by Holly Rayner
“Now it’s my turn to feel played,” he said.
“How so?”
“Well, I seem to have accepted a restaurant invitation by someone who works there. You know, you have to disclose your relationship before making the recommendation. There are laws and everything.”
He was giving her a playful grin to soften the words that might have seemed harsh if she hadn’t realized he was joking. Luckily, she did.
“Locally sourced ingredients is something that the Coffee Cup and this restaurant share,” she replied, by way of explanation. “The owner of the Coffee Cup relies on me a bit to work with the local farms and ranches, and I’ve compared notes from time to time with the buyer for this place. Technically, they’re the competition, but that’s just the way people are around here.”
“So, you’re not just a waitress, then?”
The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.
“Just?” she smiled at him, mock offended.
“I didn’t mean—”
She waved her hand.
“No, I know. I’m not offended. But no, I guess I’m not ‘just’ a waitress. I mean, technically, that’s my job and that’s most of what I do. It’s my official job title in as much as the Coffee Cup has ‘official’ anything. But I’ve been there for eight years now, and the longer I stay, the more I get pulled into the inner workings of the business.”
Kehlan nodded, understanding.
“So, are any of these dishes similar to those you serve at the Coffee Cup?”
He was hoping this would get her talking, and he was right. No sooner was the question out of his mouth than she was off, telling him every detail of any number of dishes at the other restaurant. Watching her talk with such obvious interest felt like a door being opened; as much as Paige was quick to insist that this was just a bit of added responsibility on top of her normal duties, Kehlan could tell that it was a genuine passion for her.
She told him all about the local farms, including a few interesting, colorful anecdotes of the people who ran them in all their off-kilter, central Washingtonian glory. Even as she wasn’t sparing them, her affection for each and every person she talked about shone through in her face as she spoke.
When she came around to a stopping point, their food was mostly consumed. Kehlan was satisfied to have gotten to listen to her speak for what felt like such a luxuriously long time.
“So, what is it about locally sourced ingredients that interests you so much?” he asked her, greedily trying to coax out just a little bit more. “Is it the environmental aspect? Fewer fuels and all that?”
She considered for a minute, and then smiled.
“Why, are you worried for your country’s oil revenues?”
She was teasing, but there was something real behind it. He rushed to reassure.
“Not in the slightest. Our reserves are limited, and we’re aggressively moving towards more sustainable energy production ourselves. We barely have enough oil to export twenty percent a year.”
In fact, my cousin Abdullah has made it his life’s mission to future-proof the country, and not relying on oil revenues is a big part of that.
He thought it, but he didn’t say it. Why didn’t he say it? Why didn’t he just tell her and get it over with?
“Twenty percent, huh? You seem to know a lot about it.”
She wasn’t accusing, just mildly interested.
“I keep myself informed.”
Not a lie. Technically not a lie. But for a moment, she paused, and he was worried she would notice there was something odd about his answer. But then she went on, shaking her head.
“No, it’s not mostly about that for me. I mean, it’s a bonus, and I’m not saying I don’t want to protect, you know, all this.” She motioned around them. “But it’s more than that. It’s kind of hard to explain. A sense of place, I guess? So many people are so quick to run away and get out there and explore the world. I just like the idea of finding a way to be satisfied with this corner of it, and to really live in and from this corner of it.”
As she spoke, she began talking more quickly. He wondered if she felt like the words were flowing out of her the way he had felt when he’d talked about his schooling and his friends and his childhood earlier.
“And part of that,” Paige went on, “means really supporting the businesses and the people who choose to stay here. That’s what really makes me passionate about it. That’s what it means to me to make sure that the Coffee Cup is contributing to keep building and developing businesses here. It’s about keeping home…well, home.”
When she was done, she seemed almost embarrassed by her own passion out on display. Kehlan wished he had a way of assuring her that there was no need to be, without calling out the embarrassment and worsening it.
“They should put you in a commercial,” he said, taking a sip of a locally grown tea that, Paige had told him, they served at the Coffee Cup as well.
She laughed. “If we ever decide to start putting out commercials, I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Having finished their meal, they headed back out to the slopes. As treacherous as the terrain could be, this late in the season, Kehlan found that he enjoyed the challenge, and he enjoyed undertaking it with Paige. She was a good skier, for sure, even if she seemed a little rusty. But as the afternoon wore on, and they raced each other down the slopes over and over, he saw her get back into the stride of it and give him more and more of a run for his money.
They skied until the afternoon started to turn towards evening, and they’d seen every part of the mountain that was still open for runs. They saw precious few other skiers out there, and Kehlan couldn’t help but feel that, although the conditions were suboptimal for skiing, the feeling of him and Paige being nearly alone on the mountain was irreplaceable. He couldn’t imagine a better time of the year to go.
When they had returned their gear and gotten back into the car, Kehlan turned to her.
“Well, now that you’ve shown me the restaurant and the slopes, I do believe that you are officially my tour guide.”
She laughed.
“Oh, am I? Didn’t know I was qualified for that job.”
“Believe me, you are more than qualified. And, as my tour guide, I think it’s time you told me what the best place in town is to see the sunset. It shouldn’t be too long now, I imagine.”
She thought for a moment, before a look of concern crossed her face.
“What is it? Is something wrong?” Kehlan asked, surprised at how quickly her concern had become his.
She shook her head.
“No, it’s just that the best place to watch the sunset is actually a place that Alvin told me about, years ago. And I wondered how he’s doing. If you don’t mind…”
She pulled out her phone and gestured with it, and Kehlan told her to feel free. She called the hospital, and though he only heard half the conversation, it was obvious that it was good news.
“They’re releasing him tonight,” she said, beaming, after ending the call.
Her caring was infectious. Kehlan cared about all of his patients in a professional manner, of course, but it was something different to see it through her eyes.
“That’s great,” he replied, and meant it more than he would have imagined a few hours ago.
“Now,” he said, not wanting to waste the good spirits. “About that sunset…”
Still smiling, Paige gestured ahead.
“I’ll show you the way.”
Chapter 7
Paige
She knew she probably should have warned Kehlan that the best place to see the sunset in Stockton required hiking up the side of a steep hill. They’d been skiing all day, after all, and he’d just had a transcontinental flight, so the way he still kept up with her as they hiked up the mountain was nothing short of impressive.
That’s not to say that she wasn’t already impressed with him. With everything about him, really. With his body, and his
incredible features. With his skill and his cool attitude under pressure. With his careful observance of her moods and his gentle comfort when anything rubbed her the wrong way. With his skill on the mountain and gameness to try anything. With his attention—his incredible attention—that made her feel as though everything she told him were so much more interesting than she suspected it really was.
But as she walked behind on him on the path, she found herself watching him more than the beautiful sights around them. The view headed up the hill nearest town was incredible. She’d seen it many times, as this had been a favorite spot of hers for years. She even brought Dylan part of the way up here, sometimes with her family, when she was feeling up to the task of hiking with a young child. She looked forward to the day he’d be able to make the trip all the way up to the top.
But these incredible views were familiar, and Kehlan was something new and exciting. How was the commonplace splendor of nature supposed to compete?
Plus, there was the timing. In order for Kehlan to really catch Stockton in the best possible light, they would need to make it up the trail and to the top in record time. And she found that she deeply wanted him to have his first aerial view of Stockton to be in the best possible light. That was more important to her than she could explain to herself. So, she avoided trying.
Kehlan must have sensed her urgency, because he kept up a breakneck pace, and they made it to the overlook at the summit just in time to catch the best of the shifting sunset colors as Paige had hoped.
“So, this is Stockton,” he breathed.
As accustomed to his uniquely blended accent as she had become over the course of the day, she still found it mesmerizing when she heard him talk. And she found watching his face beholding the view for the first time to be an even more entrancing sight.
“This is Stockton,” she answered. She could hear the pride in her own voice, as though the town were hers and hers alone, and the approval implicit in his overawed tone was somehow a credit to her.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he said, and she nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at her and wouldn’t see.
“It really is.”
They stood for a while in silence. She wasn’t sure where the lines were. Was she just showing him around, or was this a date? It certainly felt like a date, and there was a part of her that desperately wanted him to take her hand.
But then, there was another part of her that didn’t want it to be a date. Because if it were a date, and not just a pleasant afternoon with a passing tourist, then she would have had to tell him about her son, and that was something she definitely had not done.
The further they went along, the more she liked the feeling of being with him—of being the person who could just spend a day with a charming, handsome man with no responsibilities in the world. She liked the feeling that anything could happen, and that at any moment they might just blow off the mountain together and end up in Switzerland or the Middle East, or even somewhere else, completely new to him as well.
Real Paige, normal Paige, couldn’t act that way. In her real life, she had responsibilities. She had a life that required constant commitment and a man who was from here, and wasn’t a part of all of that out there.
So no, it was right that he didn’t take her hand, as much as she wanted him to. It was right that they stood there slightly apart in silence, watching the light play over the town in front of them, still in the impossible altered state that had defined their entire day together so far.
After a time, she saw his scowl of concentration that she had already grown so fond of appear on his face.
“Where’s the Coffee Cup?” he asked. “I’ve gotten turned around, I think.”
She leaned in, close but not quite touching, and pointed.
“Just there,” she said. “See, that’s the main road in from the highway, and there’s where it branches off towards Main Street…”
And just like that, she found herself describing everything in front of her. It was just like at the restaurant, when he had asked her about sourcing local ingredients and she’d found herself talking and talking about things that he couldn’t possibly find interesting, but somehow seemed to anyway. All the details, he seemed to drink up just as quickly as she could provide them, and his rapt attention just drew more out of her.
Before she knew it, she was telling him the little-known histories of the tiny little side streets, and the people that lived on them, and the interesting, amusing, or heartbreaking things that had happened to them. As she spoke, she realized how much more she knew about this town than she had even realized—how much of it had seeped into her mind without her knowing it, and how much she was eager to share it with him.
She kept waiting for him to show any sign of boredom at all this useless, irrelevant information she’d unintentionally been storing up, but he never did. Instead, he listened and asked questions, and laughed and commiserated with each new story.
They spoke until the sun was truly down, and the residual light on the horizon was waning. They had to use their phones as flashlights to make their way back down the steep mountain path.
By the time they had made it most of the way down the hill, the darkness was absolute around them. They could see lights in the distance here and there—the street light over the trailhead parking lot that was their destination, and the lights of Stockton peeking up from the valley.
But the darkness of the growing night closed in around them and made Paige feel as though they were alone together in some secret, private space. The glow of their phone lights was the vessel carrying the two of them together through the darkness, and the sound of the bugs in the forest around only served to increase the sense of shared isolation.
By the time they reached the trailhead, and the car that waited for them, Paige was sad to have to set aside the closeness she’d begun to feel on the hike—the closeness she had felt throughout the day, if she was honest. And she dreaded what was going to come next. She tried to speak casually as they got back into the car, but the words sounded breathy and uncertain coming out of her mouth.
“So, I don’t know if you were thinking to hang around Stockton or if you wanted to move on, but there’s really just one hotel in town. And ‘hotel’ is honestly a big name for it—it’s really just a couple of rooms that the Haases rent out above their house. If you wanted to keep going, there’s a bigger place over in Springfield on the other side of the mountain that I can give you directions to.”
It was hard to tell much about his expression in the limited light of the car interior. Paige cursed the shadows that fell across his face and kept her from being able to make out his reaction.
“The place off of Oak Street that you pointed out from the overlook?”
She felt a thrill run up her spine just at the fact that he remembered one little detail out of the whole long, rambling speech she’d unloaded on him an hour ago.
“That’s the one. If you want, I can guide you there.”
“Oh, if you don’t mind, that’d be great.”
This time, the thrill running up her spine was considerably bigger. He was staying. He was staying in Stockton, at least for the night. This still wasn’t a date. It couldn’t be—not if she hadn’t been honest with him about her son. But the hazy dream the day had been would continue longer, and for that, she was grateful. She gave him directions to the Haases’ bed and breakfast off Oak Street, resisting the urge to take him there by a longer route so that she could stay longer in the car with him.
But when they reached their destination, Paige was in for a surprise.
“I guess they turn the lights off when they’re not expecting guests?” Kehlan offered. “I don’t imagine they get a lot of people showing up without a reservation.”
“No, not many…” Paige said. “But they usually keep the porch light on at least. Wait here; I’ll be right back.”
As she neared the front porch, she saw a small square of paper affixed to the do
or with a bright piece of tape. It was comfortingly consistent with the slightly quirky, arts and crafts-obsessed person she had always known Mrs. Haase to be, but it was still making her nervous. Of all the times for the bed and breakfast not to be open, did it have to be tonight?
She stepped up to the door and read the note. It was only a few lines about being closed for the weekend as the Haases were away visiting family, but Paige stood there staring at it for a long time, as though it were written in a foreign language. As glad as she was that the Haases were finally making it out to visit their grandchildren in Albuquerque, she couldn’t help but feel horribly inconvenienced that they’d picked this weekend.
It felt like she stood there for ages deliberating, but it could only have been a minute or two. There were two options in front of her in light of this new development. With no rooms available here, the closest accommodation was over an hour away on the other side of the mountain. Sure, Springfield wasn’t that far away, and maybe Kehlan would come back to Stockton the next day. But just as likely, he would take the opportunity to venture further into the countryside. There were some great hikes and waterfalls out that way. It would make more sense for him not to backtrack to a place he’d already seen so much of.
And if he did venture on, the dream that this whole magical afternoon and evening had been would be over. Paige would be back where she was, in her ordinary life, that had seemed so much more acceptable to her before Kehlan had shown up and made the day such an adventure.
But there was another option. She could offer him her couch to sleep on.
It wasn’t exactly luxury accommodations, and she doubted that a man who had attended a fancy boarding school in Switzerland had ever been reduced to sleeping on someone’s couch.
It was doubtful, she thought, that he would say yes, even if she offered. But the chance that he might, and that she might be able to extend what today had been over to another day was enough to compel her to ask.