Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,3

Sadie had only one year left of college, the pressure was off.

Leah had fully supported his decision. The truth was, she was ready for a change, too. She’d become tired of running the shop. She’d lost the spark. Yes, she still loved cheese, and maybe she would still try to teach. But she’d had enough of the day-to-day running of the business: the payroll for her part-timers, the politics of the New York City Department of Health, the vendors, her landlord.

But when she admitted to Steven that she wasn’t planning on reopening, he had other ideas.

“I’ll help you. I’ll have so much free time. We can run it together. It can be our cheese shop.”

Leah had been shocked by the suggestion. And not in a good way. Growing up, she’d seen her parents navigate working together, and it had been fraught. “Someone has to be the boss,” her mother had once said to her.

Maybe she could discuss it with her mother next week; she and Steven would be vacationing at the vineyard where Leah had grown up.

Steven opened the register and folded in some receipts.

“Do you need help with the class tonight?” he said.

“No, thanks—I’ve got it.”

He turned to the shelves, rearranging jars that were already exactly how she wanted them. She looked away, willing herself not to ask him to stop. She loved her husband. But all of this togetherness was an adjustment.

It would get easier—she hoped.

Two

Upstate New York

“I can’t believe you didn’t even pack yet,” Sadie Bailey’s boyfriend said. He sat at the small wooden desk next to her bed, waiting for her to finish halfheartedly tossing clothes into an overnight bag.

He had every reason to be impatient. After all, they were supposed to already be on the road to his parents’ beach house on Cape Cod.

“Almost done,” she said, glancing up but avoiding eye contact. Behind him was a poster of Sadie’s favorite Virginia Woolf quote: “Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?” What does that even mean? Holden had once asked.

They had so little in common. And yet she’d found Holden Dillworth irresistible, with his golden-boy good looks and boundless energy. By day he was captain of the crew team; by night he was a beer-chugging partier. Sadie had been smitten the moment she spotted him at the dining hall.

Holden had blond hair and brown eyes. He had flawless skin and teeth that had never needed braces. He very much resembled Kristoff from Frozen, though a tad less burly.

Sadie, on the other hand, did not resemble a Disney princess. She might be cast in a movie about a family’s perilous flight from the Ukraine in the 1800s, which was something that had actually occurred in her ancestry. Sadie had curly dark hair and brown eyes and was not tall. She did, however, have her mother’s dramatic eyelashes and a version of her father’s high cheekbones, as well as an aquiline nose that she felt gave her face a certain strength of character.

Holden initially found her seriousness and intellectualism intriguing. But now reality was catching up to them. Holden complained about how much time she spent reading and writing. He complained that Sadie was never willing to be “spontaneous.”

Things had worked when crew was in season; they made time for each other in the margins of their first priorities. This always felt like an appropriate balance to Sadie. She never considered it a sacrifice to write instead of hanging out with Holden. And she thought Holden felt the same way about her own schedule, until crew ended, finals finished, and he announced that they finally had time to “really hang out.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with him. But apparently the only thing Sadie knew how to be truly devoted to was her writing.

Sadie closed the overnight bag. “I need to talk to you.” She beckoned Holden over to the twin bed in the corner. They sat facing each other. He shook a lock of hair out of his eyes, even blonder now after a month or so of sunshine. “Look, I’m sorry I’m distracted. I just met with Dr. Moore.”

“Can we not—for one weekend—talk about Dr. Moore or your thesis?”

Sadie immediately felt defensive. The only reason she was at that particular school was Dr. Moore.

Sadie had applied to only one college. It was a decision that mystified her parents and high school advisors alike. It was not the most prominent school—certainly