Hold Onto the Stars by Tracy Broemmer

Chapter 17

“Since you didn’t call last night, I’m assuming you were out late,” Violet announced as she let herself in through CJ’s front door. Sprawled on the couch with a book in her hands, CJ stared at her friend blankly for a moment.

“Did you spend the night with him?” Violet grinned. “You look tired.”

CJ finally stirred. She tossed the book to the floor and moved to sit on one end of the couch to make room for Violet on the other.

“No.”

“What time did you come home? Why didn’t you call me?” Violet plopped down and drew her feet up under her.

“Vi.” CJ nibbled on her lip and avoided her friend’s eyes.

“What?” Violet winced. “What happened?”

“It just….” CJ shrugged. “It’s not gonna work out.”

“Hang on.” Violet climbed off the couch and disappeared into the kitchen. CJ rested her head on the cushion behind her as she listened to Violet forage through her cabinets looking for junk food.

Violet was right. She was exhausted. No sleep. But not for the reason Violet wanted to believe. She had asked Peyton to bring her home last night, but disappointment had crashed down on her the second she stepped inside her house. No. Not entirely true. That weight, that horribly tight feeling in her chest and throat and the heavy feeling in her belly had started the second she confessed to Peyton last night that she didn’t want a family.

Not just because it made her feel selfish, which fueled her frustration with society and Oak Bend in general, but because she had hurt him. Maybe she was no better than Erica. Except at least she had talked to him, told him the truth, right?

“You have the worst junk food,” Violet grumbled as she rounded the couch and dropped a nearly empty pack of cookies and a bag of salt and vinegar chips on the cushion between them. “I bet your dad has a better selection than you do.”

“You’re welcome to go find out.” CJ offered Violet a syrupy smile.

Violet snorted and rolled her eyes as she opened the bag of chips and stuck her hand in.

“Not happening,” she said. “What happened to the cookies you made yesterday?”

“Well, you ate half the dough, I ate a couple of cookies, and I gave the rest to Dad.”

“Nice.” Violet shoved a handful of chips in her mouth and licked her fingers. “So. Tell me about the date.”

CJ huffed out an exaggerated sigh.

“Seriously, CJ, there might not have been chemistry between us, but he was nice, and we had fun. What did he do? He didn’t—”

“No.” CJ leaned forward and snatched the chip bag from Violet’s hand. “No. He was a perfect gentleman. And he’s nice, and he’s fun. And we’ve got chemistry off the charts.”

Violet tipped her head and narrowed her eyes at CJ. “And so, where’s the problem?”

CJ groaned and climbed to her feet to pace the living room. She crunched the few chips she had in her hand, swallowed, and avoided Violet’s eyes.

“It was super intense, and it really sucks, but Peyton and I aren’t going to work out.”

“Stop being cryptic and tell me what the hell happened.”

“We were talking, Vi. After dinner, we took a walk around the square, and he mentioned an ex.”

“Oh.” Violet winced. “He didn’t seem the type to bring up an ex on a date with someone else.”

“Not like that,” CJ argued quietly. “He wants kids. His ex left him because he wants kids.”

“And she didn’t?”

“She did. But.” CJ hesitated. She felt funny telling Violet this. It wasn’t her place to share the information. “It just isn’t gonna work out, Violet. We hashed it all out. I told him where I stand. Nowhere to go from there.”

“But.” Violet frowned. “I mean, can’t you…What if he—”

“It’s not fair of me to waste his time, and it’s no fairer of me to hope he’ll change his mind than for him to think he can change mine.”

“Dammit.” Violet tossed the chip bag away and rubbed her hand on her jeans. “You like him, CJ. I can tell.”

“I do.” CJ nodded. “Maybe we’ll at least be friends.”

CJ wasn’t even sure that would happen now. Peyton hadn’t been rude to her when he brought her home, but things had been chilly. Even before he had kissed her the first time, they had been a little bit flirty. There was no denying they had a connection. But last night, after her confession, after their disastrous date, the silence on the drive home had been prickly and unbearable.

“How did it end? I mean…I assume he drove you to dinner.”

“He did,” CJ said quietly. She moseyed to the front window and watched the neighbor kids ride their bikes past the house, both giggling uncontrollably. Ignoring the stab of pain in her chest, she tucked her hands in her back pockets and turned back to Violet. “We talked. Went back to his house. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t sleep with him and hide my truth from him. It would have been worse.”

“Did he drive you home?”

“Yeah.” CJ whooshed out another sigh and shrugged her lips at Violet. “I offered to walk. He was concerned about what Oak Bend would think of him if he bombed another date, after you weren’t into him.”

“Bullshit.” Violet rolled her eyes. “He’s not that kind of guy.”

CJ met Violet’s eyes with a reluctant nod. “I know. He’s not. He was angry. Hurt. He had every right to feel that way. It was just awkward.”

“So. I mean. That’s it? You’re never gonna see him again? Have you talked to him today?”

“What could we possibly say to each other now?”

“How are you gonna be friends if you have nothing to say to each other?”

CJ flinched. Good point. Worse yet, she was supposed to be at his house tomorrow to work on the garage. Maybe she should have her dad swap her and Travis’ sites so she wouldn’t have to bump into Peyton so soon.

“It’s just too soon,” she told Violet. “Give it a few days, and it’ll be fine.”

Violet eyed her skeptically. “Sure. Okay. And in the meantime, the hot new single guy in town is gonna be swamped with phone calls and propositions.”

CJ looked away, hoping Violet didn’t catch the way her words cut through her.

“So, you think I’m being ridiculous? That I should just change my mind so I can hang onto the hot new guy?”

“Crosby.”

CJ looked over her shoulder as Violet stood and crossed the room to stand near her.

“No. Of course not.” Her friend shook her head. “I just hate to see you like this. He might be the love of your life. Sucks that you’re losing him before you had the chance to love him.”

“Hardly the love of my life.” CJ rolled her eyes. But she turned away before Violet could see the truth of that statement in her eyes.

He might have been, and she’d never know it. But it wasn’t fair to either of them to start a relationship if they wanted different futures.

* * *

Asking her dad to swap her and Travis around on job sites was the easy part. Working with her dad on the Fitzgerald house should have been easy. They had worked together for years and knew each other’s quirks and work ethic intimately. What CJ hadn’t expected, though, were her dad’s questions about her date. She wouldn’t have told him at all that she was going out—she’d stopped checking in with him about her whereabouts several years ago. But he had knocked on her door Saturday between Violet leaving and Peyton picking her up, and since CJ didn’t make a habit of wearing dresses, he had known something was up.

She’d told him only that she had a date, because even then, it had felt special to her. Different, somehow. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to jinx herself—that thought brought a twinge of sadness—or maybe she just hadn’t wanted her dad to suspect she had been flirting—and making out—with a customer in his house last week before he asked her out.

Unfortunately, Susie Rittenhouse had seen her and Peyton at Gino’s, and Susie’s uncle was a good friend of her dad’s, so naturally, he’d known even when she asked about swapping sites with Travis that she had gone out with Peyton Quinn.

“Bad date, huh?” he asked as he eyed the measuring tape.

“It was okay,” she mumbled. She watched her dad take the pencil from behind his ear and mark the spot for an outlet on the north kitchen wall. She didn’t want to get into the details, because her dad didn’t understand her desire to remain childless. If she laid the whole thing out for him, he would tell her she was being silly. That she should date Peyton and see if they had a chance at a future, and then if he wanted to adopt a baby or three, she should just bend her will and agree with him.

And if she didn’t explain why she was moping about the date and avoiding Peyton, her dad might get the wrong idea and approach Peyton. No matter what happened or didn’t happen between them, CJ wouldn’t let anyone assume Peyton had done something wrong—or something to hurt her or make her unhappy.

“Yeah? So okay that you’re avoiding him, huh?” Her dad shot her a firm look she remembered from her childhood.

“I’d rather not talk about it, Dad.”

“Seems like a good guy. Joan and Harlan North think a lot of him.”

“He is,” CJ agreed. “We just decided we would make better friends.”

Her dad eyed her silently for a moment causing CJ to squirm. When he finally gave her a tiny shrug and turned away to mumble suit yourself, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“This got something to do with your feminist ideas about not wanting to have babies?”

So much for suit yourself. With her back to him, measuring for outlet boxes on the opposite kitchen wall, CJ bit her lip and squeezed her eyes closed. She was indeed a feminist, which was precisely why she didn’t judge other women for their choices—whether that was to have families, careers, or both. But her own personal lack of desire for motherhood had nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with growing up with one parent. Her dad was a good, strong, compassionate man who’d done right by her, but he had instilled no natural mothering instincts in her.

“Dad.” She didn’t want to argue. Not on the job. She’d told her dad a few times over the past few years that she didn’t want children, but each time she did, he waved her words away as if he assumed she would change her mind one day.

“Seems to me if you like the guy, you could figure a way around all that extra stuff.”

“Yeah?” Squatting, she clamped her teeth around her own pencil and pressed her tape measure to the studs.

“You think I would’ve walked away from your mother if she had told me she didn’t want babies?”

CJ dropped the tape measure and stood slowly. She turned to look at her dad, frustrated that he was pushing this.

“It was one date, Dad.”

“Your mother and I met—”

“At the bowling alley,” she said and nodded. “I know.”

“Maybe so.” Her dad tipped his head at her. “But maybe what you don’t know is that I knew after one look I would marry her. Come hell or high water.”

CJ wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

“I’m gonna take a break,” she told him. “Do you need coffee?”

“Sure do.”

She nodded and fished in her pocket for her truck keys.

“Heard you laid one hell of a kiss on him out in the street the night before your date.”

CJ froze in her tracks at the framed in back door.

“Behave or I’ll order you decaf.”