“Man, the double standards in this family.” Noah stood, shaking his head, and pointed a bottle of beer at his brother. “I guess taking your bike out in the sleet and plowing it into a ditch is the mark of a genius then, huh? And me coming home to cover your ass is just what’s expected?”
“Oh, bite me, Noah.” Tucker leaned on the counter to hold his weight as he lifted his broken leg from the stool and reached for his crutches. He hobbled a few steps, lifting his hand and flipping his brother off.
Noah’s laugh followed Tucker all the way to the door.
“Well, now that we’ve got the place to ourselves,” he said, despite the dozen or so customers eating at the booths and tables, “what can I do for you?”
“Call-in order,” Penelope said. She glanced at the bag she’d set on the seat beside her. Moving it to the counter, she took a deep breath and hoped he didn’t see her hands shaking. “And I brought you something.”
Noah unrolled the paper bag and inhaled. “That smells amazing. What is it?”
“Salted whiskey caramels. Seemed like something you would like.”
“That sounds exactly like something I’d like.” He eyed her over the open bag, eyebrows raised in concern. “Is there anything else in it?”
“You mean, is it charmed? Yes. But it won’t hurt you.”
He tipped the bag again and peered inside. “What will it do?”
Penelope twisted her hands together in her lap. She couldn’t back out now. She squared her shoulders and met his stare. “It’ll tell me a few things I need to know about you. Like whether it’s worth letting you try to change my mind.” Her chest didn’t automatically tighten at the thought. She couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not.
“It’s very worth it. But if eating some magic-laced chocolate can convince you, I’m all for it.” He pulled a tap handle made out of a barrel stave and filled a pint glass for an order one of the waitresses called out as she passed a ticket back to the kitchen. “You know, considering how much effort you’ve put into hating me over the years—”
“I don’t hate you, Noah,” Penelope said.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m surprised you told me the truth about these. You could’ve just let me eat it none the wiser.” He kept his eyes on the beer, though with all of his years as a bartender she figured he could pour a beer with his eyes closed without spilling it.
“That wouldn’t have been fair. Apart from being entirely unethical.”
“So it’s really the ethics part that got to you, huh?” He smiled when he said it and slid the glass to the end of the bar.
She rested her elbows in front of her, letting her fingers play with the strands of hair that had slipped loose from her handkerchief. “It was both. Whatever my feelings are toward you, you deserve to know what I’m doing. And to tell me if you’re not okay with it.”
“Those feelings—whatever they are—are present tense, right?”
“I didn’t say they were good feelings.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t say they were bad either. And if you’re even considering letting me try to change your mind about me, that means you’re at least on the fence. Tipping you onto my side just got a little easier.”
Noah stroked his finger in the air, adding an imaginary tick mark to his column. He winked at her and crossed his arms on the bar. With his long sleeves shoved up to his elbows, the thick muscles in his forearms flexed as he tapped his fingers on his biceps.
“Just eat the damn chocolate already.” Penelope flicked the paper bag with her finger.
Noah’s quiet laugh morphed into a low moan when he bit into a caramel. His tongue darted out to remove a black salt crystal that clung to his top lip. “If you wanted to know if chocolate was a turn-on, I can tell you for a fact that yes, yes it is. Holy shit this is good, Penelope. I don’t care what kind of magic is in it. I would eat these every day regardless of what it makes me tell you.” He popped the other half into his mouth and licked the melted chocolate from his thumb and forefinger.
“Well, it’s not working yet. Wait until it kicks in before you say that.”
“How do you know it’s not working? Does it take time to get into the blood or something? Like a time-released drug?”
She gave him a sheepish smile. “These make you tell the truth.”
“Huh.” Noah scratched his ever-present stubble, letting his eyes close for a few seconds. When he looked at her again, his eyes were bright with amusement. “Well, this could be interesting. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Honestly, I don’t really know what to expect out of this. But the recipe showed up this morning while I was thinking about what to do about you and I figured it was a sign. I mean, what can it hurt, right? We talk, I find out a few things I’ve wanted to know for longer than I should admit, and maybe we can find a way to be friends.”
“You are really not helping your case here. Telling me that you’ve not only been thinking about me but you’ve been doing it for a while now. I might start thinking you like me. But maybe that’s just the chocolate talking.”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Penelope said.
The low murmur from the other patrons buzzed like a current through the air. She focused on the liquor shelves made from rafter beams bolted to the wall behind the bar. She thought she could almost smell the subtle scent of curing tobacco from the barn where the beams had been before. One shelf contained nothing but tequila. Broken, angular shards of mirror created a mosaic pattern on the back wall, reflecting light off the colorful bottles and liquids.
Noah slapped a metal bottle opener against his palm, drawing her attention back to him. “So, uh, are you gonna ask me anything? Or will I just start babbling like a thirteen-year-old girl and never be able to show my face in public again?”
“I don’t want this to be awkward. It’s not an interrogation,” she said.
“I’d probably be better at that.”
“Do you get interrogated a lot?” She shot him a smile to ease the tension that pressed on her chest.
“No, but it’s kinda freaking me out a little that you know where this conversation is headed and I have no clue. I’m normally really good at reading people, but not you. Never you.”
“I can leave if this is too weird.”
“No. I want you to stay.” He reached for her hand but drew back before making contact. Curling his fingers into the wood, he added, “I agreed to this. I’ll tough it out. But just remember that payback’s a bitch.”
Penelope nodded and traced the wood grain with the tip of her finger. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. But everything came back to just one question. “Have you ever been in love?” she asked after a moment.
“Wow, no shallow water with you, huh?”
“What, should I have asked your favorite color?”
“Green, if you must know.”
That was one of the things Ella had wanted to know while Megha was dyeing her hair. Penelope would have to remember to tell her. “Okay. Now will you answer my first question?”
“Just once. Most of my relationships are more lust than love. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some strong mutual liking going on, but not in the way that would lead to it being anything real.”
Is that what she’d been to him? Lust and mutual like?
Penelope avoided his eyes when she asked, “What happened with the one girl you did love?”
“I’m fairly certain my need to do things my way, consequences be damned, is entirely to blame,” Noah said without hesitation. He waited for her to look at him, his whole face tight with an emotion she couldn’t quite place. “If you want to know if I regret how I treated her, yes. Every damn day. She deserved so much better.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him if he was talking about her. If the answer was no, she would never be able to look him in the eye again. “Why haven’t you been back to Malarkey more than a h
andful of times since you left for school?”
“I’m a bartender. Not many options around here to do that as you’re currently sitting in the one and only bar.” He shook his head, as if arguing with himself. He clenched his jaw and swore. Stepping up on something behind the bar, he leaned farther on the counter so their arms almost touched and continued. “Okay, so you said you wanted to do this to learn some new things about me. Here’s one very important thing: When I want something, it’ll drive me insane seeing it every day and knowing I’ve screwed up any chance of ever having it. It’ll eat away at me until all my nerves are raw and I’ll do very stupid things just to numb myself to it, which only pushes the thing I want that much farther away. It’s a vicious, destructive cycle and the only way to stay out of it is to stay away from here.”
“To be clear, that thing you want here is not so much a thing but a person?” Her voice was just above a whisper.
“To be clear,” he said and grinned at her.
She saw the intent in his eyes and froze, unsure if she should let him kiss her or if she should bolt. Then he wrapped his hand under her jaw, with his thumb pressing lightly against her ear, and fit her mouth to his, making the choice for her. His lips were demanding and urgent and desperately soft as he coaxed hers open. The sweetness of the caramel was still on his tongue. Penelope pressed her feet against the bottom rung of the stool to get closer to him. She braced one hand on the bar as the other gripped his shoulder. He slid his free hand over to cover hers, and their fingers twined without conscious thought.
When he released her a moment later—or it could’ve been an hour, she wasn’t sure—she dropped back onto the stool out of breath and fuzzy-headed.
“Does that tell you what you want to know?” he asked. His voice was ragged, his smile smug.
Penelope wasn’t entirely sure which question the kiss answered. All of them maybe. She rubbed her arms to ease the goose bumps rioting on her skin. “I’m beginning to think this was a very bad idea.”
“I tried to warn you. But from where I’m standing, it’s not looking that bad ’cause now at least you know how I feel about you. How I’ve always felt.”
“I seriously doubt you’ve just been sitting around pining for me all these years.” After all, he’d been the one to leave her.
“Not constantly, no. But I thought about you often enough for the feelings to still be here.”
“Noah—”
He waved her off with a quick flick of his wrist. The waitress slid behind the bar, trying to contain a smile as she interrupted them to place Penelope’s to-go bag on the counter. She waited for Penelope to sign the credit card slip despite Noah’s insistence that he would take care of it. She lingered at the end of the bar, still well within earshot, and only went back to the kitchen when Noah shot a sharp whistle at her and jerked his head in that direction.
“Listen, I was prepared to come home, help out for a few weeks, and leave without talking to you at all. Just to prove to myself that I could do it and maybe convince myself to finally forget about you. Obviously the universe had other plans. And since you’re the one who initiated this little experiment today, the least you could do—you know, apart from kissing me back—is to give me a chance to make things up to you. Have dinner with me. Like a real date.”
“Maybe I could bring Ella over to play with River once they’re out on winter break and we can see where it goes from there?” she suggested.
“Not that I mind having Ella around, but I was thinking just the two of us.” He sprayed ginger ale from the dispenser into a to-go cup and handed it to her, completing her order.
No matter what kissing him may have stirred up inside her, stealing even one minute of her remaining time with Ella was a deal breaker. “We’re a package deal, Noah. You don’t get one of us without the other.”
“I know, I know. But this,” he motioned between them, “is nice. One dinner with us and then however many more you want with Ella too.”
Penelope raised an eyebrow at him. Looping her hand through the handles of the food bag, she said, “You’re assuming I want more than one date.” She slipped off the stool but didn’t walk away.
“Exactly. Now can I ask you something?” Noah asked, not giving her a chance to protest his date request.
It also saved her from actually agreeing to go out with him. And at the moment she couldn’t trust herself to make the right decision. Whatever it was. “It’s only fair,” she said.
“Did you love Ella’s dad?”
She’d spent years convincing herself what she’d felt for him had just been a side effect of the hot chocolate and teenage hormones. It hurt less that way. But the truth was there, closer to the surface of her heart than she expected.
“So much,” Penelope said.
And it terrified her to think she still might.
28
Megha stalked into the kitchen of the Chocolate Cottage. She’d replaced her contacts with skinny rectangular glasses that accentuated her sharp cheekbones and wore a baggy hoodie with the words IN CASE OF HAIR EMERGENCY, RAISE HOOD printed across the front. “I’m pretty sure you owe me like twenty bucks or something,” she said.
“I don’t recall making a bet.” Penelope finished counting the bags of marshmallows she’d already boxed up for the festival and marked the number down on the checklist.
“No, you just said you had no intention of seeing him. Which you blew pretty much immediately, might I remind you. So how in the world do you go from that to making out with him in the middle of the lunch rush?”
“We did not make out. It was one kiss, and he kissed me. Mostly to prove a point.”
“I thought we were friends, Pen. Friends don’t let friends find out about supersteamy kisses with superhot guys from Adi freakin’ Della Lana halfway through her dye job. I was so not expecting it that I dropped the brush and left a red streak all down the front of the smock. It looked like I’d stabbed her with my shears. She wasn’t as amused as I was.”
“Shit. Adi knows?”
That’s what she got for letting the chocolates distract her. For letting Noah distract her.
“Apparently her sister works at Rehab and called her almost as soon as it happened. His tongue still might have been down your throat, actually,” Megha said.
“Oh my God, it wasn’t like that.”
“So what was it like?”
Penelope had thought about the kiss in every quiet moment she’d had since it happened. Part of her wished he hadn’t done it. Part of her wished he’d done it again. “Surprising,” she admitted after a moment.
Megha stepped aside to let Sabina enter the room. But she didn’t let Sabina’s presence derail the conversation. “As in he just randomly attacked you with his mouth or what?” She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, as if daring Penelope to cut the conversation short now that her mom had heard what they were talking about.
Catching the smile her mom and friend shared, Penelope sighed. Better Sabina got the story firsthand instead of from one of their gossiping customers. “As in I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. Also, I don’t think he planned on doing it, but I kinda provoked him.”
“How do you provoke a grown man into kissing you?” her mom asked, curiosity giving her voice a melodic lilt.
“Actually, Mama, this might apply to you. Apparently you just have to feed him some truth-telling chocolates and get him to admit he’s had feelings for you for a long time.”
Her mom held her hand over her heart, index finger thumping in time to her heartbeats. “But what if you aren’t ready to hear that kind of truth?”
Penelope hung an arm over her mom’s shoulders and tipped her head so their temples pressed together. “Then you throw yourself into a festival you want nothing to do with so you don’t have to think about it.”
* * *
Haywood Lane had already been closed to traffic for two days. Now thick strands of globe lights zigzagged overhead, strung up between the b
uildings to create a canopy of light for three blocks leading to the park in the center of town where the Festival of Fate would kick off that weekend. The oak trees dotting the park had been wrapped in lights as well, and on the night of the festival, white paper lanterns would hang from their branches. The whole town would shine bright for a few hours as the residents gathered to celebrate their futures. And to try and change them.
Penelope wouldn’t have been out there helping get things ready for the festival if Ella hadn’t begged her to go. But it was hard to be upset about it when her daughter was having so much fun. They were on marshmallow-stick duty, which involved filling gallon-sized metal pails three-quarters of the way up with sand and adding long sticks people would use to roast marshmallows.
A flatbed truck piled high with firewood was already parked at the end of the street. Two more days and it would all be over.
Just as Penelope filled what felt like the millionth bucket, Ella gave a shriek of delight and ran to meet River ten feet away. When they reached each other, they locked hands and started spinning in dizzying circles.
“Those two,” Layne said when she stopped next to Penelope. They watched their girls collapse into a tangle of splayed limbs and laughter. “It’s like they’ve been friends their whole lives.”
They probably would have been if she and Noah had made different choices. If she’d told him she was pregnant. Or if Noah had actually loved her back. But at least Ella would know that kind of friendship before …
She couldn’t finish the thought.
“I’m happy they finally found each other,” she said.
“At least they’re making the most of the time they have. I think Ella has even replaced Noah as River’s favorite person.” She tugged on her ponytail to tighten it, the purple streaks that Ella’s hair now mimicked on full display.
“How does he feel about that?” Penelope asked. She emptied the last of the sand in the current bag into a pail, adding the gritty plastic bag to the pile she’d started stuffing in her messenger bag so they didn’t blow away.
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