by Mira Gibson
“And snow that doesn’t turn to slush puddles the second it hits the sidewalk,” Jennifer chimed in, haunted by one of the most uncomfortable aspects of winter in the five boroughs. “Oh, the way the freezing, dirty water seeps into your boots, and you’re just chilled and miserable the whole subway ride home,” she shuddered.
Sue Ann let out a little chortle before adding, “The snow out here stays fresh and crunches under your boots.”
“The sweetest sound,” Jennifer agreed with an air of longing to hear just that. “I guess you could say I have no real plans other than to relax and enjoy the upcoming holiday.”
The knowing smirk returned to Sue Ann’s expression and a ‘wink-wink’ tone rose up in her voice as she said, “No real plans, huh?”
“Nope,” she replied, unwavering but feeling slightly off balance. Maybe she should order…
“Any Christmas wishes?”
Jennifer couldn’t help but feel slightly cornered and she might’ve been taken aback if she wasn’t impressed with the mischievous café owner’s remarkable perception. Was Sue Ann some kind of psychic? Not that Jennifer had plans—for the billionth time, he wasn’t the reason she was here!—but Sue Ann’s ability to pick up on the war that had been waged inside Jennifer’s head and heart was impressive if not a little spooky.
Cautiously, she asked, “What would my Christmas wish be, Sue Ann?”
As Sue Ann plucked a to-go cup from behind the counter and proceeded to fill it with her renowned stovetop hot cocoa, she very innocently suggested, “Ain’t nothing wrong with harboring a little hope in your heart. This is Hope Falls after all.”
After topping off the rich and steaming beverage with a generous squirt of warm caramel for good measure, Sue Ann offered her the cup.
“How did you know what I was going to order?”
“There’s nothing I don’t know, honey,” she shot back with a wink. “It’s on the house. Don’t try to fight me,” she said with a wave of her hand when Jennifer muttered a courteous protest. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” she said as a great, big smile spread across her face. A truer statement had never been made.
Jennifer stepped aside, allowing the next customer to step up to the counter, and as Sue Ann launched into a folksy greeting that blossomed into easy banter, Jennifer savored her first sip of caramel hot cocoa. No one made it quite like Sue Ann, but that notion didn’t linger very long in her mind. Though she was gearing up to mentally insist to herself that coming to Hope Falls for Christmas was all about getting wrapped up in its small-town charm that she’d fallen in love with a year and a half ago, and not about getting lost in hopes and fantasies of a strong-armed hunk who she’d also fallen in love with—
Insert the sound of a needle coming to a screeching halt off a vinyl record here.
What? Love? No! That wasn’t love, and that wasn’t why she booked a direct flight from Laguardia to Tahoe!
The mental gearing up, the bolstering, the virtual mantras of fortifying denial she’d been reciting on loop since she’d landed… it all crumbled in an instant the moment her lips touched warm, sticky-sweet hot cocoa. Her resolve dissolved like sugar in water the second she swallowed the chocolatey goodness, and just as fast as the entire house of figurative cards came crashing down, the perfect vision that was Kody Knowles filled her thoughts.
It was right here in Sue Ann’s Café where they had met. To say that they met would be too casual, too puny a description. No, on that hot, summer morning as Jennifer had laughed off Sue Ann’s routine teasing—hot chocolate on a hot day, you’re one of a kind, I’ll give ya that, ha!—she’d suddenly felt something electric in the air, like every nerve in her entire body had woken up. The next thing she knew, her gaze had lifted of its own accord, darted really, as if magnetized. That’s when her eyes had locked with his. So, no, ‘met’ was too random a word. The day that Jennifer had locked eyes with the man, who would prove to occupy her every thought for the next year and a half to come, felt more like fate. Destiny. As if her entire life up until that moment, and his, had been carefully orchestrated by flawless design just so that they could be in the very same place at the same exact time, and nature would take its course.
At first, she hadn’t even necessarily registered what he looked like, not beyond the obvious stats—in the ballpark of 6’2”, built like a linebacker with a confident posture, baby blue eyes, and a crew cut of light brown hair. Instead, she had been overcome not with how he looked, but how he was looking at her. Like she was the most beautiful and mysterious creature he’d ever seen. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, and yet that hadn’t made Jennifer feel uncomfortable or self-conscious the way she usually felt whenever a guy checked her out. That was the thing. Kody hadn’t checked her out. It had been as though he was looking at her, the real her, like he was genuinely seeing beyond her physical attributes and connecting directly with the essence of her very soul.
Was that crazy to think?
Most guys saw her skin-deep beauty and would get turned on by her ‘type’. Everyone wanted to nail the Asian girl, see if the rumors were true—Asian girls will do anything in bed! The novelty of being with the exotic girl… It made Jennifer’s blood boil and if ever there was a reason to rock ‘resting bitch face’ when out in a bar with the girls, that was it. Ward off the serious jerks.
Kody hadn’t made her feel like a novelty, not for one second, ever. Not the moment their eyes locked and not during any of their secret and steamy encounters. Every time he had looked at her, he saw beneath her race and class and even her makeup. Beyond appearance, as if his soul was gazing at the essence of hers and recognized her as being something that should be a part of him, but wasn’t yet. It had been exhilarating and felt so right, every second with Kody. He had been perfect for her. He was perfect for her. It didn’t matter that they’d never slept together, in fact that’s what made their time together, as panty-melting as it had been at times—who was she kidding, all the time!—all the more perfect. That’s what made it absolutely impossible to stop thinking about him, why he’s been on her mind, either in the background of her thoughts or burning at the very forefront, for the past one-and-a-half years.
The day she met Kody Knowles, Jennifer had been struck by a ‘knowing’ that told her, loud and crystal clear, that this was the one, this was her man, her partner, and there would be no way to screw it up. No way for this not to happen. It was the very essence of destiny that had enveloped them both that day in the café.
But then… without warning…
…he’d broken her heart.
***
This was Kody’s favorite time of year. When snow came down in big, fluffy flakes. When bitingly cold air filled his lungs. When Main Street was all aglow with festive holiday lights and stars twinkled overhead. Time slowed down. People stopped, opened their eyes, really took in their surroundings, and embraced the spirit of Christmas and all the magic that could and should and hopefully would unfold.
He loved seeing residents and tourists alike beaming with awe and wonder as they meandered through the heart of Hope Falls, but as much as he enjoyed observing the holiday cheer they exuded, he didn’t feel a part of it. There was something missing, or someone…
Kody pushed the thought aside and trekked on down the snowy sidewalk, gripping his toolkit in his fist and listening to the squeaky crunch of his work boots flattening fresh snow with the weight of his every stride.
Keep your head down, your hands busy, and your head clear.
That was his strategy and he was sticking to it. And for all intents and purposes it was mostly working… mostly. Except for that pesky ‘clear head’ part. His mind had, well, a mind of its own.
Which was why he’d been intentionally working twelve hour shifts with the IBEW for the past year and a half. The long hours weren’t even taxing anymore, just second nature, and you couldn’t beat the fresh air. The money was good and keeping busy eve
ry waking second was even better considering his chronic mental and, he hated to admit, emotional state. In addition to the picturesque holiday cheer, the winter months also brought with it enough power outages throughout Hope Falls and the county at large to keep Kody on a steady, seven day a week schedule, which had incidentally earned him not one, not two, but three employee-of-the-month awards with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Small victories, as they say.
Just as he was rounding onto the side street where he’d parked his truck at a quarter after six that morning before hitching a ride with one of the guys, he felt his cell phone vibrating in the front pocket of his dungarees.
He smiled when he saw who had thought to give him a ring, and then wondered why Sue Ann would be calling at this time of night.
After a quick thumb swipe across the screen, he teased, “I can fix the dishwasher again but only if you pay me up front and in bacon.”
Years ago—oh man, had it been a decade?—a young and foolish twenty-one year old Kody had stumbled, quite literally, into Sue Ann’s Café drunk as a skunk but insisting he was only hungover. The fact that it had been the crack of dawn and Sue Ann hadn’t even flipped the store sign yet that morning somewhat worked in the favor of Kody’s hungover argument, and the motherly café owner had graciously given him a wink of credit in that regard.
And then she’d sat him down at the counter and gave him two giant platters of piping hot, sizzling bacon. Picture cartoon sized platters covered in two giant, dome boobies!
Sue Ann had lifted the domes, serving the bacon feast with a side of sage advice.
Nothing cures a hangover like a mountain of grease and the will to wolf it down.
“Bacon, huh?” she laughed through the line and Kody could almost see her remembering the day and the ‘I’d kill ya if I didn’t love ya’ expression she’d worn on her face as she’d watched him gradually sober up. “Don’t tell me you’ve been getting into trouble all over again!”
“No, Ma’am,” he assured her, as his smooth, deep laugh slipped out.
“Good, ‘cause you’re about to!”
Kody cocked his head, puzzled.
“You still there?” she asked when he’d fallen silent for more than a few seconds.
“Yeah, still here.”
Kody’s heart punched hard in his chest. Sue Ann only got into weird moods—weird-giddy-floating-off-into-space moods—when she was playing matchmaker, and if Kody had asserted anything with Sue Ann over the past year it was that he did not want to be set up. Ever. Sue Ann could be pushy in her maternal way, but she was always respectful if and when you drew a clear line in the sand, and she had, without fail, respected Kody’s wishes in this department.
Which meant that…
He stopped himself cold.
“What’s up, Sue Ann?” he cautiously prodded.
“You like to get into about five-foot-five inches worth of trouble, if memory serves me correctly, don’t ya? You like your trouble with long black hair and thick, batting eyelashes, is that right?”
He stood stock-still, his heart galloping faster than Secretariat at the races and for Kody the stakes were twice as high. Had he heard her correctly?
Five-foot-five, long black hair?
Why did it feel like air was no longer hitting his lungs? She couldn’t be referring to… could she?
As if she’d overheard every thrilled thought in his head, Sue Ann went on to intuitively answer his question in her own roundabout, lazy river way, chalk full of sage advice if you could stand the longwinded elaboration.
“Look, honey, we all like to think we have private lives and that if we take extra measures to keep mum about our personal business that no one’s gonna know or find out or read it clear as day on our faces. But that just isn’t how it works in our town and you know it. Everyone born and raised here knows it. Now…
“I know you fell in—“
She stopped herself then quickly tailored her words, but it didn’t prevent her opinion from ringing loud and clear in Kody’s mind, giving him a serious behemoth to wrestle with, again, the same one that had been kicking his ass for over a year.
“It was easy to see that you had a real thing for that big city girl, Jennifer a few summers back, and if my recollections are accurate, the interest and affection ran both ways.”
“How do you—“
“I respected your privacy,” she went on, bulldozing right over his perplexed interjection. “I didn’t ask why she left and never came back, and I didn’t pry as I watched you plummet into a low mood and stay there for a month’s worth of Sundays.” Sue Ann took a deep, fortifying breath. “Now, I don’t want you to screw this up.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said dryly. Then the unaffected tone he’d been trying to keep up—as if this conversation wasn’t making his palms sweat and his hopes skyrocket—faltered as he asked, “Screw what up?”
Every nerve in his body was poised for her reply. His breathing was ragged as he braced himself to hear her confirm every instinct that was whirring through him on a cellular level; to hear that his entire internal alarm system did not need to be recalibrated. The alert was spot on. That against all odds, against reason and logic and the weight of time itself, the very thing he’d been wishing for hard despite knowing deep down it just wasn’t ever going to happen, was actually coming true.
That an honest to God, bonified miracle was taking place.
“Screw what up, Sue Ann?” he repeated impatiently, suspense gnawing at his guts.
“Jennifer Okimoto is standing in my café right now.”
There was more coming out of Sue Ann’s mouth, words of caution and pearls of wisdom and an encouraging chuckle or two, but he couldn’t process it. His head and heart and hearing had all latched onto a feeling of hope so great that it had rendered him deaf, dumb, and maybe even blind.
Kody was terrified.
But in the absolute best way possible.
(If you liked this excerpt, be on the lookout for REKINDLE THE FLAME, coming November 2017 exclusively on Amazon Kindle!)