Come Home

by Raleigh Ruebins

  So I meant it when I said I loved watching Gavin work. I had been seeing it every day for the past three months, and it had been a reminder of why I’d loved his presence so much in high school: it was amazing just to witness him.

  “I’ve got it,” Gavin said. “Singing for supper—it’s got to be the chickens. Let’s go check the coop.”

  I stood up straight again and we headed over to the chicken coop at the far end of the house.

  “I was standing there daydreaming about how much I love you being back on the island, and you were actually figuring out the clue,” I said. “This is why I need you around.”

  “We make a good team.”

  “Oh my God, you were right,” I said as we approached the coop.

  Another figurine was on top of the wooden enclosure, hidden in plain sight. It was a ceramic rooster, of course, and I held out my phone to snap a selfie of me and Gavin in front of it.

  “Three down,” I said. “We’re doing okay.”

  We made our way through a few more clues at a good pace, and we managed to only take harassment from Caleb one more time. When all that was left was the ninth clue, Gavin and I were scratching our heads trying to decipher it.

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” I said.

  “It has to somehow,” he responded. But I wasn’t so sure. This wouldn’t have been the first year I wasn’t able to complete all the clues.

  We headed around to the back of the house and found that most people were already sitting around on the benches and lawn chairs surrounding my parents’ fire pit.

  “What the hell?” I asked, walking up to Caleb, who was roasting what looked like about ten marshmallows all on one long skewer in the fire.

  “Still working, huh?” he asked.

  “We just have the ninth one left,” I said.

  “Ninth?” he said. “There are only eight.”

  I started to grin. “Oh, it’s on now,” I said. “You didn’t even see the ninth clue! I can still beat your ass in this game.”

  He eyed me from the side, taking out his paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, holding it to my face. “Only eight,” he said.

  I looked at his list of clues and saw that he was telling the truth. “Wait. Hang on,” I said, walking over to Landon Luna.

  “Lan, do you have eight clues or nine?” I asked.

  He held up his paper, grinning. “Eight. But I’ve only gotten four of them. Not really that great at scavenger hunts.”

  I turned to look at Gavin, furrowing my brow. “Are we… the only ones who got nine?” I asked.

  “That’s very weird,” he said, frowning at the paper.

  I looked out over the water, trying to imagine why some clue lists would be different from others. There was a small dock at the edge of the land that jutted out into the water, and I watched the calm waves lap against the wooden posts.

  “Wait,” Gavin said, nodding where I was looking. “Brown. Do you think that could mean the dock?”

  I shrugged. “I mean, the wood certainly is brown, but there’s no gold there….”

  “Let’s see,” he said, taking my hand and leading me out.

  The dock was a ways away from the fire pit, and once we were out there, the house and the fire and the string lights looked like a glowing, happy scene from a painting. Everyone’s voices still carried over when they laughed or spoke loudly, but the main sound out here was just the water and the wind in the trees nearby.

  “Hmm,” I said, searching all around the end of the dock, the posts, in between the slats. I got down, leaning over the end of the dock, checking to make sure my mom hadn’t hung something underneath it in an attempt to trick me. But it was no dice. I got up, still scanning the wood beneath me. “There’s just nothing out here. It has to be something else—”

  I pulled in a sharp breath when I turned and saw Gavin behind me, slowly lowering one knee to the ground. He was holding a small box in his hands, and when I locked eyes with him, he opened it up.

  There was a gold ring inside.

  “Hunter, you’ve been the most important thing in my life, for all my life, even when I didn’t know how to deal with that fact,” he said, his voice low and wavering just the slightest amount.

  I was suddenly so aware of this moment—of everything around me, the low chirp of a cricket from my left, the soft, cool breeze from my right, the distant orange glow of the fire behind Gavin, illuminating him from behind.

  “If you were anyone else, this would be crazy. But I’ve… I’ve loved you forever. And I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.”

  I stepped toward him, putting one hand on his shoulder.

  “Will you marry me, Hunt?”

  “Hell yes, I will,” I said. And then I was pulling him up, wrapping my arms around him and kissing him so hard and so many times that he laughed.

  “God, I love you,” he said.

  “I love you. And holy shit, you are going to be my husband. I never thought I would say that in my life.”

  His eyes glinted in the moonlight, and he grew more serious for a moment. “I know you never had planned for any… big commitments like this,” he said. “I was more than a little worried to ask because of it.”

  “You were?!”

  “Yes. Especially so soon. I’ve… been writing this in my goal journal for a while every day, and it seemed too impossible. Too soon.”

  “What you said before was right though, it’s not soon,” I said, shaking my head. “And even though I feel like I might bounce off the earth right now from excitement, it… doesn’t feel weird. It feels like this is how it should have been forever, kind of.”

  “Hunter, are you saying we’re each other’s destiny?”

  “Very funny,” I said, running my palm along his chest. “No. I’m just saying… I know you. And you know me. Better than anyone else in the world. Being with you makes more sense than ever being apart again.”

  He held me close, kissing me again, taking his time.

  I pulled back after a few moments, remembering the small box in his hand. “Let me put it on!”

  He slid the ring onto my finger, and it fit just right.

  “I may or may not have borrowed your college class ring for a day to get it sized,” he said.

  “And of course I didn’t notice, because I never wear that thing,” I said. I held up my hand, admiring the glint of gold in the light. “This is much more my style.”

  “It looks so good,” he said.

  I raised one eyebrow. “Wait a minute,” I said. “The scavenger hunt… does this mean…”

  “Your mom was in on it, yes,” he said, smiling at me. “I didn’t tell her what I had planned, but she guessed almost instantly. Nobody else knows yet.”

  I smiled, reaching to grab his hand in mine. His fingers laced into mine, and I felt a surge of energy building inside me.

  I knew this was right. I knew it was one of the better decisions I had ever made in my life. And I couldn’t wait to be Gavin’s husband.

  “Then let’s go tell ‘em.”

  The End

  Thank you so much for reading!

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  Sneak Peek

  Chapter 1 - Caleb

  I need to start by saying that I was not usually drunk at work.

  Not even tipsy. I always take my job seriously, even if being a line cook at a diner isn't exactly neurosurgery.

  But there also wasn’t usually a very drunk, very loud, young woman with bleached blonde hair and radioactive orangey-tan skin sitting across from me at the front counter in Luna’s Diner, watching my every move from behind as I prepare
d her food, buying me shots of vodka every ten minutes.

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and everyone else had gone home for the night. Other than Drunky McGee, there were only a couple stray customers sitting along the blue leather booths by the windows. The tall, bearded guy was a regular. He came in every couple weeks, always at night. Right now he was hunched over a black coffee. He’d never said much of anything to me at all, but he always left fifteen dollars for a meal that only cost eight, so he was as close to perfect as a person could be in my book.

  As the woman let out a peal of shrill laughter, he briefly glanced over, giving me a look that was something between sympathetic and Dear God, I don’t want to get involved.

  Until the blonde woman had sauntered in a half hour ago, I hadn’t had much to do other than keeping water glasses full and starting clean-up behind the counter. I’d been eyeing the bearded man, trying to figure out if I knew him from somewhere, or if I was just painfully attracted to him.

  “I like your tats,” Drunky was saying from behind me as I fried up a serving of hashbrowns for her. “I was gonna get a tattoo once. A fucking bird right above my ass. Can you believe how dumb that would have looked?”

  Her lips were pursed, her elbow propped on the counter, chin resting in her hand. I moved to expose my lower left forearm, where I had a line tattoo of a sparrow taking flight. “Not that dumb.”

  “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry,” she said, snorting a laugh. She was still decked out in bachelorette party regalia--neon pink sunglasses perched on top of her head and a silver plastic necklace with a usable shot glass hanging from the end of it. She’d been making me pour her vodka shots into the necklace glass, but I vehemently refused when she told me to drink out of it, too.

  I may have been dumb enough to accept her offer to buy me shots, but I wasn’t dumb enough to come down with a cold next week just because someone young and foolish had told me to “suck it from her necklace.”

  “God, you are hot,” she said, a little too loudly, slurring her words.

  Great. The first person to show interest in me for months, and it was a girl who looked like she’d be too over-the-top for Jersey Shore. Why couldn’t the bearded man be the one bothering me instead? I’d only ever been with a guy once before, but Lord, he was my type if there was one.

  “Shh,” I said, furrowing my brow as I slid the plate of hashbrowns in front of the woman. “There are still other people in here. You need to be quiet.”

  “That looks good,” she said, immediately reaching for a bottle of ketchup and depositing a metric ton of it on top of the potatoes. She wolfed them down as I cleaned off the cooktop, inhaling the whole plate in about ninety seconds before setting her fork down with a loud clatter. “They’re alright. Little on the greasy side, honestly.”

  The bearded man looked up again from across the room, this time shaking his head, almost imperceptibly.

  “Well, you need grease to soak up all the alcohol in your system. Want me to pour some melted butter in a mug for you?”

  She made a sour face. “I mean, how much would that cost?”

  The man in the booth turned back to look down at his table, but I noticed he was trying to hide a smile.

  “Let’s do that steak you told me about,” she said. “I need some hot meat in me. Badly.”

  I didn’t respond, just watching her hiccup.

  “And shots!” she said, nearly shouting. “More shots. For both of us!”

  I shook my head. “You’re cut off. And you need to be quiet. There are other people here, and I’m working.”

  “But the only reason I came here is because this place is supposed to be a diner with a full bar! I would have gone to a damn Denny’s if I’d known you were going to cut me off.”

  “There isn’t a Denny’s on Kinley Island,” I said. “We’re what you’ve got at two in the morning, I’m sorry to say.”

  She whined a little more as I started preparing the steak, but I ignored it. This was my wheelhouse, and despite being slightly drunk, instinct took over as I prepared the filet. I’d started working at Luna’s Diner about a year ago, and I’d completely fallen in love with the rhythm of cooking. Nothing was more satisfying than preparing a perfect medium-rare steak, basting it in butter with rosemary, topping it with just the right amount of flaky sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. It was science and art, all at once. It took me out of my own head, put me in a zone where I knew I could create something people would love.

  And it was absolutely nothing like the job I had done in my previous life. The life I was constantly trying to forget. I preferred serving up steaks to being on Wall Street, anyway. At least that’s what I told myself.

  After flipping the filet to sear on the other side, I rang up one of the other customers who’d come to the cash register, a police officer who’d likely just finished a late shift. She was looking sidelong in Drunky’s direction, and I turned to make sure she was still alive. She was clearly flagging, her eyes starting to get a lot droopier than before.

  “Um,” she said, her voice thick like molasses, “do you guys have a… a bathroom?”

  “Second door on the right, past the jukebox,” I said, pointing over past the dessert case.

  She stumbled a little as she stepped off the stool, falling to her knees. In a flash, the bearded man jumped up from his seat, coming over to grab her arm and help her up.

  “You alright?” he said.

  It was the first time I’d ever heard him speak, and fuck, that voice. Deep and velvety, deeper even than I’d expected from his tall frame. He had to be at least six foot two, if not taller.

  “I’m fine,” she whined. “I just have to--” she hiccuped again, not finishing her sentence as she swayed.

  “She needs some water,” the man said, glancing over to me.

  “Of course,” I said, nodding and retrieving our biggest plastic cup.

  “I feel a little--a little sick,” she said.

  The officer came to her other side. “We gotta get her to the bathroom,” she said. “She’s about to blow.”

  “Come on, we’ve got you,” the man said, and they headed over. They pushed open the bathroom door not a split second too soon--I heard the sounds of her heaving into the toilet almost immediately. I pulled out my phone, calling up a cab company.

  “Hi. Yes. Can we please get a cab to Luna’s Diner, on the corner of Hill and Mayview? I’ve got a woman here who has more alcohol in her than her own blood. She needs to get back to her hotel safe.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  The man was waiting just outside the bathroom, and the police officer had returned. She was leaning against the counter, her arms crossed. “Do you need any help?” she asked. Her name tag read L. Derrick.

  “I think I’ve got it taken care of. Just need to make sure she gets back alright.”

  “I’ll follow the cab back to the hotel. This is a small island, she can’t be going far.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Don’t want to trouble you.”

  She shook her head. “No trouble. Not too much else going on tonight, as you might be able to tell.”

  I filled the plastic cup with cold filtered water, popping a lid on it. When Drunky came back out, with Beardy still escorting her, I shoved the glass into her hand and we led her out front. The officer followed behind. The cab was already waiting outside at the curb, and the man went back in, nodding once at the officer. We managed to get the name of the hotel out of the woman, as well as twenty bucks to cover her food and drinks. She finally slid into the back of the cab.

  “Drink that water,” I said. “The whole thing. And please, dear God, take care of yourself.”

  “I’m not that drunk!” she shouted, reaching out to stroke her fingers down my arm. “God, these are even better up close….”

  “Good night,” I said, waving at the officer before heading back inside.

  I let out a long breath as I stepped in. It was only me and Beardy left inside
, and I still had a good hour left on my shift.

  “Shit,” I said, smelling the filet mignon. I rushed back to the cooktop and transferred the steak to a plate. Shockingly, it looked perfect--not a minute too long. I plated it with a garnish of fried rosemary, a drizzle of the herb butter, and took it over to Beardy in the booth.

  “Made you dinner,” I said, sliding the plate onto his table.

  He looked up at me with wide eyes. Really, really blue eyes. They were gorgeous in an arresting sort of way. How had I never noticed that before?

  He looked shocked that anyone had spoken to him, let alone put a plate of hot steak in front of him.

  “For me?” he said.

  “Well, it isn’t exactly like she was going to eat it,” I said. “And I’d rather you have it, anyway. On the house.”

  “Thank you,” he said, as if he still didn’t believe he deserved it.

  “Thank you for helping out with that madness back there,” I said.

  “She seemed a bit difficult,” he replied.

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Most people are.”

  He quirked one corner of his mouth up toward a smile, but then just looked back down at the table. He didn’t respond. Clearly he’d thought the interaction was done, and normally, I would have too. But tonight was already so far from normal, and I was at least a little tipsy still.

  And fuck it. He was really hot.

  His forearms were thick and workmanlike, and when he picked up the fork it looked puny in his hands. I wasn’t exactly a shrimpy guy, but he looked like he could pin me up against a wall with ease.

  Christ. It had been a long time since I’d been any kind of attracted to someone, especially another guy. I’d thought my foray into sex with men had been limited to one wild time in my mid-twenties in New York City, but apparently it was still alive and well for this guy in dark denim, boots, and a weathered flannel shirt.

  “Late night?” I asked, leaning against the opposite side of the booth.