by Sarina Bowen
As the summer progressed, she’d gotten even more creative. The pan-fried lake trout had tasted so fresh I’d almost cried.
“You are the most loyal customer I’ve ever had,” she’d said. By then, I’d memorized the shape of her smile and the flush of her cheek when I complimented the food.
But I didn’t hit on her. Not once.
At the beginning, restraint had been easy. I’d come to Nest Lake to be alone and to stop chasing women. I was still bitter about the tabloid article. I didn’t need any distractions. I was going to finish that album or die trying.
But by midsummer, my vow of chastity had gotten a lot harder. Literally. The time I’d spent with Kira had evolved from a simple nightly transaction to a real friendship. And every night I went to bed hearing her laughter echo in my head and wondering how her skin would feel sliding against mine.
But I was young and dumb. At the time, I’d written it off as mere horniness. Five years later, I knew better.
Well before Labor Day, Kira’s bright smile and intelligent eyes had stolen my heart. And her curvy body turned up in all my dreams. But I never slipped up and made a pass. Not just because I’d been feeling stubborn, but there was something vulnerable about Kira. I couldn’t have told you exactly what, but still it held me back. Banging her like one of my fans would have felt wrong.
Besides, if I’d talked Kira into my bed, there’d been a risk that she wouldn’t make me dinner anymore. And then I would have been stuck with the miserable fare that my B&B landlady referred to as “food.”
Somehow it had all been enough to keep even a dedicated horn dog in check.
“Earth to Jonas,” Quinn teased. “Let’s pick up a magazine or two, and then I want some soft serve.”
I’d been staring at Kira’s old counter, memories flooding through me. But where her delicacies once sat, there were now only scary-looking danishes wrapped in cellophane. It was no better than gas-station food.
It was true what people said. You can never go back.
I turned toward the magazine rack, shaking off my disappointment.
Two
Kira
I pulled up in front of the general store, putting the car in park. After the three-hour drive from Boston, both my companions were asleep. In the passenger seat, my older brother’s head rested against his bicep, which he’d curled against the window. And when I swiveled to see my daughter in her car seat, her eyelids fluttered, then settled closed again.
As I rolled down my window, Adam woke up with a shake of his head. “Ugh. We’re here,” my brother grumbled.
“It’s only two days. You always survive somehow.”
“I suppose.” He rolled his neck.
I studied him. “You look beat, Adam. Are you okay?” He’d told me that there was something he needed to discuss with me this weekend, and now I wondered what it was.
“I’m fine. Just tired.” He removed his seatbelt.
“Dad will have the baseball game turned up good and loud. You’ll keep the beer flowing. We’ll be fine.”
“I know.” He sighed. “But how do you stand it? All the jabs at your choices. And mine.”
“I just remind myself that he’s a sourpuss to us, but he’s good to Vivi. Do you want to tell him we’re here, or should I do it?”
Adam turned to look up at the store, considering. “I’ll get it over with.” He opened the passenger door. “Plus, I can buy my first six-pack.”
“Good plan.”
“I want to go in!” Vivi yelled from the backseat.
“Oh, you’re awake!” I swiveled around again. My daughter fiddled with her car seat straps, trying to spring herself free.
Adam opened Vivi’s door. “Come on, princess. Let’s go see grumpy.”
“You mean Grandpa!” my little girl corrected.
“Right. Just like I said.” He swung her out and onto his hip.
“I’ll unload our things and then come back for you?” I suggested. The house was barely a quarter mile away.
“We’ll walk it,” Adam countered. “She’s a big girl now.”
“Okay. See you there.”
I watched Adam carry my daughter up the wooden steps and onto the store’s screened porch, then I turned the car around in the post office driveway. Idling past the Kreemy Kone, I happened to glance at the couple seated at the picnic table. The woman was watching me, but the guy was reading a magazine. Then, maybe because he sensed my gaze, he looked up, smiling. His mouth fell open in surprise.
And my heart absolutely stopped.
Jonas Smith was sitting right there on the bench. After five years, he barely seemed real. In my mind, he’d become a mythical figure. Back when I’d known him, he’d called himself John Smith. He’d given me a fake name. A fake name, and thus a fake friendship for an entire summer.
And on the very last night, he’d given me a baby.
Then John Smith had left town, and I’d never spoken to him again, had never seen his face. Not in person, anyway. It wasn’t until a year and a half later that I’d spotted him on my computer screen, looking out at me from an ad for a new album called Summer Nights.
And now he sat casually on the picnic table bench in shorts and a T-shirt. Like a specter from my past.
Stunned, I pressed the gas pedal. But in my rearview mirror I saw that he’d stood up, his eyes following my car.
The woman he was with called to him. “Jonas?” He didn’t respond. Instead, he took off, trotting after me.
Go home was all I could think to do. But of course, John, or Jonas, knew where my father’s house was. Adam would be on his way there too. With Vivi.
Oh God.
I had driven maybe fifty yards, to the place where the road veered left and curved around the lake. But I didn’t make the turn. Instead, I stopped the car in front of the beach. I got out and closed the door. I could hear the slap of flip-flops coming my way.
“Kira,” his voice begged.
With my heart beating wildly, I walked away from him, down the little slope and out onto the town dock. My throat went dry. I knew I wasn’t behaving rationally. The dock was a dead end, unless I planned to swim away from him.
But there was no escape anyway. The sensible part of my brain knew I would have to deal with the fallout. If he was here in Maine, I was going to have to tell him the truth even if he’d broken my heart.
“Kira.”
I closed my eyes at the sound of his voice. The water lapped gently under the dock. If I turned around, he might not truly be standing there. I held my breath.
That’s when he began to whistle softly. The first four bars of “You Are My Sunshine.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms.
“You remember,” I gasped, whirling around. Five years later, and he still knew to warn me. He hadn’t forgotten that I used to startle if he—or anyone else—approached me from behind.
He walked towards me slowly, his hands spread wide, muscular arms on display. His hair was shorter now, but still the most beautiful shade of sandy blond. “Of course I remember, sweetness. Never sneak up on Kira.”
At that, my eyes filled with tears.
“Hey, now,” he said gently. He’d made it all the way out on the dock, so close I could almost touch him. His blue-green eyes regarded me warmly. “I’m sorry to take you by surprise. Don’t I get a hug?”
Lord, I needed to get a grip. I took a step towards him, and he folded me in. He smelled the same, like sunshine and soap.
It hurt so much to see him again. It was excruciating to be wrapped in his hug.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he said.
And I had absolutely no reply to that. My heart urged me to hold on tightly and never let go. To confess that I thought of him every single day.
But I didn’t do it. Because I was still so angry, too.
Drawing off that anger, I summoned a little willpower, stepping backward, freeing myself. “If I ask how you’ve been, which name should I use? Jonas or John
?”
A look of dismay creased his handsome face, his eyes closing for a moment, before opening again to pin me with a turquoise gaze. “Kira, I’m so sorry about that. That summer I was just trying to get away from it all.”
I swallowed. “Really? But I told you all my secrets. You must have thought that was pretty funny.”
He blinked, his face as stunned as if I’d slapped him. “Jesus, Kira. Never.”
That wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. And it was suddenly very hard to hold his gaze. I’d spent the last few years shaping my idea of him to match the pictures I saw in Us Weekly. The problem was that the guy standing in front of me on the dock did not look like the frivolous celebrity in those articles. This was the same man I’d met all those years ago. His face was open and youthful, his voice rich and mellow. His gaze seemed to touch me everywhere at once, making me feel flushed and confused.
He stepped forward again and wrapped his arms around me. And I let him. I took a deep breath of him, and my heart began to gallop again. When I put my arms around his back, I felt his lips press against my hairline. It was a chaste kiss between old friends.
Or rather, it should have been. But the feel of his lips on my skin sent a charge through my body. Tipping my face to meet his wasn’t even a conscious act. It was more like the inevitable result of a five-year absence and Earth’s gravitational pull.
When I moved my chin, his lips slid softly down my cheekbone. Still, it might have ended there. He might have released me, but he didn’t. “Sweetness,” he whispered.
And then? His kiss slid to the corner of my mouth, pausing there, hovering. Torturing us both.
I couldn’t resist. I leaned forward an immeasurably small distance. At that, he made a low sound in the back of his throat. He melded his mouth onto mine, his hands curving around my lower back. With a sigh, he teased my lips apart until his warm tongue met mine.
The next moments were lost to me. I melted against his body, knowing nothing except the stroke of his tongue against my own and the feel of his breath against my face. His strong arms held me in their grasp. It was the sound of my own gasp that finally brought me back down to earth. And I became aware that someone was standing on the little beach nearby, watching us.
“Oh my God, your…” Horror stopped me from finishing the sentence.
He looked over his shoulder without releasing me from his grasp. “My drummer,” he said quickly. “We’re old friends.”
I pushed on his chest until he took a step backwards. I was hot and confused. I needed oxygen and time to think. “Look… we need to talk.” I couldn’t tell him my secret now. Not with an audience. And not without a little rehearsal. “Tomorrow,” I added.
“Okay,” he said, his voice low and even. “I’d like that.”
“Um, lunch?” I asked, my eyes on my shoes. I couldn’t quite catch my breath. There wasn’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere anymore. There might never be again.
“I could meet you on the porch at the store,” he suggested.
That’s where we’d always sat together. But that place was way too public for the conversation I needed to have. “No… Where are you staying? At the B&B?” The very mention of the place made my cheeks flush.
His eyes flared, too. “No. My whole band is at the Nest Lake Lodge for the weekend. I made them come here with me.”
“Okay.” I swallowed. “Can I find you there at noon?”
“I’ll make us a picnic,” he said, a grin blooming on his face.
God, he was beautiful. A picnic with John. There had been so many days during the past few years when just the promise of spending an hour with him would have seen me through any trial. But our reunion would truly be a trial. For both of us. I needed to keep my head. “That would be fine.”
“Tomorrow, sweetness,” he said.
I stepped past him and forced myself to walk away, my heart racing, my face hot. “I’ll be there.”
As I stepped off the dock, I felt the eyes of the other woman tracking me. I should have given her a wave or a smile, or even introduced myself. But at that moment, I couldn’t manage politeness. I just went back to my car and, with shaking hands, turned the key in the ignition. I drove away without another look toward the beach.
With unseeing eyes, I parked the car in my father’s weedy gravel driveway. Leaving the keys on the seat, I heaved myself out of the car and up the creaky wooden steps of my childhood home. When I opened the door to the screened porch, Vivi and Adam looked up from the rocking chairs.
“Mommy’s home!” my brother said.
“We got cheese,” Vivi said. “And crackers.”
“Thank you, Uncle Adam,” I managed. My brother was my bedrock. Without him, the last few years would have been impossible.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.
I just gave a little shake of my head. “Later.”
“You didn’t beat us here,” he pressed.
“I know. I ran into someone. I’ll get our stuff now.” I ran back outside toward the car, still feeling unsteady. Out of sight of my family again, I parked my backside against the car and bent to brace my shaking hands on my knees.
Breathe, I coached myself. It had been several years since I’d had a panic attack, but one threatened now. I straightened up again, drawing a slow breath. The trick was to lower my heart rate, which would break the cycle.
A rapid heartbeat convinces your brain that something is wrong, a therapist had explained to me years ago. And in turn, your brain tells your heart to get ready to flee. Which elevates your heart rate even more. Fear begets fear, in other words.
At twenty, I’d needed someone to help me learn to control my panic. At the time, the worst mistake I’d ever made was simply to walk through the wrong parking lot at the wrong hour of the night. I’d paid for that mistake.
But now, at twenty-five, I had quite a few more mistakes under my belt.
And now I would pay for those, too.
To calm myself, I counted the pine trees across the road. There were nine of them. Between their straight trunks, flashes of Nest Lake sparkled in the distance.
I’d grown up here in this house, where only glimpses of the water were visible. If my father had purchased a house on the other side of the road, with lake access, his property value would have risen tenfold.
But that’s just how life worked. Sometimes the distance between wealth and scraping by was as thin as a country road.
After a few minutes, I was breathing more easily. I lifted our overnight bags out of the car and pulled them into the house. I would need to put my game face back on so I could make it through the family ritual here in my father’s house. Even though my mind would be a quarter mile away at the general store. Everything had begun there.
The first night he’d come into the store, it had been right before closing time, and I’d been working alone. And since John had worn soft sneakers, and was kind enough to prevent the door from slamming, I hadn’t heard him approach. When he’d greeted me, it had startled me so badly that I’d dropped a full mason jar of pickled onions, breaking it on the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” he’d said before helping me clean up the mess.
I’d been so flustered that I hadn’t gotten a good look at him that first night. I’d sold him his first meat pie and a soda to go with it, my heart pounding with unnecessary fear.
Even if I had gotten a good look at him, I wouldn’t have recognized him. I wasn’t the kind of girl who paid a lot of attention to rock songs on the radio, or the people responsible for them.
But after that disaster, he’d always whistled on his way into the store. Whenever I’d heard the first part of “You Are My Sunshine” drifting down the street, I’d known he was on his way over for supper.
After a week, I’d felt comfortable enough to tell him I appreciated the warning. “You have no idea how much that helps. Last fall I was mugged. And even though it’s been almost a year, every time someone walks up b
ehind me, I jump.”
His turquoise eyes went wide with surprise. “Shit, I’m sorry. You got mugged here, in Nest Lake?”
I laughed. “Can you imagine? No—this was in Boston, in a parking lot at the university.”
John rubbed his whiskers with the knuckles of one hand, his chiseled face still full of concern. “That sucks.”
“It really, really did.” I changed the topic. “I made whoopie pies today. Do you want one for dessert?”
“Hell, yes. Whatever that is. It sounds naughty.”
That made me blush, because my crush on him was already blooming. “You don’t know whoopie pies? The official treat of Maine? They’re everywhere. Mostly, they’re dreadful, but you didn’t hear it from me.”
“You want me to eat something dreadful?” Those bright eyes twinkled.
“I said they were mostly dreadful. Mine are exquisite, naturally. You should know this.” I surprised myself by flirting with him. It had been so long since I’d felt flirty with anyone.
When I handed the bag with his food over the counter, he reached right in and plucked the whoopie pie off the top. “Mmm,” he said after taking a big bite. “Sweetness.”
“It’s not too sweet, though,” I argued. “Most of them are, but mine have dark cocoa and cream cheese in the frosting. For tang.”
He licked his lips. “It’s perfect. You’re the sweetness.” He winked at me as he walked out.
And that naughty wink did funny things to my insides.
After that, he called me “sweetness” from time to time. The man was a charmer. I looked forward to his visits so much that I soon found a way to prolong them. A trip to our dusty attic at home produced an old card table and two chairs. I set these up on the screened porch at the front of the store.
I was too shy to let on that I’d put the table there just for him, but he figured it out right away. From then on, he ate his meals sitting on the porch, instead of carrying his food back to his room at Mrs. Wetzle’s. After I locked up the store at eight, he would often be sitting there, staring out into the darkness and listening to the crickets.
