At her father's memorial service, the short speech she had given had gone surprisingly smoothly, and she thought that it must only be because the other emotions that were flooding her had been so strong and overwhelming that they had drowned out her anxiety. But now, in front of this small group of only five people, her nerves were definitely getting the better of her. She stopped and took a deep breath.
“OK, let me start over,” she said more confidently, “You guys know I'm not the best at talking in front of groups, but here is basically what I want to say. I know that there has been some talk about people being unsure what the future holds for Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures.”
The staff nodded as one. This small affirmation of her audience connecting with her words actually had the opposite of what the expected and desired effect would have been. Rather than calming her and giving her confidence to move forward more effectively with her speech, instead, it caused her to falter yet again.
“Well...um...you know, that's totally not true...” she said.
Bertha looked puzzled. “What's not true?” she asked uncertainly.
Amanda gulped audibly, “Oh, that, you know, anything is wrong, or that we might be closing, or...”
“We might be closing?” one of the Bartollo Boys exclaimed in a shocked tone.
“No, no! We're not! That's my point!” Amanda said, trying to get her train of thought back on track.
“But people are talking about it, is that it?” Bertha tried to clarify, cautiously, “I mean, you wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't a possibility, right?”
“No!” Amanda said, trying with all her might to overcome her nerves and get some conviction into her tone. She was aiming for “emphatically,” but if she was honest, she knew that she probably only achieved “defensively.”
“That's my whole point!” she tried again. This was all spinning out of her control more quickly than she could have imagined.
Justin stepped forward smoothly. “Closing is absolutely not on the table,” he said, with conviction ringing out in his voice that Amanda could only dream about achieving, “No one's talked about it, no one's considered it. The only reason it came up here at this meeting is because we want to assure you that nothing like that is actually going to happen.
“Just this morning, Amanda and I spent over an hour coming up with a detailed schedule of work and tasks that need to be completed before the winter opening. As far as we're concerned, Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures is opening for the winter season right on schedule. That's where we're headed, that's where our focus is, and that's where we want everyone's focus to be.”
He turned and gave Amanda a small smile, “Convoluted attempts aside, that's what we're trying to get across at this meeting.”
Amanda blushed, laughed, and gave him a swat on the back of the head. Just like that, the tension in the room was broken. The five employees laughed as well, and suddenly, like magic, the entire room was on the same team.
Justin continued, “We are planning on opening on time this winter, and we fully expect this opening to be the first of many winter openings to come. But in order to achieve that, we need your help.”
Amanda felt the atmosphere in the room changing again. The employees' interest was piqued, and the air was tinged with something resembling excitement. Amanda realized that it was the electricity that came with working together toward a common goal. The seven of them were coming together as a team.
It had been exactly what she had hoped to achieve when she had walked into the room and began to speak, but had been unable to get there. In fact, her fumblings had actually had the opposite effect.
When Justin stepped forward and began speaking, however, he was able to communicate exactly what she had intended to get across. She realized with some reluctance that it was hard to deny the fact that they made a damn good team.
Justin continued his inspirational talk, pointing out how this was all of their opportunity to honor Parker's memory by approaching the work needing to be done the way that he would have wanted it done, and the way that he himself would have done it – with gusto.
By the end of Justin's speech, each of the workers was ready, if not eager, to accept their assignments and rush off to get started on them. Amanda opened up her day planner and distributed the task lists that she had printed out in the office for each of the staffers, including a list for herself and one for Justin.
Amanda turned to Justin and said, “That was amazing. Seriously. Credit where credit is due. I was falling flat on my face, and you completely and totally turned it around.”
“Well, we make a great team,” Justin said, echoing her earlier thoughts, the ones she hadn't wanted to dwell on, hadn't wanted to consider the truth of.
“Yes,” she admitted with a small smile, “We really do.”
--- ~ ---
A few hours later, as Amanda was driving out to a far edge of the property where Justin was making his way along the fence line and repairing spots where weather or animals had made their mark, she reflected on how the morning had gone. It had really felt like old times in a lot of ways. They had their old rhythm back, their old unspoken communication, moving completely in sync, completely simpatico, each one picking up where the other fell short.
Their individual strengths and weaknesses fit together seamlessly, which was one of the things that Amanda had always taken as evidence of their perfect fit with each other.
Amanda sighed. It would be so easy – SO easy – for her feelings for him to start resurfacing in a major way, if she allowed that to happen. For her to lull herself into believing that she could depend on his steady presence. How she wished that she could just relax and allow that to happen.
But it was so dangerous.
Still, she also needed to take into account the fact that keeping him at such a strict arm's length, she might actually be passing up something that could be, as Karina had pointed out, the greatest thing that had ever happened to her – the direction, in fact, that her life was actually meant to go in.
She wished that she had a sign, any kind of sign that would tell her what the right thing to do was where Justin was concerned. Something that would let her know if his sojourn here was destined to be temporary, or if fate had decided that this was truly the place where he belonged.
Her truck bumped and bounced down the rutted dirt path to the edge of the property, and she reached out a hand to steady the Thermos of cold lemonade she was bringing to Justin. She determined that, as much as she was type of person who liked a quiet, predictable life – one that she could wrap her head around easily – she was going to have to resign herself to the fact that she needed to remain open to whatever fate was going to bring her in this instance, not over-analyze or bend everything that was going to happen to her will.
After all, that was how she had messed things up with Justin before, by trying to make things happen on her time table. That action on her part, that rushing of things between them, had been the impetus for their ten-year-long separation, a separation which had almost killed her.
In this case, she knew she needed to learn from that mistake, to sit back and let whatever was going to happen, happen.
Still, she thought, it would be great to have some kind of sign.
As Amanda's truck rounded the final bend and Justin came into sight, she got what she thought might be the sign she was looking for. There he was, off in the distance, his shirt off, prominently displaying the magnificent musculature of his chest, glistening with sweat.
His shoulders rippled with exertion as he swung his hammer into the fence post that he was working on, securing the wiring that he was attaching to that post.
Her breath caught in her throat looking at the figure he cut, which was so familiar, in both his silhouette and the way that he moved. She flashed back to the hundreds of times that she had brought him lemonade in the past, while he had been performing these exact same types of maintenance activities around the prope
rty, and suddenly, it just felt like home. It felt like family. It felt absolutely 100% right.
Further cementing her belief in this realization was, at Justin's feet, the other portion of the tableau which had always been present in the past when she had performed this lemonade-bringing ritual. Yes, there was Teddy, who had clearly been following Justin around all morning just like he used to do. He was curled up and lying contentedly at Justin's feet while he worked. It really was just like old times.
Amanda took a deep breath as she slowly approached Justin in the truck. Even though her perspective had shifted somewhat, it would be dangerous to let that through too transparently in her manner. In other words, she needed to play it cool. Not her strongest trick.
She parked the truck and climbed down, holding the frosty thermos in her hand as she leaped to the ground. Justin looked over and greeted her with a huge grin, pulling a bandana from his back pocket and wiping the sweat from his face.
“Wow, aren't you a sight for sore eyes!” he called out happily as she crossed the remaining space between them.
“I know, I brought you lemonade,” she replied cheerfully, holding up the Thermos.
Justin grinned playfully and looked her up and down, “Oh, that's not what I meant,” he teased, and Teddy thumped his tail appreciatively, as if in support of Justin's playful flirting.
Amanda pulled Teddy's head towards her and scratched his ears affectionately as she handed Justin his Thermos of lemonade. “So, I see your shadow hasn't forgotten the old routine over the past ten years,” she said companionably.
“Oh, he's been a great help. Teddy's my right hand man. Isn't that right, mister?” he asked the dog, putting out his palm face up. Teddy obediently swiped Justin's palm with his paw, the doggie equivalent of slapping Justin five.
“That's right, my little buddy. That's my boy,” Justin cooed, and Teddy's tail cut a fast swath back and forth in the air.
The scene felt so normal, and – because of that very normalcy – so unbearably poignant that Amanda was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion and couldn't stay there one moment longer.
Trying to cover her intense feelings, she turned quickly and started back towards the truck. “Well, gotta get back to work,” she said, trying to keep her tone as even as possible through the sudden rush of feelings choking her vocal chords.
“Amanda,” Justin said, surprised, “why don't you stay and hang out for a few minutes? At least wait for me to finish the lemonade, you can take the Thermos back with you.”
“Keep it!” she said lightly, reaching up a hand to wave her fingers behind her in a friendly gesture, but without turning around. She didn't want Justin to see the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes. She didn't want him to see how affected she was by the realization that this precious everyday domestic scene represented what could have been a daily occurrence in their lives, had he stayed and had they ended up together.
This could have been their life, a life that she wanted so desperately that sometimes it paralyzed her. This small exchange represented to her what could have been, and, even more torturously, what could possibly be. She wanted it so badly, and she had absolutely no control over whether or not it was actually going to come to pass.
God, how was she going to do this? She didn't know if she could take it.
Chapter 13
As Amanda got dressed in her room that evening, getting ready to go out to dinner with Karina, Lauren, and Sam, she struggled to concentrate on the clothes that she was pulling on her body while the very distracting sound of the shower running across the hall did it's best to intrude on her thoughts.
Normally the simple sound of a shower running wouldn't be incredibly distracting – it was, after all, almost like white noise – but in this case, the distracting part was the occupant of said shower. Justin. It was Justin in the shower.
As soon as Justin and Amanda had walked into the house that evening, after a long day of working at Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures, Amanda's three friends had been sitting on the couch waiting for them.
“It's about time you guys got home!” Karina exploded in a cheerful huff, “We've been waiting forever!”
“About twenty minutes,” Lauren amended.
“Whatever,” Karina said with a wave of her hand, “We're bored. We've been sitting around this house all day. We want to go out to dinner. You guys go get ready.”
Amanda readily agreed, but Justin declined. He said, “Thanks for the invite, but I already have plans. I'm getting together with some of the guys from the team. In fact,” he continued, glancing at his watch, “I should probably get a move on.”
With that, he had bounded up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Amanda had heard the bathroom door slam and the shower turn on. She had walked up the stairs to her bedroom, taking the steps at a more sedate pace, and started to get dressed for dinner.
However, she could not seem to focus on the task for more than about two seconds straight. Mental images of Justin standing in the shower, naked, water streaming over his body, soaping himself, leaning his head back into the pulsing stream...she sighed. She couldn't take it. She felt as if her every nerve ending were on fire. Every tiny noise anywhere in the house made her jump.
This, of course, had been the same routine that she had gone through as a teenager every time Justin had been in the shower. Hiding in her room, listening to the water as it pummeled the stall floor, picturing what he must be doing in there during any given moment, and what he must look like doing it. Her body becoming flush from the heat that her thoughts generated.
But that had been when she was a hormone-riddled teen. She was a grown woman now. Apparently the hormone-riddled part hadn't changed much, though. She couldn't believe she was behaving this way.
She heard the shower turn off just as she finished getting dressed, and fanned her flushed face. It's too bad I don't have a sink in my room, she thought to herself wryly, I could definitely use a couple splashes of cold water right about now.
Amanda straightened her clothing and opened her bedroom door intending to head downstairs and meet the girls, and at that exact same instant, Justin exited the bathroom, chest shining with steam and a towel wrapped around his waist. Too bad about the towel, she thought ruefully before she was able to catch herself and get her naughty thoughts in check.
Justin winked and joked, “Enjoying the show?”
Amanda drew back her shoulders in a way that she hoped approached dignified. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she said loftily.
Justin stepped closer to her until less than an inch separated their bodies. He reached out and gently drew her hand to the edge of his towel, at the juncture where it folded into itself at his waist.
“I think you do know what I'm talking about,” he said in a low, husky tone, “I think you were timing your exit from the bedroom to coincide with my exit from the bathroom. I think you wanted to catch a glimpse of me in just my towel, and maybe try to de-towel-ify me, like you were going to let me do to you this morning.”
“I wasn't...” she began to protest, but she was betrayed by her voice, which had taken on a hoarse quality that belied her true thoughts.
“You weren't what?” he leaned forward and whispered seductively, “Going to let me take your towel off? Or trying to catch a glimpse of me now?”
“Either,” she said, trying to be emphatic, but her voice was weak and unconvincing.
“Amanda...” Justin said, his low voice conveying raw sensual intensity. Amanda tilted her head up so that she was looking directly into his eyes. He lowered his head until his lips were just barely brushing her ear, and then he whispered huskily, “I...don't...believe...you.”
Amanda's breath caught in her throat and she yanked her hand away. She turned and fled back into her room, flustered, slamming the door behind her.
She pressed her back up against the closed door, breathing heavily, trying to collect her thoughts and drag her consciousness back
down to earth.
In the hallway, Karina stepped around the corner from where she had been standing at the top of the stairs, listening to the entire conversation. “One point, Justin!” she said, high-fiving him.
She walked over to Amanda's door and knocked solidly, calling, with a teasing lilt to her voice, “Amanda! Are you almost ready? We're waiting!”
“One minute!” Amanda replied
“Take all the time you need,” Karina laughed, flashing a mischievous grin at Justin, and heading back down the stairs.
Chapter 14
Karina, Lauren, Sam, and Amanda settled happily into the last open table at Sue Ann's cafe, surveying the rest of the bustling dining room with interest. Sue Ann's looked just as it had for the past 30 years, or maybe even more. Fifteen tables sat at comfortable angles around the room, covered in eclectically mismatched tablecloths.
Shelves lined the back wall, displaying local crafts and personal mementos of Sue Ann's, and photos dotted the rest of the walls, depicting local happenings of note, and residents who were special to Sue Ann or Hope Falls. Amanda spotted a candid pic of herself with both of her parents, when she was about six years old. A few feet to the left of that shot, she saw a picture of a much younger Karina and Renata.
Much like so many places in Hope Falls, Sue Ann's Cafe radiated a strong, cozy vibe of hominess. Tonight every single one of the fifteen tables was filled with boisterous parties of happy, chattering people, adding even further to the inviting atmosphere.
“Wow,” Karina observed, “This must be the closest thing to nightlife that Hope Falls has to offer! It's a regular party in here!”
Lauren smiled. “Honestly, it just feels good to be back in Sue Ann's. It really feels like home. In a way, I just now fully felt like I was truly back in Hope Falls, and truly home.”
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