Homecoming (Speakeasy)

by Rebecca Norinne

  Time and time again these past few weeks, he’d been the brightest spot of my day, and it was ridiculous that I was avoiding him because I was embarrassed that my mom was trying to push us together like some plot from a Hallmark Channel movie, albeit one with more sexual tension and innuendo. Her scheming didn’t have to negatively impact our burgeoning friendship. Hell, I’d actually love to be able to just sit with him at the end of a long day and laugh about her crazy shenanigans. After all, no one understood better than he did the lengths she’d go to. Why shouldn’t he be my partner in crime? And if along the way, her scheming and plotting actually worked, and Preston and I happened to become more than friends, I wasn’t going to turn my back on a shot at happiness.

  13

  Preston

  When I’d caught Rosalie staring down at me from the attic window a couple of nights before, my initial instinct had been to lift my hand in greeting. But then she’d raised her camera and pointed its lens my way, and I’d realized she hadn’t meant to be seen, so I’d gone back to whittling my wood.

  And no, that wasn’t a euphemism for something else.

  That was approximately seventy-two hours ago, and I hadn’t been able to think about much else in all that time. Rosalie had told me it’d been years since she’d last picked up a camera, so it was big news that she was taking pictures again. My obsessing had nothing to do with the fact that she’d chosen me as her first subject.

  Nothing. At. All.

  Except it totally did.

  Which was less than ideal since I had about a million and one other things I needed to be thinking about right now. Chief among them, the job I’d moved to Colebury for in the first place. Suffice it to say, things were not going well. Just as soon as I’d managed to talk the Lindholms out of using that hideous tile they’d picked out, another set of problems had cropped up. Now, I’d relish the chance to deal with something as mundane as ridiculous tile choices. At least I had some control over that.

  Unfortunately, I’d had to call in a structural engineer to come evaluate a set of beams we’d uncovered that had turned to dust after a powderpost beetle infestation had occurred sometime in the last two hundred years. And if the phone call I’d just received from a land surveyor the township had hired after a property line dispute between the owners and their neighbors was any indication, my week was about to get even worse.

  I’d hoped to have wrapped up the exterior restoration and renovations so my crew could focus their efforts indoors this winter, but we were still weeks away from being able to move inside. With this latest round of setbacks, I wasn’t sure we would make it either, especially if we had to drop everything to shore up the foundation. Assuming, of course, we weren’t shut down indefinitely while the owners battled it out with their neighbors in court.

  Some days it was enough to make me want to sell all of my tools and run off to a tropical island where my most pressing concern was what wave to surf and what to eat for lunch.

  And speaking of lunch … my fucking fridge was empty, too.

  On the bright side, a trip out Montpelier to stock up on groceries would provide a much-needed break from all this worrying.

  At least, that had been the plan.

  But when you were crushing hard on someone, everything you saw made you think of them. Those chips? Rosalie would probably enjoy them. That beer there on the top shelf with the really awesome artwork? She’d get a kick out of it. And since she’d enjoyed the Speakeasy vanilla spiced porter, I added a bottle of maple porter to my cart since it had a similar flavor profile.

  And since she’d been so generous sharing her pork roast with me, I decided it was only fair that I return the favor.

  I only knew how to cook a few things really well, chief among them a flavorful, traditional bolognese sauce served over homemade pasta. It was sure to wow her, I thought, as I pointed myself toward the meat section to grab some ground beef and pancetta as I mentally tallied all the other ingredients I’d need to purchase in order to make up a big old pot of it.

  Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t see the person in front of me until I accidentally rolled over the back of an Ugg-encased heel.

  “Ow!” the woman yelped as she turned to face me with a murderous look on her face.

  “Oh shit!” I rushed around my cart to inspect the damage I’d unwittingly inflicted on Rosalie’s right foot. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

  “No shit.” She scowled up at me as she tried to wipe away a large black smudge where my wheel had mangled the chestnut-colored suede. Despite her best efforts, the mark stayed put.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, eyeing the ruined shoes. “I’ll buy you a new pair.”

  She sighed and straightened back up to her full height, which still left her several inches shorter than me. “No, it’s fine. These were on their last leg anyhow. I found them in the back of my mom’s closet. She got them for me for Christmas when I was seventeen. I hadn’t even realized I’d left them here.”

  I wasn’t even sure I could tell you what I’d gotten from my parents for Christmas when I was seventeen. Probably an envelope filled with cash. For as much as my mom lived to shop, she’d always seemed at a loss when it came to buying gifts for her nerdy son.

  “If you’re sure?” I asked, pushing my cart to the side so as not to obstruct the aisle for other shoppers.

  “Yeah. Don’t even worry about it.”

  We stood staring at one another, awkward in our silence.

  “So …” she said eventually, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “How’ve you been?”

  “Good,” I answered automatically.

  Wasn’t that how this went? How are you? Fine. That’s great. Well, it was good seeing you. Bye.

  Except I didn’t want that for us. Aside from the day we’d met, my conversations with Rosalie had flowed smoothly, and frankly, I’d missed having them.

  “Actually,” I amended, “that’s not true. Work is a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and all I want to do is chuck all my tools in the Winooski so I can go live the life of a beach bum.”

  “Oh no. What’s wrong?”

  “For starters, whoever inspected the property did a shit job, and now we’ve run into some major structural issues that are going to require a specialized crew to come in and fix them. That would be bad enough, but it also turns out that my clients are fighting with their neighbors about a strip of land that may or may not be a right of way and not an actual parcel. The neighbors are threatening to sue them to stop construction entirely.”

  “Oh no!” She gasped. “What are you going to do?”

  “I honestly don’t know yet.” I groaned and ran my hand through my hair. “All I can do is wait until I hear back from the structural engineer and my clients.”

  “That sucks.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “But enough about that. You don’t want to hear about my problems.” I hated to unload on her like this—especially standing in the middle of the produce section—but I couldn’t deny it felt good to get it all off my chest finally.

  As my right-hand man, Mikey was in the loop about what was happening on the project, but I couldn’t always rely on him to be a good sounding board. He was my best friend, and his skills as a finish carpenter were second to none, but his general approach to dealing with issues he didn’t want to was to throw his hands up in the air and say “Fuck it.” When you ran your own business, that wasn’t an option. If problems arose, I had to deal with them immediately. And if they couldn’t be dealt with the way I wanted to, I had to develop alternate plans. I wasn’t there quite yet, but I didn’t think I was far off.

  Rosalie rested her palm on my bicep, her face a mask of concern. “Of course I want to hear your problems. Lord knows you’ve listened to mine often enough. That’s what friends do.” She paused briefly, her voice unsure. “We are friends, right?”

  My gut twisted with an emotion I couldn’t name. I’d clearly done a shit job of making it clear
where I stood. Not that I necessarily knew myself—what with my wanting to get her naked and all—but the fact that she didn’t know how much I valued her friendship (even more than I wanted her body) did not sit well with me. At all.

  “We’re friends. In fact, we are such good friends that you’re going to let me cook dinner for you tonight. Assuming, of course, you don’t already have plans.”

  Rosalie had been home for several weeks, and while I wasn’t always around, I hadn’t seen anyone visit her during that time. Still, I didn’t want to presume. For all I knew, she had a hot date lined up with someone later tonight. It was a Saturday, after all, and we were supposedly in the prime of our lives.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t cook?” She eyed me skeptically.

  “I mostly can’t cook. My two specialties are an amazing grilled cheese sandwich so overflowing with gruyere and cheddar that it should be a crime, and homemade pasta with bolognese sauce. If I finish up here in the next half hour, I can be home with plenty of time to cook and feed you by seven.”

  She eyed the contents of my cart and then looked up at me with suspicion in her lovely green eyes. “What goes in a bolognese?”

  “You think I’m one of those people who call a regular old meat sauce bolognese so I sound fancy, don’t you?”

  “Are you?” She raised her right eyebrow in challenge.

  I chuckled. “The secret ingredient is milk. And a carrot.”

  She grinned then. “I’d love dinner. Come on. Let’s finish shopping so you can get home.”

  We traversed the aisles side by side, loading up our carts with food for the week.

  “Hey,” she said when we reached the freezer where the ice cream was kept. “Remember when I jokingly offered to cook you dinner on the regular because I was bored out of my skull and needed something besides Candy Crush to keep me occupied?”

  “I do.” I nodded, wishing I hadn’t been so quick to turn down her offer. It would have meant spending more time with her.

  “Well, my mom is gone most nights with one of her clubs or whatnot, so I’ve been eating a lot of microwave meals. Since we’re friends and all, what do you say we form a club of our own? A couple of nights a week, one of us will pick a dish while the other has to learn how to cook it? If it’s good, we’ll each have a new meal to add to our repertoire, and if it’s bad, we’ll order pizza. It’s a win-win situation.”

  I smiled down at her, enjoying the idea more than I had any right to. I knew she didn’t intend for this to be anything romantic, but getting to spend time with Rosalie without her mother hovering in the background sounded like an excellent way to pass the time. And it would definitely beat the Hungry Man meals I’d been subsisting on now that Gloria was no longer trying to fatten me up with hearty, home-cooked dinners.

  “That sounds like an excellent plan,” I remarked as I tossed a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Oat of This Swirled ice cream into my cart and headed toward the checkout.

  Out in the parking lot, I made my way toward my truck, Rosalie by my side.

  “I’m just over here,” she said, gesturing toward the furthest cart corral.

  “Me too,” I said, lifting my chin to indicate my Chevy at the end of the row.

  She laughed. “How did I not recognize your truck?”

  I swiveled my head to and fro, taking in the hundreds of vehicles that surrounded us on this busy Saturday afternoon. There were no fewer than twelve black trucks in this section alone. “Gee,” I remarked in a deadpan voice. “I have no idea.”

  She chuckled, stopping at the rear hatch of her Volvo and lifting it to begin loading her groceries into the back of her car. “Point taken.”

  “Here, let me help,” I said, hefting the last of the bags out of her cart and into the back of her vehicle.

  When I was done, she closed the hatch and turned to face me. “See you at home?”

  The question was spoken innocently enough, but it still sparked something proprietary inside of me, a dormant desire I hadn’t known I still possessed. Obviously, Rosalie and I didn’t live together—I wasn’t stupid—but hearing her call the property where we both lived “home” made me picture what it would look if we actually did live together. Strangely, I didn’t hate it.

  I cleared my throat. “See you at home.”

  The next few hours felt like the longest of my life. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed them. I had. Too much. Every moment I spent with Rosalie only intensified my feelings for her.

  Feelings I needed to tamp down.

  As we moved about my kitchen cooking dinner together, we’d fallen into easy—and at times flirty—conversation, until I had to fight the urge to reach out and touch her. And as she’d smiled at me across the table while recounting a funny show she’d recently discovered, I’d wanted nothing more than to tell her how good I felt being with her.

  By the time I’d walked her across the yard and we said our goodbyes, I’d wanted to kiss her so damn badly that my lips had tingled with the urge to feel hers pressed against mine. Tingled. What the actual fuck?

  I’d never experienced anything like it before.

  And there was nothing in the world I could do about it.

  14

  Rosalie

  A few days had passed since Preston had cooked me dinner, and I was still floating on cloud nine. I picked the basket of clean laundry up off the floor and tucked it in against my hip. With a spring in my step, I made my way out of the laundry room, through the kitchen, and into the dining room where the rest of my clothes were folded and neatly stacked on the table waiting to be taken upstairs.

  I’d been in such a ridiculously good mood that not even scrubbing all the toilets in our house could diminish it. Which was saying something, since cleaning the bathroom was my absolute least favorite chore in the world. Getting up close and personal with feces was definitely not a good time. And yet, even as I’d been down on my hands and knees wiping around the base of the toilet with a sponge drenched in Lysol, I’d still been smiling and humming along to Taylor Swift—the Lover era; I’d recently ditched my angsty Reputation-era phase.

  And now my stomach was growling and I’d only just realized that I’d skipped lunch. Coming back down the stairs for probably the twentieth time today, I made my way to the kitchen, opening the freezer door and staring glumly at the pile of Lean Cuisines stacked inside. My mom was out with friends—this time helping a goat farmer she knew make tubs of homemade chevre to sell at the Capital City Farmers Market—so it was just me again, and the thought of eating a frozen patty of Salisbury steak did not sound appetizing in the least.

  I closed the freezer and opened the fridge, taking stock of the ingredients we had on hand that I could turn into a quick meal that wouldn’t taste like regret with each bite I took. Spying a sleeve of red, orange, and yellow peppers, a block of Monterey jack cheese, and an unopened package of tortillas, I decided to try my hand at an enchilada recipe a friend had made during a ski weekend a couple of years back. She’d tossed julienned peppers with rotisserie chicken to bulk up the filling, but since I didn’t have one on hand and it would take too long to defrost the chicken breasts in the freezer, I was going to wing it with a vegetarian version instead. Even if it sucked, it would still be better than that Salisbury steak I had to admit I probably wouldn’t ever get around to actually eating.

  Just as I was setting all the ingredients out on the counter to begin prepping my enchilada filling, a beam of light that was too high and bright to be coming from my mom’s Mini Cooper panned across the kitchen, illuminating the room.

  Preston.

  I’d spent the last several days telling myself the pasta bolognese dinner he’d cooked for me wasn’t the reason for the perpetual smile I now wore. And maybe it wasn’t the dinner itself. Perhaps it was the time we’d spent standing side-by-side at his kitchen counter cutting up carrots and celery for the sauce while we’d shared embarrassing stories from our youth. Or maybe it was the way his forearms had flexed as he rol
led out the pasta by hand that had a shiver running down my spine? Or was it the promise of more evenings cooking together?

  All I knew was when he’d walked me across the yard after a truly excellent meal, I’d wanted him to kiss me more than I’d wanted anything else in a good long while.

  And for a minute there, I thought he might do it, too.

  But then he’d shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his worn jeans and rocked back on his heels, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “You’re trouble,” he’d said, shaking his head with a smile on his face as he took one step back and then another. I’d watched him walk across the yard to his own house, thinking the same thing about him.

  Now, I couldn’t shake the notion that I was ready to experience some good trouble for once in my life.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I quickly pulled one of my mom’s NPR tote bags down off its pegs and dropped all of my ingredients into it, making sure to grab everything I needed to make a homemade enchilada sauce as well out of the spice drawer and pantry. With one final Tasmanian devil-esque pass through the kitchen, I yanked a six-pack out of the fridge and headed out the back door to catch up with my sexy neighbor. He’d just made it to his front door when I called out, “Howdy, neighbor!” to get his attention.

  He turned around, and I watched as his face transformed from mildly curious to downright pleased. The power of his grin stopped me in my tracks. It’d been so long since a man had looked that happy to see me. I stood there for a second, just letting the magic of the moment wash over me, and I felt my cheeks warm as his smile grew brighter.