by Easton, Meg
Addison laughed as she took the last few steps to him. “Have you been mowing all this time? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He lifted one of those strong shoulders in a shrug. “Everyone loves a mystery. Besides, I’ve never stayed next door and not taken care of this yard, so it felt wrong not to.”
“Did my aunt line up payment with you before she died? Do I owe you lawn mowing back fees?”
“She used to pay us when we were kids. But my brothers and I did a lot of yard care for others when we were home in Salem, and my dad’s rule was that we had to mow at least one yard a week for someone who needed it and not charge them. When I moved back here more than a year ago, the inn became my one yard a week.”
That was so sweet. And to still be doing it now, when he was no longer mowing lawns as a kid for money. Maybe that was why his eyes looked so kind. Because he just genuinely was. She realized that she was looking into those eyes a little too deeply and shook herself out of her stupor. “I feel like I should do something to repay you. I’m not much of a baker, but I’m pretty good at buying baked goods. Maybe I could get a pie, or cupcakes, or...Ice cream! Not that ice cream is a baked good.”
“How about coffee?”
He was smiling that adorable amused smile, and it suddenly made her forget what they were talking about. “You want me to bake you coffee? Oh! We had plans to go get coffee and catch up. Right.”
“Tomorrow right after work?”
Addison nodded. “Tomorrow it is.”
As she walked back to the inn, knowing he was watching her, she was hyper-aware of how she was walking, and suddenly couldn’t remember how to walk normally. But it was definitely not whatever she was doing right now. She couldn’t even talk to him like a normal person. What was wrong with her?
It was probably his eyes.
Yeah, definitely those eyes that threw her off. The eyes that were the same blue as the sky she painted on that rock back when she’d first forgotten how to talk around him. All she had to do was avoid the eyes, and she’d be just fine.
* * *
After she got the enchiladas that she’d nearly forgotten about out of the microwave, she headed up to her room and sat down at her desk with her laptop. She took a bite of the dish that made her, once again, so grateful that Peyton was a roommate, booted it up, and opened Google in a browser and started typing.
How to stay away from a rebound relationship
There were links to several articles about how to tell if you were in a rebound relationship, but she had to scroll through a lot to get to one that showed how to keep from getting into one. Of course, there wasn’t an article titled “How to keep from falling a little more for your neighbor every time you see him.”
So she just reminded herself: Rebound dating = bad. Bad for her, bad for him. Even if Ian’s eyes were kind and beautiful. Even if his jaw line was pretty near perfect. Even if he looked incredible mowing the lawn, or covered in sawdust, trying to surreptitiously close his bedroom door before she could see inside. Even if he did things like buy a house so he could help his grandma, or mowed people’s lawns just to be nice, or volunteered to teach kids woodworking skills. None of that mattered, because Rebound dating = bad.
Maybe she should write it in giant letters on her arm with a marker so she couldn’t forget.
She was only partway through reading the article when she grabbed a notebook and started taking notes of things she needed to remember that would help her keep herself from being attracted to Ian. She started by writing in all caps across the top of the page HOW TO NOT FALL FOR THE GUY NEXT DOOR.
—If you want to date someone just to make your ex jealous, you’re not ready to date.
—If you hope your ex will call and let you know he’s doing okay, you’re not ready to date.
—If you think of your ex constantly, you’re not ready to date.
—If you struggle to delete photos of your ex, you’re not ready to date.
—If you have a hard time deleting your ex’s phone number, you’re not ready to date.
—If you still have feelings about your ex, you’re not ready to date.
—If you’re still looking at your ex’s social media, you’re not ready to date.
—If you feel pulled to rush a new relationship because of a sense of urgency, you’re not ready to date.
And then she added one more that the article hadn’t mentioned that was important for her to remember, too.
—If your neighbor experiences any of the above, then he’s not ready to date, either.
She looked over what she had written. Matthew lived seventeen hundred miles away, so it wasn’t like he would ever see if she dated anyone else. So she was pretty safe with that first one. She still thought of Matthew too much and often wondered how he was doing, but she’d been fairly good at the other things. Mostly. More than Matthew, she should probably be more concerned about how much she was thinking of Ian.
She was making progress on all the items, though, and that was what mattered. It was a good list of things to keep in mind. If she ever felt herself doing any of those things, she’d know she wasn’t ready to move on. And just like writing I won’t run in the halls one hundred times when she broke the rule in fourth grade, writing you’re not ready to date so many times had actually helped.
Actually, two of the things didn’t need to be on the list at all. She opened her phone, went to the photos app, and deleted the entire folder containing pictures of Matthew and her together. Then she went into her contacts and deleted his. It felt good! Healthy. Wise. Powerful.
Grinning widely, she crossed both items off her list with as much glee as her high school English Lit teacher marked up her Hamlet essay with.
Not that she was aiming to cross all the items off the list. She was in Quicksand for a fresh start, and that meant re-figuring what she wanted out of life without a boyfriend affecting the plan.
No, this wasn’t a list of things to accomplish so she could move on to something new. This was a list to help keep herself from falling for Ian.
7
Ian
Ian sat on a bench at the trailhead park, smiling as Addi pulled into the parking lot slowly. Then she looked down, probably at her phone. Then she turned to look at the road she’d just turned off before her eyes met his and she smiled and pulled into a parking spot. He hoped she was up for the trail. Sitting down across from each other in a coffee shop where all they could do was stare at each other’s eyes while they talked seemed too intimate. Not like old friends catching up. He reminded himself, once again, that this was all it was. He stood as she opened her door and stepped out of her car.
“It’s a good thing you’re sitting where I could see you—I thought I got the address wrong. This isn’t exactly a coffee shop.”
She had come straight from work and was wearing dark jeans that were fitted and made her legs look incredible. She had on a flowy light purple blouse, which was a little dressy for a walk in the woods, but at least she was wearing flats. If he had planned to spend the day organizing someone’s house, he’d probably show up wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and athletic shoes. He had guessed Addi would be dressed similarly, so he hadn’t anticipated that changing up the date a bit would be an issue.
“No, but since we’ve had a few rain-free days, I thought a walk along Chipper Creek Trail might be more fun than a stuffy coffee shop. Plus,” he turned to grab the two cups of coffee he had already picked up from Doug’s Donuts and held one out to her, “I’ve got coffee.”
Addi looked at the cup for a long moment before she took it. “I was supposed to pay for coffee, remember?”
“But then I changed up what we are doing without warning you or giving you a chance to dress for it. Let’s consider us even.”
“We’re even, then,” she said, and bumped her cup into his. Then her gaze went over his shoulder to the opening to the trail. “I haven’t even thought about this place in so long. I used to love coming here as a kid.
”
“If you’d rather not in those shoes—”
“No, I’m good.” Then she started walking toward the trailhead purposely, like she was afraid he’d change his mind.
He had lived in Oregon for his whole life, so this scenery was nothing new. But Addi had only spent four summers here half her lifetime ago, and he imagined it was a bit different than living in Amarillo. So he tried to see the thick forest filled with green things growing at all different heights through her eyes. It was beautiful as always, but he hadn’t really paid attention to exactly how green things were until he pictured Amarillo. Even the tree trunks were green here, with all the moss growing on them.
The trail wasn’t crowded, but there were people ahead of them on the trail and a few people passed them every few minutes. But mostly, they could just hear the sound of their feet on the crushed gravel trail as he asked her about how work was going and she asked him the same.
He was dying to ask her about what happened thirteen years ago, though, so as soon as the conversation moved past enough pleasantries to be polite, he said, “That last summer you were here, you said you’d see me the next summer, but you never came back.”
Smooth, Ian. Could you be any more blunt?
“It wasn’t my fault, I swear. My little sister, Chloe, never came with me to Aunt Helen’s, because she was into fashion marketing from pretty much the day she was born, so she always went to Fashion Designer Camp, and the year I was thirteen and she was eleven, she came home from camp with a portfolio of her work. My parents decided it was time I stopped spending my summers playing and started spending them developing skills. I went on a bunch of week-long camps every summer until I was sixteen and had a job. So,” she said, ticking each one off on her fingers, “I went to soccer camp, young explorers camp, drama camp, young novelists camp, leadership camp, space camp—you name the camp, I probably did it.”
For years, he had wondered if his reaction to her gift and kiss on the cheek were the reason why she never came back. He didn’t realize it still bothered him so much until the weight was gone. “No Organizer’s Anonymous Camp?”
She laughed as they walked onto one of the five bridges that crossed the meandering creek, and he soaked in the sound. “No, surprisingly, based on the variety of ones I went to. Because even though it probably didn’t exist, I didn’t have every second of my future planned out at age fourteen enough to know I even wanted that. I still don’t let Chloe forget how she ruined my summers by her unnaturally young career planning.”
She stopped to lean over the rail and look at the water, so he did, too. “Remember when we were kids and your grandma taught us how to make origami boats out of waxed paper, and we’d drop them off at one bridge, and then race down the trail and try to beat them to the next bridge?”
He laughed at the memory. “And the boats always won, except at the very end of summer when there wasn’t much water flowing. And then, half the time, they got stuck along the way.”
She turned to him. “Let’s go down by the creek.” Her smile lit up her face and made him smile. It had when they were kids, too, but somewhere along the way, her smile had become beautiful. Mesmerizing.
They walked to the end of the bridge, threw their coffee cups in a garbage can at the bridge’s edge, and made their way down to the water. He should’ve known—water always drew Addi to it. That’s why they had spent so many of their summer days either here by Chipper Creek or in their favorite cove at Quicksand River.
He was glad to know that she didn’t stop coming to spend her summers with her aunt because of him. But he was still curious about that kiss her last summer there. He stepped up next to her and they both watched a squirrel race to the water’s edge, then scurry back, then to the creek again, each time getting closer and closer to them. “So, you know that painted stone you gave me? I still have it.”
Addi’s attention flew right to him, a shocked look on her face. “You kept it?”
“I was hoping to one day ask you about it again.” Her eyes searched his, and he was working up the courage—and trying to come up with the wording—to ask if she had kissed him because she had liked him, or if it was just a friendly goodbye, but every sentence he thought of sounded awful. It wasn’t like he needed to know so that he could sleep better at night or anything. Well, okay, that knowledge probably would’ve helped him sleep better back when he was fourteen. But he hadn’t thought about it for years before seeing her again in Gateway Groceries.
Maybe just letting it go again was the best thing. But he felt like he owed it to the fourteen-year-old from his past to just spit the question out no matter how awful it sounded, so he wouldn’t have to wonder.
He was just opening his mouth to ask when a dog’s barking got rapidly closer, along with shouts from the dog’s owner. Both he and Addi turned just in time to see a large dog racing toward them—or, more likely, the squirrel that had been very near them—with his leash bouncing as it hit the rocks and tufts of weeds behind him, his owner chasing after him. Neither of them had time to react before the dog plowed into Addi, knocking her backward.
He grabbed her arm as she fell, and between the efforts of both of them, she managed to stay upright, even though she had taken a giant step into the creek to stop her fall. The dog went off in the direction of the squirrel just as quickly as he had come, leaving both of them breathing heavy from the adrenaline of it all.
“You okay?”
She nodded, and he pulled her toward him as she stepped toward the shore. As soon as she lifted the foot that had been deepest in the water, though, the rushing creek grabbed hold of her shoe that, as a slip-on, had only about two inches of shoe holding it to the top of her foot, and sent it downstream.
“No!” Addi said, lurching for it.
“I’ve got it,” Ian shouted, racing after the shoe. Within moments, though, it went under the bridge. It was too low to duck under, so he raced around the structure that suddenly seemed overly massive for the size of the creek, and then dashed alongside the river. The shoe was ahead of him by a couple hundred feet. He leapt over rocks and tree stumps and fallen branches as he ran after it. But no matter how fast he went, it kept getting further and further away.
Finally, he realized what a lost cause it was, and how his chasing it down the river had left a woman balancing on one foot upstream. He jogged back to the bridge and found Addi making her way back up to the trail, doing a mix of hopping and touching just the ball of her foot down on the most rock-free parts of the ground. He raced to her side and she put an arm around his back to steady herself.
“I’m so sorry, Addi. I swear it took your shoe downstream even faster than it took our boats.” He glanced down at the foot that still wore a shoe. “They looked new, too.”
“Today was my first time wearing them.”
He cringed.
“But they’ve been killing my feet all day. They aren’t nearly as comfortable as the website made them look.”
“Your feet have been aching all day in those shoes, and yet you still agreed to walk the trail?”
She shrugged. “It’s no different from wearing heels on a date.” Her eyes went wide, seemingly shocked at what she’d just said. “Not that this is a date! I didn’t mean that. I just meant...Friends. Catching up. This is a friends catching up…get-together.”
“I missed you, Addi.” He had forgotten how much being around her ratcheted his happiness level up a few notches. Or how much he loved the blush that lit up her face.
They both looked up at the trail. Sure, down here by the water, there were rocky places as much as dirt and patches of grassy weeds. But the trail itself was crushed gravel—the kind you definitely didn’t want to walk on barefooted.
She was right. They were just old friends catching up. This wasn’t a date. But still, he had been feeling an attraction to Addi pulling him the entire time. He knew how much what he was about to do would take him to very dangerous territory, but he asked anyway. “Well, I
guess there’s only one solution: I’ll have to carry you back.”
“What? No. That’s like half a mile, Ian. You can’t do that. Your arms will want to fall off by the time you carry me that far.”
“You have that little faith in my muscles?” She checked out his muscles, and she blushed again. He had to admit, it made him feel pretty great. “All right, then. Ready?”
She nodded, and he picked her up, an arm around her back and one under her knees. She wrapped an arm around his neck to hold on. With her in his arms, her arm around him, her face so close to his, all his reminders to himself that they were nothing more than old friends flew away faster than her shoe going down the river.
Right now was the point when he should very emphatically remind himself that he never wanted to date again, and even if he miraculously did, it was too soon, so he should keep a wide distance. But that voice just as quickly faded away in the breeze. Apparently, too big a part of him wanted to just let himself be in the moment for a moment.
And that was all it was. A moment. Nothing serious. Just old friends.
“Do you know what else I kept?” He was so close to her, all he had to do was whisper.
She barely shook her head no, like nothing more was needed while they were in such close proximity.
“Those cheesy rhymes you used to write whenever we got on each other’s nerves and you wanted to lead me to where you were hiding so we could make up.”
“Oh my goodness. You didn’t.”
“I so did. Every last one.”
Her ears turned pink and she looked out at the woods for a moment before she met his eyes again. “Seriously. Tell me you didn’t.”
“They were pretty catchy rhymes. Let me think—I think I still have my favorite one from when you were ten or eleven memorized.” He gazed up at the sky. It had been a long time since he’d thought of it, but he still had the preamble to the constitution in his brain from memorizing it in eighth grade, so surely he had that rhyme, too, because he had cared a lot more about memorizing it than he had the preamble.