Like my thoughts called a ghost from its grave, the bell over the store door jingled, and the man himself walked in.
Lucas looked the same as he ever did. A little more filled out, sure. Maybe a little softer, with a slight belly that pressed at the bottom of his t-shirt. But he still had the same smattering of brown stubble over his rounded jaw. Still the same old Mariners cap perched on the crown of his head. Still the same big shoulders that would shelter me from a world that was less than kind.
When he caught sight of me, he stopped in front of the beer case, jaw dropped.
“Holy…Maggie, is that you?”
I smiled shyly and gave an awkward wave. “Hey, Luke. Yeah, I’m home for a little while.”
“Dang…wow.” His eyes roved over me openly, like he was checking for cracks. He pushed off his cap, revealing a severely receding hairline, then quickly put it back on. “You look good. I, um, like your hair like that.”
I fingered the half-dried waves again. I didn’t know why, but it made me feel weird to hear him say that. Lucas’s sisters both had pin-straight hair, and they were always flat-ironing mine when I would come over. Back then, Lucas would tell me I looked beautiful no matter what. Of course, that was usually when I was sitting on top of him in the bed of his pickup. It’s hard to take compliments seriously when the guy is trying to sneak a hand down your jeans.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s temporary. How, um, how are you?”
“Good. Good.” He reached into the case and pulled out a six-pack of Bud. “Just, you know, getting ready to take over the inn, doing some contracting on the side. Dad’s retiring next year, so he and Mom are stepping back.”
I nodded. “That’s great.” It was pretty much what I would have expected. Don and Linda owned the Forster Inn, the single lodging accommodation on Newman Lake—a big, five-bedroom house that had been converted to a bed and breakfast years ago, plus a camping “resort” that basically just allowed people to park their campers or pitch a tent on their five acres of lakeside property at the north end.
Lucas removed his cap again to rub his forehead, revealing just how far back that hairline went now. It wasn’t unexpected—his dad was totally bald, and Lucas was already losing hair when we were in high school.
“You thinking of doing it?” He pointed at the flyer in my hand. “Kick everyone’s ass again, like the old days?”
I looked down at the paper. Compete in the first annual Newman Lake Triathlon this Fourth of July! It was only about a month away.
Once upon a time, I had been a decent athlete. Good enough to get myself a few scholarship offers to state schools, all of which I had turned down when I’d gained acceptance at NYU. “Like a workhorse,” my coaches had said. It wasn’t until I left Spokane that the undertones of that particular term, directed at someone who looked like me, would really sink in.
I shrugged. “I doubt it. I’m not much of a swimmer anymore. And I haven’t been on a bike in years. I’d probably fall over during the transitions.”
Lucas looked me over frankly. “You look pretty fit to me.”
Cathy hummed, barely masking her grin at the comment. She was leaned over the counter, chin propped on her hands while she watched us like her favorite soap opera.
I blushed. “Um, thanks.”
“I just, uh, I just mean that you used to like it, didn’t you? Racing?”
His fumbling once again returned me to those heady days in the back of his truck. Lucas, always caring and tender with me, but always so unsure. Though we had been together for close to two years, and were one of those couples people assumed would “end up together,” whatever that meant, there had always been that hint of uncertainty when he approached my character. Every statement ended with a question. I had been left to provide the answers.
Still looking at the flyer, I nodded. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I did.”
It was the truth. If music had been one constant in my life, sports had been the other. I had given up the latter when I moved to New York to pursue the former. But now that part of my life was over. Maybe it was time to return to rediscover something else that made me tick.
I looked up at Lucas. “All right, sure. Count me in.”
Lucas grinned. “Awesome. Just put your name over there on the sign-up, and I’ll be in touch.”
“Already on it!” Cathy called out from the register, scribbling my name and Mama’s number in the appropriate columns.
I turned back to Lucas with a sheepish smile. “Sounds good.”
“So, your mom, how’s she doing? We heard about Alan leaving and everything…”
Inwardly, I grimaced. The gossip of this place was something else I never missed. Didn’t matter how hard you tried—everyone always knew your business. While Mama has yet to reveal the whole story, I could guess what probably happened. Clothes tossed out the window. Shouts that echoed over the water. Shit-talking on a cocktail cruise. She and the Forsters didn’t exactly run in the same circles, but they still attended the same church. And it was a small town. A very, very small town.
“She’s all right,” I said. “We’re trying to get the property cleaned up so she can move forward with the B and B licensing. There’s a lot to do, though. The work that Alan did was pretty shoddy to begin with, and he walked off with a lot of their savings.”
Lucas frowned sympathetically, but he didn’t seem surprised. “Sorry to hear that. I’ll come by and see if there is anything I can help with.”
“No, that’s okay,” I replied quickly. “You don’t have to do that. Especially since we’ll be your competitor and everything.”
In response, all I got was a lopsided smile that told me neither he nor anyone else on the lake really believed that Ellie Sharp would be able to run a bed and breakfast. And really, they were probably right. But it didn’t make me any less irritated.
“I’ll stop by,” Lucas said again, though this time his smile was warmer.
I blinked, but saw no sign of ulterior motive. It was just Lucas, as kind and straightforward as always. Maybe I really had been in New York for too long.
Slowly, I smiled back. “Okay, then. I’ll, um, tell Mama you’re coming.”
Lucas tipped his hat at me, then paid for his beer and waved to Cathy on his way out. Cathy and I both watched until the bell over the door rang after him.
I turned to Cathy, who was examining me with far too much enthusiasm. I sighed. “How much do I owe you, Cath?”
She pushed off the counter, opened a small laminated binder, and ran a finger down the price list on the first page. “Six fifty minus four for the eggs—that’s your cut—is two fifty.” She pulled out a calculator to finish the math. “With tax, that’s two seventy-two for the sugar and soda.”
I dug out three dollars from my wallet and set them on the counter. “Keep the change.”
3
“It all needs a lot of work, Mama. I don’t know how else to say it.”
I plopped into one of the chairs on the front lawn and handed Mama a bottle of water, hoping to temper the rum and Coke she was already nursing after work today. I took a long drink from my own bottle and used the bottom of my stained t-shirt to wipe sweat off my brow. Before sweeping and collecting dried pine needles around the cottages, I finished reviewing the list of Mama’s maintenance requests and had made a list of my own. If she was serious about turning this place into a B&B, there was so, so much to be done. But for some reason, the looks on Cathy’s and Lucas’s faces just made me that much more determined to help her do it.
The water bottle toppled over on the grass while Mama took a long sip of her drink. She grimaced and shook her head, her bangs bouncing slightly. “Don’t sugarcoat it, Maggie Mae. Lay it on me now.”
I sighed. Over the last few days, I’d been combing through all of the requirements needed to get this business off the ground, and Lucas had come by earlier to walk around the property with me, doing an informal inspection. Mama’s pet project had morphed into
my crusade.
“You and Alan did some nice cosmetic stuff on the property with the paint and the landscaping. But the two outer cottages need new plumbing since last winter’s freeze, and they both look like they have some pretty bad flood damage from the spring flooding that will probably require us to replace the drywall completely. All three houses need new roofs, but maybe we can get away with some patching. I don’t know. On top of that, if you want to get licensed, there are a bunch of things that have to be done to the stairs, to the electric and heating systems, all in order to get the place up to code.”
I looked to Mama, who sipped nervously on her cocktail. I knew what she was thinking. Repairs meant money, and money was what neither of us had at the moment.
“This is beyond me, Mama,” I admitted. “I can paint and clean. Some minor landscaping, help with the livestock. But these are major infrastructural problems. You need someone who can help you with this stuff now, even if we don’t try for the B&B thing.”
“And with what money am I supposed to do that, Margaret?” she bit out. She stared angrily out at the lake, refusing to meet my imploring gaze.
“Mom,” I said gently. “We’ll figure it out.”
I didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t move, likely hearing the uncertainty in my voice. I reached out and touched her arm gently, causing her to look down at my fingers on her freckled forearm. When she finally looked back up, her eyes shone angrily with a fine gloss of tears. Tears and drink. Always drink.
I removed my hand.
“That goddamn bastard,” she muttered fiercely. “Left me in this mess. We sunk everything into this place, Maggie. Everything. I’ve got nothing left. Do you understand that?”
I didn’t have to answer. I’d seen the state of her finances. She had liquidated her entire 401k in order to finance the remodel on the property, all wasted through Alan’s bad investment schemes and debt maneuvering. Just before he left, Mama filed bankruptcy. This property was all she had left, and only because it was her home.
She looked back at the lake, taking deep breaths. She slid the sunglasses resting on her head down over her eyes, masking her emotions while she drained the rest of her glass. I stood up, sensing her need to be alone. You couldn’t talk to her when she was like this, though I’d almost certainly be picking her up off the couch in another few hours.
“I’m going to go for a run,” I said. “I’ll take a quick look in the storage shack to see if there is anything worth selling on my way up to the road.” It was a feeble attempt to make things right, but I already knew I’d be calling Lucas tomorrow. So much for independence.
“There’s not,” Mama snapped. “But you take your time. Take the whole evening if you need. Honestly, Maggie, I just want to be alone without you bothering me for once.”
I tried not to let her words hurt, though the sharpness in her voice reminded me of why I left in the first place. And just how much worse it could get.
“I’ll look anyway,” I said quietly. Then I patted her on the shoulder and left.
It turned out that Mama was right—all that was left in storage were boxes of yard sale knickknacks, my childhood paraphernalia, and a few pieces of miscellaneous furniture and other odds and ends. Certainly nothing of monetary value.
But if I was being honest, that wasn’t what I was looking for anyway. I found those things right away: a bag of the gear I once used to swim laps across the lake in the early morning, and my old bike, resting in the back next to a pump. Nothing was too out of shape. The swimmer’s buoys just needed to be pumped up, and the bike, though definitely in need of a tune-up, still seemed rideable. Thinking vaguely of the triathlon flyer, I decided a ride sounded better than a run. I used to cycle the hilly twenty-eight miles around the lake on a regular basis. If I could still do it now, maybe doing a triathlon wasn’t so far-fetched. And I couldn’t ask for a better distraction.
After pumping up the tires, I wheeled the bike up to the road. Some cloud cover had finally settled across the skies after almost a week of sweat-inducing sunshine. I turned left down the backside of the hill, basking in the peace of the lake and a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in years.
Come back soon, Flower.
It was what he always said anytime I left him. For a walk. A run. A gig. A job. In the time we lived together, I had stopped running or doing anything outside completely, locked instead in his lavish apartment. I was lucky if I found an hour a week to myself, let alone an afternoon to do what I wanted. He so intensely resented anything outside of our life together that gradually, I gave up almost everything that mattered to me to make him happy. Everything except music, and for that most of all, he had punished me. A slap here. A shout there. And eventually, so much worse. Still I had taken it, having been convinced for most of my life that I was never enough.
I coasted down the hill, feeling that knot in my stomach release just a bit more, continuing even when I started to pedal uphill and felt a long unfamiliar burn in my thighs. Go! I thought fiercely. This was my time. I didn’t want to waste it.
For most of the ride, I did all right. I had to stop around mile eight to walk the bike up one nasty hill, but from there, I rode another ten, huffing and puffing up the smaller hills in order to fly down again, the comforting smell of dry pine needles and briny lake water filling my nose as I went.
Unfortunately, it was in the middle of one long coast with my eyes partially shut that I missed a massive pothole. It pitched me off my bike and down another steep hillside. I rolled about twenty feet through the soft, needle-covered forest floor until I hit the base of a large pine tree with a thump that made me see stars.
I lay there for a second and focused on breathing in and out with the wind. Could I move my fingers and toes? The answer was yes—okay, I wasn’t dead or paralyzed. I sucked in another large breath and sat up slowly, feeling the side of my head that had smacked the dirt and gravel. There was only a slight scrape, although I’d definitely have a bump there later. I didn’t think I had a concussion. And shockingly, I didn’t appear to have any other major scrapes and bruises—just an unholy amount of pine needles and dirt clinging to my bike shorts and shirt.
I looked up the hill to where my bike lay innocuously on its side.
“You little shit,” I denounced it.
There was nothing to do but get up and ride home. All nine-plus miles there. But when I tried to push myself up, a shooting pain lanced through my right ankle, and immediately, I yowled and fell right back on my ass, sliding a few more feet down the hill.
“Fuck!” I cried, clasping the offended body part. “Shit! You fucker!” I yelled at the bike, now more than a little annoyed with it.
Slowly, I managed to pull myself up onto one leg next to a tree. I looked down the hill, hoping to find a house or a cabin or someplace to find help. I didn’t know many people on this side of the lake, although there had been rumors of a clan of skinheads since I was a kid (not that I’ve ever seen any). Even though neighboring Idaho supposedly had a fairly large white power community, I’d always thought there were more likely meth labs than Neo-Nazis. Still, considering my skin was a few shades darker than most folks around here, and I had the notoriety of being Ellie Sharp’s bastard kid, I wasn’t interested in taking my chances.
“Great,” I muttered. “Now I’m going to be whacked by Walter White.”
“There are worse ways to go.”
At the sudden deep, male voice behind me, I screamed and jumped onto my bad leg, falling again and rolling another three feet down the hill. I scrambled back up, ignoring the pinches around my ankle and calf, then grabbed another tree trunk, looked up, and froze. There he was: a real, live yeti.
Well, not quite. Upon closer inspection, it was a man, but only just. He was tall—at least six feet, more likely six-two or six-three. Dressed in grungy cargo pants and a t-shirt that looked like it had more holes than fabric, his tan, sinewy limbs filled out hole-ridden cotton better than it deserved, revealing mus
cles that looked more like the product of natural hard work than hours spent in a gym.
His hair was a wild riot of dark blond that, when combined with a severely unkempt beard that extended well past his collar, made him strongly resemble a lion. And yet, even in the midst of this wild man's ferocious appearance, a pair of equally wild green eyes looked just the slightest bit familiar. Did I know him from somewhere? Maybe an old high school classmate, or someone who used to hang around Lucas’s crowd from before. I squinted, trying to place him.
His mouth, wide and full, twitched. He tilted his head, and something in me clicked, like a lock that had just been picked.
Gorgeous.
The word echoed through my head before I could even think consciously.
Wait, what?
The man shuffled down the hill, then reached out a hand. Slowly, I took it, though I gasped at the warmth of his grip, apparent even in the early evening sunshine. His hand was broad, practically a paw, and slightly calloused across his palm and fingertips. This was someone who spent his days using his body, not sitting indoors.
He jerked at the contact too, like he’d been shocked. His squeeze tightened, and I allowed him to guide me toward the road.
“I—uh—thanks,” I stuttered, hopping toward him on one foot and nearly losing my balance again.
He didn’t answer, just cast a look over at my hobbling form, pulled my hand around his neck, and slung an arm around my waist before lifting me completely off the ground, effectively carrying me the rest of the way up the hill. I might have protested more if I hadn’t been one hundred percent entranced by the solid wall of man pressed against me, feeling intoxicatingly…good. Because God, did he smell good.
Like rain. That’s what it was. Soap, of course, and a bit of sweat—he had clearly been in the middle of some kind of workout when he’d seen me fall down the hill. But through all of that was a fresh, vibrant scent, the kind I used to crave when I was stuck in the city for weeks at a time. The kind that would make me run up to the roof of my building when summer thunderstorms hit Manhattan, or make me stop on the side of the road when I’d cross the unlikely bay or river driving between gigs. He smelled like water. Briny. A little sweet. Unbelievably fresh and potent.
Vote Then Read: Volume I Page 174