felt before, not even twenty years earlier when she'd left Belmar, and he hadn’t come after her.
He didn’t know how long he'd been sitting in the stadium bleachers. He just kept looking out at the skiff of snow on the field, its thin coverage only making the grass a sickly shade of yellow.
There had been beauty in the emerald green of summer, and there would be comfort in the thick coat of white a full-out winter would bring. But this wasn’t either of those seasons.
He felt the leather camera case in his grip, just in the palms where he had a little warmth left. He ought to capture the moment. It was under-photographed, the ugly middle, the sketchy late fall when things were dying and not gone enough to offer the resignation of hibernation. She would leave. Not that it should matter. She’d already left him. Left him the first time by shutting him out. Left him the same way the second time, he supposed.
And he had what he’d always had. Himself. A camera. When he was younger, he'd also had the need to see the world. Maybe that impulse had really been to run, and probably from the moment he’d opened his eyes to his parents. But when it came to Gwen, he hadn’t been the one to take off. This time he’d tried to prove himself, and maybe he hadn’t even done a completely bad job of it.
But a man couldn’t prove anything to a woman who didn’t care either way.
She sat in the cafeteria until the last student left and the last work-study worker wiped the second to last table then skirted around her and dimmed the lights. She didn’t consider that she couldn’t stay forever. Nothing existed except the moment, the moment she’d hurt the one man she’d never wanted to hurt and, she knew, changed things forever.
When the table shift slightly, she looked up to see Old Man Jameson across from her. He wore the same neutral going-on-sour expression he always did, and he sighed like sitting was more work than he cared to engage in.
She sighed back because it was a language Eyeore might have understood.
"So, you changed my recipes."
She nodded once, sighed again.
"Without my say so, in my kitchen, past your own little gourmet hoo-ha."
"Yep."
He shifted in his chair, and Gwen felt more exhausted just witnessing it. "I suppose you know better with your fancy cooking da-gree and your la-de-da herbs."
He’d said herbs with the h, but Gwen didn’t have the energy to correct him.
"Suppose you think you’re something."
"Yes, I suppose I am just full of myself. I’m a la-de-da herbal genius."
"I could kick you out, Missy. Don’t get sassy with me."
Old Man Jameson used to call her missy? "Oh my god, I named my daughter Missy."
"Probably just as big a know-it-all as you were. Got to learn the rules before you break them. Didn’t know that when I sent you packing, did you?"
"Well, don’t pop a blood vessel. I’m gone for good this time."
"Cry me a river. You’d think you didn’t want a job, taking that attitude with me."
"Oh, please hire me 'cause I really need a minimum wage job dishing up runny eggs to match the rest of my life. I’m broke and homeless and out of school one semester before I actually finish a god damn degree, and alone, alone because I am a total screw up, twice with the same wrong man, and don’t even get me started on my teenage daughter and mother."
"Your mother’s a teenager?"
"Go away."
He rose, his knees creaking, which only made Gwen think serves him right when she might normally have thought oh, that’s too bad. "Got an assistant who up and left for one of them rib houses. Serve you up dinner on a garbage can lid like people need a trough these days. Could have been a la-de-da chef myself, but I landed here. Benefits and a chance for my kids to go to college for free. Me too if I’d wanted it."
She studied his long, thin face. He had the beady eyes of a really sharp crow, but he made no sense. "What are you talking about?"
"Well, isn’t Miss Smarty Pants paying attention now?" He sat back down. "I’m offering you a job."
"I have nothing, and you’re offering me..."
"Free school, free room if you want it."
"And about…"
"Ten thousand meals a week."
Gwen swallowed then put her forehead on the table.
"You can eat nineteen of those yourself, but you might want to pace it