mom, I think, broke up with Buster.”

“Why?”

“I don't know,” Daisy said. Actually, she had a theory about it, but she wasn't about to share it with anyone else. “I came home last night,” she said to Jessica, “and there was my mom, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, in full crisis mode. She didn't want to talk about it, though. And this morning, well, you saw her this morning.”

“I saw her,” Jessica said with a shudder. “But still, poor Buster.”

Daisy nodded, a little sadly. She'd always liked Buster, partly because he was a nice guy, and partly because, for a long time, he'd seemed to make her mother happy.

“Do you think he'll still come in here?” Jessica asked.

“I don't know,” Daisy said. “Probably not right away.” Which meant that now there'd be two men in Butternut who wouldn't be coming into Pearl's.

“He was such a good tipper, too,” Jessica lamented. “I mean, he even left
me
good tips.” She finished her root beer float with a majestic slurp, and she seemed to feel better, too, because when she pushed her glass away and turned to face Daisy, her big brown eyes were free of tears and they only looked a little bit swollen.

“All right, change of subject,” Jessica said. “What about you, Daisy? How's your love life?”

“Mine?” Daisy asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

Jessica nodded. “You never told me how your date with Will went last week.”

“It was . . . it was good,” Daisy said, evasively.

“So what did you two do? On your first date, I mean?”

Daisy shrugged. “Not much. He came over, and we had pizza and watched a movie.”

“And . . .” Jessica prompted.

“And that was it,” Daisy said.
Well, that and he kissed me. Five times. Not that she'd counted. And not that she'd replayed every single one of those kisses over and over in her mind, because obviously, she hadn't
.

“Well, have you seen him since then?” Jessica asked.

“Uh-huh,” Daisy said. “A couple of times.”

“So what did you do?”

“Oh, we just went out,” she said vaguely. After Will had come over to watch the movie, he'd taken her the next night out to dinner at a nice restaurant in a nearby town. It had felt a little like an apology to Daisy, almost as if Will was saying,
This is the date I should have taken you on that first night
. But the best part of the night wasn't the dinner; it was after the dinner, and after Will had driven her home and walked her to her front door. Because that's when he'd brushed a strand of hair off her cheek, leaned down, and given her a long, lingering kiss that seemed to hold the promise of the whole summer in it.

The next time they'd gone out, a few nights later, Will had had to work late and by the time he'd picked Daisy up, she'd already had dinner. So he'd taken her for a drive on South Butternut Lake Drive, which followed the curving shoreline of the lake. And Daisy had been perfectly happy, alternately watching Will drive—he was an amazing driver, the kind who drives with the same naturalness most people breathe with—and looking out the window at the soft, twilit night. Will had the radio tuned to a classic rock station, and the windows opened to the sweet, piney air, and just when Daisy had thought things couldn't get any better, he'd smiled at her and reached over and taken her hand. He'd held it there, too, resting on the seat between them, until he'd driven, one-handed, all the way back into town again. But after he'd parked on Main Street, he'd made no move to walk her to her door. Instead, he'd pulled her into his arms and kissed her, gently at first, and then harder, pouring so much desire, finally, into that kiss that it had left Daisy half wishing he'd take her out to the beach again. But he'd stopped kissing her as suddenly as he'd started, and when he'd kissed her again, at her front door, it had been a chaste, almost polite kiss.

“Honestly, Daisy,” Jessica was saying now, a little impatiently. “I don't know why you're being so secretive. You've always told me everything before.”

“I know; you're right. I'm sorry, Jessica,” Daisy said, feeling guilty. She didn't want to hurt her friend's feelings, but she also wanted to be alone with her own feelings for Will a little bit longer.

But Jessica didn't look hurt now. She looked bemused. “You really like him, don't you, Daisy?” she asked.

And Daisy sighed, because she really did.

Jessica studied her, frowning slightly. “But what do you like about him, Daisy?”

“What do I like about him?” Daisy repeated, a little stymied.

“Yeah. Like with Steve, for instance, I liked his abs. That's basically why I was going out with him.”

“Oh,” Daisy said, a little taken aback.

“In retrospect,” Jessica said seriously, “it might not have been enough to base a relationship on.”

“No, maybe not,” Daisy said. But the memory of Steve's abs seemed to have sent Jessica into another funk, because she got up to make herself another root beer float, leaving Daisy to ask herself the same question Jessica had just asked her: What
did
she like about Will? Well,
everything
, she admitted, even his abs, though her exposure to them had been limited to that first night at the beach. Still, she'd be lying if she said she didn't like the way he looked. She did. She liked all the things she'd noticed about him that day he'd repaired the pickup: his gold-brown eyes, his athletic shoulders, his worth-waiting-for smile.

But there were other things she liked about him, too, things that were harder to quantify. She liked his quietness, for instance. It wasn't the quietness of someone who had nothing to say. It was the quietness of someone who didn't feel the need to fill every silence with empty conversation, especially since the silences, with him, never felt strained or uncomfortable. They felt right, somehow. And he was a good listener, too. He really paid attention to what Daisy said, and when he commented on it, or responded to it, he didn't say a lot, but he always said something that was insightful, or perceptive, or funny.

“Daisy, honestly, you're acting like me,” Jessica said, coming back with her new root beer float. “I'm the one who falls in love after three dates. Not you.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say I was
in love
,” she said, thinking that, crazily enough, she might be. “But I think when I told you not to jump into things too quickly, I was being a little hypocritical.”

“Daisy,” Jessica said, her brown eyes widening. “Did you two, are you . . . ?”

“Oh, no,” Daisy said, shaking her head emphatically. “Not even close.” Since the night at the beach, they'd only kissed, and Daisy understood that that was all they would do, too, unless she told him or, more likely, showed him that she wanted to do more. And she
did
want to do more. But she was afraid of the more; well, not the more itself, but the feelings that came with it. Because even Will's kisses left her feeling like she was being pulled into something, like the time she'd gone swimming in Lake Superior as a kid and she'd felt as if the lake's current was pulling her in. It had been scary and exciting, all at the same time. Will's kisses made her feel exactly the same way.

“Daisy, are you all right?” Jessica asked, clearly worried. “You have the strangest expression on your face right now.”

“What? No, I'm fine,” Daisy said, trying to keep the memory of those kisses at bay, at least temporarily.

“This really is different, though, isn't it? This thing with Will.”

“It is,” she said, and something about the expression on Jessica's face made her add, “Why, is there something wrong with that?”

“No, it's just . . .” She shrugged. “I mean, I don't know Will that well, obviously, but you two seem so different. And I . . . I don't want you to get hurt.”

“Why would I get hurt?”

“You wouldn't, necessarily. But I . . . I heard something about Will recently. You know, gossip. About someone he was . . . not
dating
, exactly. But, you know, more like
seeing
.”

“You mean, seeing right now?”

“I don't know,” Jessica admitted. “But it wasn't that long ago that I heard about it.”

Now it was Daisy's turn to be worried, because the thought of Will with another girl left a sudden, hollowed-out feeling in her stomach. But then she remembered something. “Will's not seeing anyone but me, Jessica,” she said calmly.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I asked him, the night we went out to dinner. I said ‘are you seeing anyone else right now?' and he said ‘no, I'm not.'”

“And you believe him?”

“Well, he hasn't given me any reason not to.”
Yet
.

“So you don't want to know what I heard?”

“No, I don't want to know,” Daisy said, unconsciously squaring her shoulders. “It's probably just a rumor, anyway.”

“You're right,” Jessica said, visibly relieved. “Besides, if you don't have trust in a relationship, what do you have?” Saying this seemed to remind Jessica of her own recently ended relationship with Steve, and Daisy, watching her, realized her tear glands were warming up again.

Fortunately, Frankie chose that moment to interrupt them, coming through the back door of the coffee shop and wiping his hands on a rag.

“Hey,” he said to both of them. Then to Daisy, “Tell your mom I got the air-conditioning working again. For now, anyway.”

“Thank you, Frankie, I'll tell her,” Daisy said, wondering, for the one-millionth time, what her mother would do without him.

“Hey, Jessica, what's wrong?” Frankie asked, coming over to them.

“I'm fine,” Jessica said. But even with the remnants of her second root beer float in front of her, she dabbed her eyes with a napkin.

“Well, I hope you're not upset about the mix-up here this morning,” Frankie said. He was referring to Jessica's confusing so many orders that the grill had come to a standstill while Daisy and Frankie had tried to help her sort them out. Caroline, barely hiding her fury, had given all the customers free coffee. “Because that kind of thing could happen to anyone,” he continued. “I make mistakes like that all the time.”