“Oh, no you weren’t!” Mom shakes her head like she’s in a presidential debate. “Fletcher was the cutest baby.”
Presley howls at my mom’s diss. “Don’t worry, Keaton, you’re still the cutest baby in my eyes.”
The glare I give her has her laughing even harder. I heft the last of the china boxes down and blow the dust off them, a little getting in my eyes and causing me to squint.
Mom takes the lid off one, and the gleaming white and silver of her set blinks back at us.
“Oh, they’re gorgeous. How old are these?” Presley marvels, running a hand over one of the plates.
“They were my grandmother’s. The set dates back to the early nineteen hundreds, and I’ve tried to keep them in the best condition possible so I could pass them on.”
The way Mom is looking at Presley right now has alarm bells going off in my head.
“Now, I know I may have forced you two onto that Ferris wheel, and I’m about to jump to conclusions again.”
“Mom—” I try to cut her off.
The thing Presley gets spooked about the most? Putting down roots. And my mom is about to play right into her worst fear.
“Keaton William, don’t try to silence me. I know you two just started dating, and I know I’m an old woman who wants grandbabies and weddings and things you aren’t ready for yet. So what I’m going to say is just an offering … a starting point. I had Keaton get these boxes down because I am going to send them home with him. Him, not the both of you. They should go to my oldest daughter-in-law, which is why Keaton is inheriting them. But, that being said, I really hope that daughter-in-law can someday be you, Presley. I think you’re perfect for my son, and I see the way he looks at you. So, this china is a promise, and I hope you’ll see it as one, too.”
My lungs burn, and I’m surprised to find that I’ve been holding my breath the entire time my mother speaks. When I look to Presley, I find tears shining in her eyes and a smile on her face. Which … has to mean that she isn’t completely freaked out by my mother basically proposing marriage to her as my proxy.
“Thank you, Eliza. Truly, this is very special.”
I clear my throat. “Okay, now can you stop proposing to my girlfriend so we can empty this place out?”
That gets a laugh out of the two women, and I’m glad to have de-escalated the situation a bit.
Nothing like a mother’s guilt to send your girlfriend heading for the hills.
29
Presley
“This might be even better than the yoga class we attend here.” Penelope giggles as she tilts her chin up to salute the sun.
“Hey!” I spritz her with my spray bottle, which is the only thing keeping me hydrated out here. “I heard that yoga class was the shit.”
“Teasing.” She chuckles, sighing. “This is the best kind of day. Especially because my kids are at camp and I have a glorious eight hours to myself.” Penelope wiggles on her towel next to me.
My skin burns from the sun exposure, but it was the good kind of burn. The kind that felt purely summer, with the heat beating down on you so much you could practically feel each new freckle sprouting up on your nose.
I’m not sure who volunteered the idea of tanning by the lake at Bloomsbury Park, but it was the best suggestion any of us had had all summer. Living in the city, I had to take two subways and a train to the nearest beach. Having a place to lie out right in my own backyard was something I’d have to take advantage of more often.
“I can’t even imagine pushing a human out of my body.” Lily laughs at her best friend, sitting up on her elbows to look at Penelope.
She’s in a yellow bikini that highlights her fun-loving, cheery personality and also matches her long, curly brown hair that’s threaded into a braid.
Penelope snorts. “You were there for the third, Lil, you saw it. It’s not fun once, let alone three times. Also, your body will never be the same again. Every time I sneeze, I pee, and have you seen these stretch marks?”
The curvy blonde points to maybe two faint silvery scars on her tight stomach and sighs.
“You look like a Kardashian, only blond. So Khloe, but not as tall. Seriously, shut up,” I chastise her.
“She’s right. Now you only have to make a sex tape and you’ll get famous.” Lily laughs.
Penelope applies some more tanning oil to her supple chest. “Who says I haven’t?”
Lily and I whip our heads to her. “You have?” We say in unison.
She just smirks, and I turn onto my stomach to tan my back. “I’ve always thought making one might be hot, but also I feel like I’d just be looking at the imperfections of my body jiggling the whole time I watched it back. And is it weird to watch your own porn?”
It’s Lily’s turn to frown at me. “Um, have you seen your body? You have like zero percent fat on you, plus people kill for your shade of hair. You’re gorgeous … and I don’t think Keaton would object to watching your porn tape over and over and over again.”
That sends a blush all the way from my toes to the tip of said red roots.
“How is Dr. Nash in the sack, anyhow?” Penelope asks.
I prop myself up on my elbows, totally game for a little sex talk with girlfriends. I’ve missed this, and I’ve never been shy talking about the dirty deed.
“The man may examine animals all day, but he knows damn well what to do with a woman. He’s very generous. And I know he may seem like the mild-mannered small-town doctor, but in the bedroom, he is shameless. God, the things he does …”
I fan my face just thinking about it. I would have never guessed that Keaton turned into a dominant heathen when the lights went down.
“So what she’s saying is that he likes to lick her pussy, and then hold her down when he fucks her.” Penelope takes a sip of water from her bright pink tumbler to hide her snide smile.
“Penelope!” Lily’s voice is the peak of embarrassment.
“Oh, come on, little Miss Librarian. I’ve known you too long, you don’t fool me. You’ve been with the most caveman of all the Nash boys, even if you were just in high school. You’re a dirty little minx in the bedroom. I just miss sex, is all. Orgasms aren’t quite the same when you give them to yourself.”
“Tell me about it,” Lily grumbles, relenting.
“What is it about having a man on top of you that is so satisfying? Like not even the sex, penis in vagina, part of it. But the actual weight of him.”
“It’s because that weight on you is comforting. It’s why people get those weighted blankets.” Lily flops from her stomach to her back, shaking her feet in the grass where her towel ends.
“So what you’re saying is that I should get a weighted blanket and a vibrator and I’ll be good to go?” Penelope snickers.
“Or you could find an actual man. Come on, there are some pretty nice guys in Fawn Hill. Surprisingly. Come to think of it, is this like the hidden gem town of hot men?”
There were actually way too many sexy guys around here for this place to be real. It was a blip in rural Pennsylvania, for God’s sake.
“Must be something in the water.” Lily laughs.
“An actual man, what a nice thought. Too bad I have three miniature humans ruining my life. I wouldn’t even know where to fit a man in my house, let alone my bed. There is always a combination of kids or dogs in my bed … I barely get any covers myself.”
I eye her, because I’ve honestly never thought about being a mother. I guess in a someday sense I have, but I’d never been in a relationship, which I think makes you really consider the possibility of children. And now that I was …
It would be lying to say that I didn’t picture more little Nash boys running around.
“Is having kids really that bad?”
Penelope sighs. “It’s not, I know I’m sarcastic and cold-hearted most times, but they are my biggest blessing. They’re just a handful, and I was so young when I got married to Travis. And then losing him … my two oldest r
emember him. They ask about him constantly. So on top of grieving myself, I have to deal with children who are grieving. Plus, they’re just rambunctious in general. I don’t wish I had a different life, but sometimes, I wish I had two hours to myself.”
“Well, we’re here if you ever need to get out. I’m happy to watch the kids, you already know that. Except for that one time they locked me in a closet and threatened to use said closet as a Nerf Gun target.” Lily laughs, but reaches over me to squeeze Penelope’s hand.
The death of her husband wasn’t something she talked about often, if at all, but I knew he’d been in the military and died overseas. They’d been married since she was nineteen and had babies shortly thereafter in rapid succession. I couldn’t fathom what it was like to lose the man you thought you’d grow old with.
“Enough with the pity party, back to the sex talk.” Penelope takes my own spray bottle and squirts me with it.
I laugh. “What do you want to know?”
“How big is his thing?” Lily squeaks.
“Lily, I’m so proud of you.” Penelope chuckles.
“And I may kiss and tell, but I don’t draw pictures. Just know, he’s both a show-er and a grow-er.”
They both hysterically laugh, and I flop down with my face in my towel.
I was smiling too, but for a completely different reason. I’d had friends, homes, summer days in bikinis … I’d had all of these things in the past.
But I’d never felt as comfortable in my setting or in my skin than I did right now.
That was something to smile about.
30
Presley
And just like that, summer is over.
The first day of September marks a change in the seasons, but also in my life. I’ve now lived in Fawn Hill for an entire quarter of a year. I’ve been through the hottest of days and wake today with the scent of autumn and orange leaves on the breeze.
Anxiety bubbles in my chest, leaving me with an unsettling feeling that at best feels like acid reflux and at worst feels like something I don’t even want to put a name to.
Most of the day passes with much of the regular routine; breakfast with Keaton, my ten-minute walk to the bookshop, helping customers, eating lunch with Grandma, and meeting Keaton on the corner of Main Street so he can drive us home to start dinner.
It shouldn’t be different than any other day … but it is. I can’t put a finger on this turmoil inside me, or maybe I don’t want to. Because the creeping fingers of a toxic friend I thought were long gone are tightening around my neck, and I’m running out of air.
The suffocation started when Grandma came to me this morning with a document that I didn’t want to read. The sale listing for McDaniel’s Book & Post. She’d done it, the thing she’d said she was going to do about a month ago. The shop she’d spent her whole life building, this family business that had existed in Fawn Hill for decades … she was selling it to help me start my own business right here in the town she loved.
And I couldn’t put my sneakers on fast enough. My hands were itching to tie those laces, to run. It was instinctual, a knee-jerk reaction that had me silently breaking down in the tiny bathroom of the store so that she couldn’t hear me. I was trying to get a grip on myself, but I was slipping.
This happened every time. Every time shit got real, or life took on another layer, I got going. It’s not like I wanted to be a quitter or a coward … it was just something inside me that wouldn’t be extinguished. Maybe in a past life, I was a gypsy. The thought made me hiccup as I’d sobbed in the McDaniel’s bathroom and I knew I was only trying to gloss it all over with sarcasm.
The feeling only intensifies over dinner when Keaton tells me his mother’s house has sold in a matter of weeks. He’s called it the end of a book and took hold of my hand and said we’ll be able to start a new chapter. He says that his mom was going to take a small portion of the money she received from the house sale and split it between the boys. I could tell by the glimmer in his eye that he had an idea for what that money could be used toward … and the butterflies born of nerves in my stomach grew tenfold. They’d already been placed there the day she offered me her china at the house, and now they were swarming.
By the end of the meal, all I want to do is get out of the house. I am jumpy, anxious, my palms are sweating … it is as if I’ve been arrested for a crime I didn’t commit and am about to confess just to make it stop.
“Do you want to go out for a drink? Maybe put all of this change aside for the night, get totally blasted on a bottle of wine and do unspeakable things to each other?” I wrap my arms around Keaton’s neck and attempt to give him the sexiest grin I can muster.
If we can just get back to the flirty banter we’d had going at the beginning of the summer, maybe I could relax. Today was too serious for me, too much heavy adulting going on and I couldn’t cope.
Keaton’s smile is far away, and when he looks down at me with those mocha eyes, I know he isn’t thinking about alcohol and heavy petting.
He unwinds himself from me and crosses the room, setting his hand on the countertop, almost bracing himself.
“Remember Gerry, that old bartender that I had words with the first time you went to the Goat & Barrister?”
I nod. “The one you said is the father of your ex-girlfriend. Yeah, now that I’m not drunk and your brother isn’t trying to fight someone, your interaction did seem odd.”
That beautiful head of dirty blond hair bobs with his nod. “He snapped at me because he believed I was the one who trapped her here. Who made her not follow her dreams for so many years. Katie, the one who broke my heart the first time and did a damn good job of it.”
My flesh bristles, the hairs standing on end. Something in me wants to stop him, wants to pause the tape right where it is so I don’t have to hear about this. And I’m not exactly sure why.
Keaton continues without looking at me.
“We met when we were young. High school sweethearts, turned college couple, turned real-world partners. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her. We bought a house together, I was getting ready to propose. But I guess I never noticed how much she’d grown through the years. The long nights I was in medical school, the weekends spent away from her studying, and then when I went into my father’s practice, I worked so much that we barely spent time together. She became a different person; where we once functioned as a unit, my schedule and life choices forced her to thrive on her own. Looking back now, the breakup was as much my fault as it was hers. We were too young when we met … this town put a lot of weight on our shoulders. And Katie, she wanted more. She wanted more than to be the wife of the town vet, to be married to the only man she’d ever been with. Her interests changed, she started to dream. And one day, she left. Loaded up a truck and left town … and I haven’t seen her since. I was so angry, so heartbroken. I didn’t understand it and I blamed her for a very long time. And I blamed her father, Gerry, for not helping me bring her back. I thought my life was going down the path that I’d always planned for it to go, and in one day, it was completely obliterated.”
So many emotions roil in my gut. Heartache, for a younger Keaton. Jealousy, for some woman who could leave a man as good as he is. Apprehension, because I can tell where this is headed. And for all of my boasting about planting roots and feeling okay as a woman settled in once place, something in my chest begins to stir.
There it is, my old friend flight. From a young age, my flight instinct has been ultra-sensitive. It’s sent me running anytime life gets murky, or complicated, or conflicted. It’s the thing I couldn’t put my finger on earlier, and now it’s here full force.
I hate that this is part of who I am. I hate being the wayfarer, the one who can’t buckle down in tough times.
“I thought she took my heart with her. But now, I know I was wrong. I was waiting for you to come into this town like the breath of fresh air, holding my heart right there in your hands. Katie didn’t take my hear
t with her because it was never hers to have. Presley … I was a fool for thinking that I ever loved another woman. Because that comes nowhere close to this. I’ve told you from the beginning that I’m a straight shooter, an honest man who plays no games. And it might be early, and lord knows it could get me in trouble with you, but I’m going to say it.”
Please don’t, I try to tell him with my eyes. This will ruin us.
“I love you, Presley. From the minute you brought that goddamn dog into my practice, I was head over heels. You balance me out in every way, and I don’t know that I could have gotten through this summer without you. I am in love with you, and I know now that this kind of love was the one I was waiting for all along.”
His confession feels like a bullet. Straight to the chest, mutilating my heart. I have to actively try to keep my feet planted to the spot, and words have escaped me.
Keaton just broke us, and he has absolutely no idea.
31
Keaton
I knew when I decided to tell Presley I loved her that she may not say it back.
Hell, I knew she probably wouldn’t. But stupid me, I’d given her the benefit of the doubt, just like I gave everyone.
And now she was acting weird. She’d said she wanted to have dinner with Hattie instead of coming back to my place as the week started, and now it was Wednesday and she hadn’t slept over the first two nights of the week. She’d barely spoken to me when I brought lunch over to the bookshop and had shrugged off with some vague excuse about needing to see Lily when I asked if she wanted to see a movie tonight.
Inside, my gut roiled with regret and fear. I’d rushed things … me and my stupid, small-town heart had told the adventurous, city-girl wanderer that we were in love with her. Which was basically the exact thing I knew would send her packing, and yet I’d done it anyway. Presley was distancing herself, and waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to tell me she couldn’t do this anymore … the anxiety was eating me alive.
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