She watched him smile his sexy smile at her as he handed her the bag. Today, he was wearing his bulky coat that hid all his hard muscles that Mia loved to touch. Or used to, back when she could touch them.
“No, Mom,” she stated firmly, maybe too firmly.
“Okay, Mia, but you will never get married if you don’t try,” Dotty said as Mia walked away from them.
Mia didn’t care that the conversation with the sisters had ended early she walked to the front of the café as he walked out the door, taking the last of her desire to stay at work with him. He hadn’t even ordered anything while he was there. Not even the heart-shaped meatloaf, and everyone was ordering that today.
“Mia, Rafferty dropped this off for you. He said it was from Ruth and Anderson for Valentine’s Day.” Paige held out the bag Rafferty had given her.
“Paige, I know you haven’t worked here long, but you can’t flirt with the customers.” Mia chastised her for no reason. But he was still her husband, and so far, she hadn’t come up with a plan to make him her ex-husband, nor had she tried.
“I’m sorry, Mia, I haven’t flirted with anyone. I swear,” Paige said with her innocent eyes as she looked around the café, as if the man she had flirted with was still there.
“Rafferty,” was all she said to the younger woman.
The face the young woman gave her said she didn’t see Rafferty worth flirting with. Mia just waved her away as she took the bag from her hand. Looking down at it, she remembered his gift from last year. Funny how she had forgotten the pregnancy test of the previous year. She wondered how her life would’ve changed if the test had come back positive back then. That was the night Tess’s daughter was conceived. Would she and Rafferty be as happy as Tess and Math were these days? Or would they be just as separated as they were now, but with a baby to shuffle between them?
But the present hadn’t been from him anyway, it was from Ruth. But really what would Ruth give her for Valentine’s Day? Resisting the temptation to look, she went back to her mom and aunt’s table and steered the conversation to their grandbabies. Mandy’s surprise baby had ticked off Dotty a little, as if Dolly had been hiding the pregnancy instead of her daughter to spite her sister. And to Mia’s delight, that made her put pressure on her married daughters to produce more children. Her sisters deserved a little of their mom’s pressure.
By the time three and the end of her day rolled around, Mia was more than ready to leave behind the meatloaf special and go home. Happily, she shed her work clothes and put on pajama pants and a Landstad Tigers sweatshirt to watch a few Valentine’s movies. As she found a good one, she picked up the pink bag to see what Ruth had gotten her.
Inside the bag was the movie Sleepless in Seattle and a post-it note that said:
If you want to watch You’ve Got Mail, it starts at eight. If you want to watch them both together, I’m home at five. Pizza will be served. Rafferty
Was he asking her out? On Valentine’s Day? Was he luring her to his house with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks?
Was it working?
The movie on the screen had lost her interest. Staring at the DVD in her hand, she wondered what it meant. And what would happen if she actually went over there. Well, she knew what would happen, but what would happen tomorrow.
Looking at the clock, she saw she had just over an hour to figure it out. But the more she thought, the more she knew what she should do. What she needed to do. Going into her bedroom, she looked through the boxes on the floor in her closet where she kept her movie collection, the collection that she already had both the movies mentioned. Grabbing what she was looking for, she slid it into the pink bag and put on her coat, hat, and mittens for the short walk. Before she left the apartment, she grabbed her half-empty bottle of whiskey, and out the door she went.
Her feet still knew the way to his place, so she didn’t have to think about the walk, just the destination in the falling snow. Once there, she let herself in; the door was unlocked. She took off her outerwear, hanging everything in the coat closet next to the front door. He wasn’t there, but it was before five, so she assumed he was still working.
Putting the bag of DVDs on the coffee table, she saw the movie he had mentioned already there. Still in plastic and a price tag on it from a big box store, meaning he had planned this entire thing out. That made Mia feel a little special.
Going into the kitchen, she looked around for a while and then decided on what to make him for supper. She wasn’t up for frozen pizza. By the time he walked in the door at 5:05 p.m., the house smelled of baked chicken and roasted potatoes.
“You didn’t have to cook,” Rafferty said from the kitchen doorway, not mentioning she hadn’t been there in a month.
“I didn’t want frozen pizza.” She didn’t mention it either. Or that their last conversation was a huge fight.
“Thank you It smells great.”
“Thanks, it was nothing. It’s almost ready. You can get the movie ready, and I’ll bring the food out. Eating on the couch, right?”
“Sure. Which did you want to start with?” He didn’t apologize.
“You forgot the first one in the collection, so I brought that one. We have to start there.” Neither did she.
By the time they sat down to eat, he had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt to match her lounge pants and sweatshirt. Even his shirt had a tiger on it. Once the movie started, they talked about everything from the plot to the characters to the actors who played them. But nothing about anything that had happened in Landstad, North Dakota, ever. Once the second movie started, they had settled into a pleasant silence that was comforting to them both, bringing back memories of their short two weeks together.
Before that movie had finished, Mia was sleeping in Rafferty’s arms. It had been so comfortable to be there that she had let it happen. She didn’t even try to stay awake, just let herself be with him one more time. Just be exactly where she wanted to be, one more time.
CHAPTER26
Spring