"Hey neighbor," a male voice called, making me let out a small shriek as I whipped around, hands already balled into fists, big city distrust rearing its ugly head. "Didn't mean to scare you, sweetheart," Brant added, giving me a warm, lopsided smile that was entirely too boyishly charming on his very masculine face.
"Jesus," I said, hand going instinctively to my heart that was slamming hard enough that I could hear it in my ears. I noticed almost immediately that it wasn't the wisest of things to do as it brought perfect attention to my bright yellow sports top that was, well, thin. And by bringing attention to the sports top, I knew there was no way he missed how the chilly morning air had my nipples slightly hardened and pushing out of the material. But his eyes only slipped there for a second. Really, it was actually a respectable gaze, not ogling. "What are you doing here?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest a little self-consciously.
"I live here," he said simply, shrugging.
And it was right about then that I realized he was dressed like me. Well, not like me, but he was dressed to workout too in a pair of black basketball shorts and sneakers. He had on a zip-up hoodie I had a sneaking suspicion he was going to pull off before he did any of the actual working out.
"Wait... what? You live here?" I asked, looking back at my mother's place that I knew was only a two bedroom. So unless he was sleeping in... oh, God.
"Yeah," he said, waving a hand behind him where I knew the house curved and then had another entrance.
The rush of relief I felt was both weird and unexpected. "Oh, right. My mom didn't mention that."
In fact, it was something she had expertly sidestepped when I brought up not running into her crotchety old neighbor yet.
What was she up to?
"That's how Alice and I devised the plan for the shop. I was just coming through town, stopped in her place, liked it, decided I would stick around. I asked her if there were any places in town available and she told me here. We were sitting right on this porch when I laid the plan out to her. Was more fucking nervous than before I gave my goddamn valedictorian speech."
"Where are you from?" I heard myself blurt out.
"The City. Like you," he said, shrugging. "Wasn't for me. Are you running?" he asked, gesturing out toward the street.
"Oh, yeah. I, um, need to work off that frappe and the sweets my mom gave to me. Nice seeing you. I'll, ah, catch you later."
With that, before I could have any more unwelcome thoughts about what he might look like under that hoodie, I waved and took off.
I was almost to the corner of the street that led onto the main drag when he fell in beside me.
"What are you doing?"
"Running," he offered as I tried to talk myself into keeping my eyes forward.
But I couldn't.
And I was right; he had discarded the hoodie.
Also, whatever I may or may not have imagined was under it was nothing like the reality.
See, after five years with the same man, it was almost easy to forget that they came in all different shapes and sizes. Richy had always been fit, but mostly because he was thin. As the old saying went- 'abs don't count if you're skinny'. That was Richy. He looked great in trendy things like skinny jeans and fitted button-ups with blazers, but naked he was about average and a bit skinny.
Brantley was not skinny. And the six-pack he had, it was from obvious hard work. They weren't just a hint of muscle under the skin either. They stuck out and demanded attention. They asked you to run your fingers into the ridges between them, to trace their edges. My eyes followed to the lowest set, seeing how almost indecently low his shorts had fallen from the jog- not only revealing a happy trail that disappeared inside the waistband, but an Adonis belt like I had only ever seen in pictures of fitness models.
Bodies like that weren't supposed to exist in a town so small that there wasn't even a gym to workout in.
But there he was anyway.
"Right," I said, finding my brain again. "But why are you running with me?"
"Little cocky there, sweetheart?" he asked, smile teasing. "As much as it's nice to watch your ass while I get my workout in, I'm not following you. There's only one decent running path in town. And you're on it."
Right.
Duh.
That made sense.
It was the only path I ever ran all through my adolescence. It made sense that he ran it too. The town was quiet and even more idyllic in the early morning before everyone else woke up, before all the stores opened, before real life set in.
"Oh, alright," I said, shaking my head.
With that, feeling a bit fuzzy in the brain for reasons I was choosing not to analyze, I simply turned forward again and kept running.
Within a couple feet, he fell in beside me. Which, well, I preferred since he already admitted to watching my ass and I wasn't altogether too comfortable with the idea. Or maybe I was too comfortable with the idea. One or the other.
"Got any plans for your day?" he asked, not the least bit winded.
Meanwhile, no matter how many years I had been doing daily runs, I had to focus hard on my breathing. "Probably hanging out with my mom at the shop, seeing if she needs any help."
"Not going to lay in bed watching romcoms, eating chocolate, and wallowing?"
"I'm not exactly the wallowing kind," I said, knowing it was true. I had always been more action-oriented. When something didn't go to plan, I let myself have a day then I got my ass up and I made different plans, tried different routes to get where I wanted to be. Maybe a part of that came from having such an upbeat and supportive mother. She never really had expectations for me so I became a bit harder on myself to make up for it.
And, right then, I was glad for it.
I didn't want to wallow. I didn't want to sit and mourn lost love. Because, quite frankly, it hadn't been the love I thought it was. If something as simple as money and his parents' opinions could sway his feelings for me, it was barely love at all.
I could, possibly, mourn the loss of the life I had built on the idea of our love. But bemoaning that wouldn't change anything. I needed to take control and figure things out.
I certainly didn't need to eat my feelings.
As a pudgy kid and middle-schooler thanks to my mother's endless supply of junk food, I swore to myself when I finally dropped the weight that I wouldn't turn to food out of boredom or upset again.
As a whole, I stuck to that. Candy bar during the red death excluded.
"My ass won't keep looking this way if I start laying in bed and wallowing," I said, brushing it off.
"Well," he said, giving me a devilish smirk, "we wouldn't want that, now would we?"
We fell into companionable silence for a while before I found myself blurting out, "Why did you leave the City?"
He didn't seem phased by the question and gave me a shrug. "I was just over it. It's a great place for people who don't want to connect on more than a superficial level, but after a life there, I decided it wasn't meant for me."
"So you'd rather be here where they literally gossip about you if you let your lawn grow just a quarter inch too long or didn't do a fresh coat on your trim every spring?"
"Maddy, I had the flu this winter and I came downstairs to find three different kinds of soup on my porch along with cornbread, brandy, and a gallon of fresh squeezed orange juice. I've had the flu every winter of my life and no one has ever even checked on me. Not even my office. The only way I would find soup outside of my apartment was if I fucking ordered it."
"You have a point," I agreed, remembering how everyone had brought me things to bring with me to college the week before I left. It had been so long, I had forgotten the things like that.
"It's a different kind of life in a small town. It's not meant for everyone, but there's nothing like an entire town that gives a shit about you and roots for you."
Again, right.
"What did you do?" I asked then, not seeming able to shut up which wasn't like me.
"In the City, I mean."
"I was a lawyer."
"What!" I yelped, stopping running completely, shocked.
He went another two feet before he realized I stopped then turned back with a brow raise. "What what?"
"No way were you a lawyer."
"No? Then my suit collection is really extensive for no good reason."
"What kind of lawyer?" I specified.
"Corporate."
"Corporate attorneys are soulless vampires," I said, shaking my head. Richy had three cousins who did corporate law. And they were, without question, the biggest assholes I had ever met.
"Think I'm a nice guy, huh?" he asked, reading too far, too correctly into my statement.
"I didn't say that."
"Yet you meant that. Nice coffee shop guy who can make you practically orgasm from a frappe couldn't possibly be someone who once ripped a small family business away from them for no other reason than a bigger company didn't like them."
"You did that?" I asked, brows drawing low.
"That," he said with a nod, "and about a thousand other awful things. Like I said, sweetheart, I got sick of it."
"But... coffee shop?" I asked. "Why not do criminal or freaking personal injury?"
"I worked in a coffee shop while I was in college. For beer money," he said with a smile. "It was the happiest I had ever been."
"And it maybe didn't occur to you that it was the happiest you had ever been because you were eighteen years old without any real life responsibilities and all you had to worry about was which girl would screw you and which wouldn't?"
"When did you get so cynical?" he asked, shaking his head at me.
I felt myself jerk back, realizing that was exactly what I was being- cynical. And it was maybe something I had been a lot over the years. Ever since...
Moving in with Richy.
Ugh.
Was I really that girl? That girl who let a relationship change her?
I guess, in some ways, I was.
And I hadn't even realized it happened.
"What's that look for?" he asked, head ducked to the side as he watched me.
"Nothing. Just... doing some long-overdue life evaluation."
To that, unexpectedly, he threw his head back and laughed. It was a deep, masculine, rolling sound that I somehow felt reverberate through my body until I felt like I was actually vibrating with it, even from a few feet away.
"What's so funny?"
He looked back at me, shaking his head, huge smile on his face. "You're... what? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? What the fuck can be 'long-overdue' at twenty-seven? Life doesn't have to be so fucking serious, sweetheart."
But life was serious.
Life was... life.
What could possibly be more serious?
"Not taking it seriously in your twenties is how you end up in some dead-end job you hate, living in a shitty apartment, mindlessly numbing yourself with TV and processed food at forty. Alone at home with your twenty cats."
"Oh, kid, what did that big, bad city do to you?" he asked, shaking his head.
"It's not wrong to have ambition," I said, offended.
"No," he agreed, shaking his head. "Ambition is what got your mom her pastry shop. Where she is happy. Is happy something you factored into your ten or twenty year plan, Maddy? It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like hard work and appearances. And if it's not in there, sweetheart, it fucking should be."
With that, he moved off in the direction we had come from, leaving me feeling very much chastened, made me feel silly for wanting things I had been raised to never aspire to.
Not in eighteen years did I ever have anything designer, name brand, or expensive. All my clothes had been whatever style I wanted, but at whatever budget we could afford. It never even occurred to me to be unhappy with that.
Until...
Well... Richy.
He bought me red bottom heels and a designer dress on my birthday. He got me Tiffany earrings on our anniversary. He was the one who made it seem like designer wasn't just elaborate, overrated clothing, but an important status symbol, something people judged you for if you didn't have. Because in his world, they did.
Hell, I thought as I looked down at my feet, my running shoes cost almost two-hundred dollars... for something I would have to replace in under six months with how many miles I put on them. And they were in no way more comfortable than the fifty dollar ones I used to buy myself in high school.
I had been so busy planning a life that meant nothing. Labels, cars, positions in companies... it all meant nothing.
Brant was right; what mattered was what you were passionate about, what you loved. That was why my mom was blissfully happy with her little bakery, even though it meant she still had to bargain hunt when she wanted new clothes or couldn't get a new car every four or five years like most other people. Those things didn't matter to her.
And I was raised to believe they shouldn't matter to me either.
On that very heavy thought, on the realization that I had spent five years not only loving someone who didn't love me nearly the same amount, but also that I had become a different person on top of it, I walked back to my mother's beloved house that was more than enough for her, not because it was grand, but because she put her touch, her love into every square inch of the place.
I went in and showered, slipping into a pair of gray skinny jeans, flats, and a lightweight long-sleeve black tee, ate my crepes, then headed back into town.
The smell of sugar, chocolate, and coffee greeted me- happy, welcome, familiar, and I took a deep breath as I stepped in to already find several of the tables full.
I greeted a few of the people I knew and avoided eye-contact with Brant, feeling just a little bit like an exposed wound because of the things he had said and not needing any salt poured in.
"Maddy," my mother said, coming in from the back with a tray in her hands, dropping it down on the counter with a huff.
"Still?" I asked, smiling huge as I looked down at the small little circles that should have been fluffy and just a little firmer on the outside than the inside, but were instead flat and hard as rocks.
My mother, through all her years baking and about three million tries, could never seem to master macarons.
It was a classic French pastry that she absolutely refused to believe she couldn't have in her bakery.
"Don't laugh at me," she said, scrunching her face up at me, but her eyes were dancing. "It's not funny."
"A pastry chef who can't make a macaron to save her life is kind of funny if you think about it. What flavor is this?" I asked as I picked one up and brought it to my mouth.
"Chocolate?"
"Oh, God," I said, grabbing for a napkin and spitting it out. "How is that even possible that chocolate tastes bad?" I asked, tossing the napkin then taking the tray from her and tossing the rest. "You can not serve these. People might die."
She smiled huge at that, giving me a look I would know anywhere. It was one that said she was up to something. "Well, why don't you show me how one more time?"
"If the first thousand times didn't work, I don't think a thousand and one will do the trick," I said, but I was already reaching for the elastic band on my wrist and tying my long hair up. "But we can try," I added, going into the back and washing my hands.
Then I spent the morning making macarons. There were the classics: chocolate, vanilla, pistachio, strawberry. Then I went ahead and went a little crazy, finding the familiar task relaxing, peaceful, and made some more exotic flavors: raspberry, green tea, honey, rose, kiwi, mint, and coffee.
By the time I was done, there were four trays full of the little round mounds of deliciousness out front where people were all-too happy to finally get to try.
I wiped my hands and reached for one of my mothers fine China white plates, all so vintage that they had to be hand-washed because they weren't dishwasher safe, and loaded up a small amount of the coffee-flavored ones and brought them acros
s the restaurant toward Brantley who turned to me, head ducked to the side, eyes kind.
"You seem less stressed."
"Baking does that to me," I admitted, giving him a small smile.
"What's this for?" he asked, nodding toward the plate.
"A thank you for the frappe and maybe a little bit of a thank you for the reality check this morning," I added, feeling my belly go just the strangest bit wobbly as his smile went sweet, making his dark eyes look positively melty.
Thankfully, because my pride couldn't take it if he did, he didn't make any comments about said reality check. He reached to take one of the macarons and looked at it. "I've never had one," he admitted, smelling it.
"That's because my mom makes ones that could turn a man off sweets," I said with a smile. "It's coffee flavored with a hint of Bailey's mixed into the filling."
With that, he popped it into his mouth and chewed.
Then proceeded to make a sound that would make any woman feel the slightest surge of desire- he freaking growled.
"Jesus Christ, woman."
"Good?" I asked, feeling I needed the approval just a little too much, but asking for it anyway.
"No, sweetheart. Good is a fucking jelly donut from Dunkin. This is... other fucking worldly."
There was no stopping the smile that spread across my face at that- so big it made my cheeks hurt. I was used to criticism over my baking. That was how schools and internships worked. They picked apart every creation and told you what you did wrong, what you could do to make it better. And Richy didn't like sweets. So for the past several years, I very rarely got the chance to hear someone praise my creations.
"Well, there are plenty more of those," I said, putting the plate down on the counter. "And about... nine other flavors to try if you get adventurous."
"Oh, I'm feeling adventurous alright," he said, eyes almost seeming a little heated. "Maddy," he said as I turned to walk away, the sound intimate on his lips again, something I still couldn't quite wrap my head around.
Peace, Love, & Macarons Page 3