The moment Valentine is outside and the screen door swings shut behind her, Sharon springs into action.

The chatter breaks over the room like a wave. People around me are trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Two old ladies sitting nearby are beside themselves.

“Did you see that other one?” one says with a quiver in her voice. “What a disgusting dog.”

“They both have their issues,” her friend says primly. She drops her voice, but not quite enough. “And the attractive one is here with his daughter. I’ve heard that’s his daughter.”

I’m torn between running after Valentine and letting her go forever. She can do what she wants. She can call it over if she wants to. I can’t force her to be with me, and I would never want to do that. But the look in her eyes when she said those things...

It didn’t look like it was over. 

Still, the best thing I can do now is give her a little space.

I can hear Sharon’s voice coming from the front room. “Emily? Hey, it’s me. Can you come down to the Short Stack? Right now, yes. She had to...take a break. Fifteen minutes. No, I don’t know. Just come, okay? I’ve got too many orders to—okay.”

Then she rolls up her sleeves and takes over for Valentine. I pay for Minnie’s pancake and, as soon as she’s done eating, whisk her out of her high chair and out onto the sidewalk.

“I wonder where she went,” I say out loud, slipping into my habit of narrating for Minnie.

“Where’d she go?” Minnie raises both hands in the air and looks in one direction, then the other. 

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“Balontine come right back?”

“Maybe. But I don’t know.” I breathe in the fresh morning air, but all that does is make it easier to sigh. “I don’t know.”

* * *

Minnie and I circle the block, taking our time, but I don’t see Valentine again. Either she’s decided to just go home or she slipped inside while we weren’t on that part of the street, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t keep doing this all day. I’m going to look like the same kind of creepy stalker that Conrad was being.

No sign of him, either, which is about the only silver lining to this situation.

There’s an ache in my throat that I can’t get rid of, no matter how much Minnie makes me laugh, no matter how much she eases the tension just by being around. 

I have to do something for Valentine. Even if she doesn’t want to keep playing our game—even if I’m the only one who wants to take this to the next level—I have to prove to her that I don’t think of her in the way she imagines. I have to. I might never see her again after this summer, and I can’t have it end like this. I just can’t.

Eventually, Minnie has to go home for a nap. The house is too quiet with her asleep, without any possibility of talking to Valentine, and I spend my little chunk of free time watching out the front window to see if she comes home. Her car isn’t in the driveway.

At eleven-thirty, I have to leave for work. It just about kills me to leave without seeing her. I do it anyway. 

I hate it.

* * *

“I don’t know how you get yourself into these situations,” Jamie says while he hauls another bag of premium garden soil out of the back of his truck. I’m still not in love with the idea of having to beg work from my brother, but of all the jobs in the world, this is probably the most ideal for the summer. It keeps me in shape and, most importantly, frees up my mind to think about Valentine.

I guess dwelling would be the better word, and somehow it’s all mixed in with Angie. Valentine was there when I got that news. She was the one person on earth I trusted to leave with my daughter. 

I look at him with narrowed eyes. He misses the expression entirely. “This isn’t the same thing as with Angie.” It’s hard to say her name. It’s always been hard to mention her to my family because it was so fucking embarrassing to be with her in the first place.

It’s been five days since I had to go to the city. I haven’t been back to the Short Stack, and I haven’t seen Valentine’s car outside her place. This morning I finally cracked and told Jamie everything. 

“Isn’t it?” Another bag of garden soil hits the pile with a heavy thud. “You pushed us all away so hard that you went all the way to Afghanistan.”

“That’s not why I joined the Army.”

“Then why?” Jamie pauses and looks at me over the garden soil. “You always held everybody at arm’s length. That’s probably why you thought there was nothing for you at home.”

“Mom and Dad wanted me out, and you know it.”

“Nah,” Jamie says. “You wanted to leave, and so you made that the story. It was easier that way.”

There’s a certain ring of truth to what Jamie’s saying, something that feels way too familiar. 

“I don’t know about that.”

He rolls his eyes, then reaches into the truck for another bag of garden soil. “Yes, you do. You’re doing the same thing here. That’s why you have to leave at the end of the summer.”

“That’s—” The argument is so flimsy that I can’t force the words out. I hate it more than a little bit that my brother is right about this. At least, I’m pretty fucking sure he is. It’s never been obvious to me until this moment, though, so my instinct is to scowl. “Fine. Maybe you’re right. But that’s not what’s happening with Valentine.”

“Look. Nobody can blame you for not wanting to rush things,” he says, counting up the bags and reaching for the clipboard he has wedged in the back of the cab. “But if you keep pushing them all away, you’re not going to end up with anybody.”