Confessions from the Quilting Circle, Maisey Yates [animal farm read TXT] 📗

bring over in the morning, and she really did need a car for carting things around.

She sat there for a moment, and then remembered. There had been a mechanic in town back when she’d been in high school. And she hadn’t really taken note of if the building it used to be in was in fact still the same business, but it was only two doors down.

At the very least she could go ask for a jump.

Of course, it was after five and most things in Bear Creek, except the bars and restaurants, closed by then.

She got out of the car and looked down the street, and saw a light filtering through the window of what had once been the garage.

Well. She might as well go check it out.

She started down the street, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the sign above the door still said R&J’s Auto Shop.

And the sign on the door said Open.

She pushed the door open and looked around the room. The small reception area was empty.

Except for a small, orange plastic chair and a fake plant that had seen better days. It was shabby and dusty, and Lark had to wonder what the point of fake shrubbery was if it actually made the place look uglier.

The floor was white tile with mottled gray spots, which worked, because the trim that separated the wall and the floor was also gray, and the white walls were spattered with what was probably oil, but could have been high-octane coffee, judging by the vaguely burned bean smell in the air.

She wondered if they’d just forgotten to lock up and turn the sign over. Which was infinitely possible in her hometown.

The second hand on the clock ticked around twice, and she was starting to wonder if it was a sign that this wasn’t happening and she needed to just walk on home. If the universe was going to prevent her from her quest, then she wasn’t going to argue with the universe.

The universe had seen things.

But just as she was about to turn and leave, the door that separated the reception area from the garage opened.

It was him.

Oh, lord. It was him.

Ben.

Recognition was swift and brutal.

But when she looked at him, she did not see her friend from all those years ago. He was older, that was how time worked, after all. But time hadn’t hurt his looks at all. Not at all.

Right. Well the last thing she needed to do was start melting over how he looked.

But there was something else that felt changed too. It wasn’t her, that was for sure.

Apparently you could avoid your hometown for years, except to see your family. Limit the amount of time you spent wandering around. Do anything, absolutely anything, to forget the biggest heartbreak of your life.

And he could walk into a room covered in grease and oil, wearing nothing but worn jeans and a dirty white T-shirt, and you could find yourself right back where you never wanted to be.

Hopeless and desperate for a man who didn’t love you.

Fantastic.

His blond hair was darker, pushed back off of his forehead. His cheekbones were sharper, his face covered with stubble. But the scar on his cheek was still visible. She remembered how he’d gotten it. Running underneath the bleachers and colliding with a support beam beneath it. He hit the side of his face and tore it open and it had taken a fairly legendary amount of stitches to close it back up again. The end result was a groove that ran just beneath the corner of his eye to the edge of his cheekbone.

She remembered him before and after that scar.

He had a beard now. But that didn’t do anything to hide the lips that she had spent a whole lot of her teenage years staring at, composing poetry about them. Poetry that would only ever exist in the secret pages of a diary that had been burned long ago.

She could look at him and see a map to her past, but it felt distant. Far away.

She could see the exact moment recognition sparked through him. His blue eyes flickered over her, then stopped, and then clashed with hers.

He didn’t smile, and somehow she wasn’t surprised. Because there was something about his bearing now that didn’t suggest he smiled all that often. There was a groove worn between his eyebrows, but he was missing lines by the corners of his eyes.

“I heard you were in town,” he said.

Well she’d heard blessed little about him. Certainly not that he was running this auto shop which would have been nice to know.

Sure, but you pretend you’re not avoiding and you’ve done it so well no one has noticed that your friendship didn’t just fade away from years of neglect.

Right. That friendship that had been one of the most important, essential friendships in her life. Except she’d gone and fallen in love with him when she was fourteen.

While he’d gone and fallen in love with the other most important person in her life. Her friend Keira.

And they’d been a golden couple.

Still were, she was sure.

“I am. Obviously. I... I’m running Gram’s shop. Though it’s not...candy anymore.”

“I wondered.”

“Well. Wonder no more.” Wow. That was so lame. She was so lame.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, but she would never call it a smile. “What brings you in?”

“Oh. My car won’t start. Which you know is... I mean I could walk back to The Dowell House. I’m staying there.” Too much information, Lark. “But the car thing will be a problem at some point and I saw you were open and...and.”

Ben had been her very first experience with hiding emotion. Letting feelings out had been a catharsis for her all her life and she’d never thought of them as dangerous.

Until keeping how she felt about him shoved down deep for fear it would ruin her friendships, and therefore her life, had taught her that she sometimes needed to keep things to