“It’s a beautiful legacy,” I say, my voice cracking, and it’s so clear what this place means to both him and his namesake. This isn’t just a place of business. It isn’t even just their home. This is the place where families are born, happiness is made, and memories are everlasting.
Big H reaches under the pottery wheel, his eyes brightening when he pulls out the electrical cord. “The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life is make that phone call to Holden to tell him we might have to sell the place,” he says, eyeing the barn walls for a free outlet. “No father ever wants their son to have to save them the way he has.”
“Trust me…” I say, waiting until he’s plugged the cord into an outlet beneath the shelves. “It’s every child’s dream to help their parents successfully.”
He stays squatted, low to the ground, as his eyes meet mine, and I can tell by the pity in his stare that he understands my meaning. I wish I could’ve saved my mother.
The difference between Holden and me? I failed.
Big H doesn’t respond, and silence stretches time, turning the air thick between us. Finally, I break our stare and drop my gaze to the pottery wheel, telling him, “You’ve raised a good man, Big H.” I swallow the sudden knot in my throat, ignoring the heat behind my eyes. “I’m positive that there is no one else in this world that I would willingly tear down my walls for, or accept love into my heart, the way I did for Holden.” I press the tips of my fingers to my eyes—a pathetic attempt to hide the tears there. “Holden—he made it incredibly easy to love him. And that’s because of his heart, of the way he never once judged me for who I am or what I came from. The way he loved me beyond words. Beyond reason. And I know that you have everything to do with that.”
Big H watches me a moment, nodding slowly, before sucking in a ragged breath. He turns to the outlet and flicks on the switch, his shoulders momentarily slumping when nothing changes. “You know…” he says, standing to full height. He picks up the biggest vase from the shelf and sets it on the middle of the wheel. This one doesn’t have a flower on it. It’s just lines of colors. “Holden and I would speak every day when he was in Tennessee.” He spins the wheel manually, and I listen to his words, even though I’m mesmerized by the twirling of the vase, the different colors shifting, acting like a tidal wave of rainbows behind my irises. “He’d tell me all about you. About how you were both healing from what happened to you. He’d even send me pictures of the things you’d drawn...” My head snaps up, gaze locked on his. He simply smiles down at me. “That piece that won you the art contest…” My stomach turns while bile rises to my throat. I close my eyes, force the memories away so I can take in his words. Let them pull me away. Let them break me, then heal me. “He was incredibly proud of you, Jamie. Not just for your art, but of you, in general. He’d tell me all the time that it blew his mind that he could get a girl like you.”
I laugh—such a contrast to the emotions I’m feeling.
“Do you still draw?” he asks, and I shake my head. “That’s a shame.” He slows the pottery wheel until the vase is still. “I think it’s important for people to keep hold of their hobbies, their passions… their loves.” He pauses a beat. “Some people wait fifteen years to rediscover them…”
The corner of my lips lift. “You and Mags?” I tease.
Big H smiles. “Trust an experienced man with this one, Jamie. Don’t wait fifteen years.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, his broad shoulders shifting with the movement. Slowly, he starts to back out of the barn, saying, “And you’re right, by the way. This whole place could go belly-up tomorrow, and I could lose it all, and in the end, it wouldn’t matter because I know I did one thing right in my life. I’ve raised a good man. The kind of man who realizes how lucky he is to find a girl like you…” He throws me a knowing wink as his smile grows. “The kind who still holds on to his passions, his loves… even if he doesn’t show it…”
21
Jamie
“Don’t laugh…” I warn Maggie.
“Oh, God, I’m scared. Don’t tell me it’s like… some super creepy old dude like Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs?”
I almost choke on my dinner. “No! Gross! What the hell, Mags?!”
“Then how bad could it be?” she says through a giggle.
“Chris Pratt.”
“Oohh, I love me some Chris Pratt.”
“But not the ripped Star-Lord or Jurassic World version. I’m talking about Parks and Rec, overweight—”
“Ew!”
“Hey! A sense of humor can go a long way!” I don’t know how we got to the conversation of celebrity crushes, but here we are.
Last night, after the conversation with Big H, I decided to stay for the weekend. On Monday, I’ll figure out what to do. But, for now, I’m going to enjoy what little time I have with the woman sitting opposite me.
Maggie looks around before leaning forward. “Want to know mine?” she whispers as if Big H is going to round the corner and catch her mid illicit thought. Maggie and I have had dinner together at the table and chairs they set up just outside my RV every night since I got here, and Big H has never once interrupted us. He does, however, replace the flower in the vase every day. He’s yet to give me a dahlia, and I wonder if he knows it was my mother’s name. Maggie says, “Channing Tatum in Magic Mike.”
My nose scrunches in disgust. “Gross…”
She stabs her fork in the air, aimed directly at me. “How is pre-ripped Chris Pratt okay, but Channing Tatum is gross?”
“Because…” My eyes widen the moment I realize. “Ew!” I squeal, dropping my own fork and rubbing my eyes, wishing I could pour bleach directly into the sockets. “Now I’m picturing Big H doing a striptease for you and ew!”
“God, that would be so hot!” Maggie laughs out.
“Stop!”
“The man is jacked, Jamie. I’m talking—”
I squeal. “Why are you torturing me?”
“What’s the big deal? It’s not like you’re related!”
I lower my hands, glare at her. “But he’s kind of like a father figure to me.”
“Yeah, he can be your father figure…” She pauses to lay on a shit-eating grin. “But he’s daddy to me.”
I gasp in horror, or maybe disgust. “Maggie!”
She folds over herself, laughing harder, and in my mind, Big H has stripped down to his boxers. “I can’t unsee the things playing out in my head right now!”
“What’s so funny?” We both jump at the figure that does round the corner. Only it’s someone neither of us was expecting.
Maggie’s laughter dies down to a simmering giggle as she looks up at the boy I’ve met twice now. “Coltamus,” she says in greeting.
Colton, the guy who was there to wipe my tears away at the diner and then again when my little rollerblading adventure was cut short, returns her greeting with one just as odd. “Magsamillian.”