“Are you sure you don’t mind taking me into town?” Today’s the last day I can officially enter the baking competition.
Brady grins. “I’m more than happy to drive Miss Daisy.”
I stand on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you soon.” With at least three backward glances on my walk out of his cabin, down the steps, and across his small yard, I finally turn a corner and stop, dragging in a long breath.
Overwhelming feelings threaten to consume me. Being in his presence fills me with the highest high and being apart from him makes me feel depleted. I shake my head, a physical attempt to clear the mental fogginess and keep going toward the main house.
I freeze the second I open the back door. My grandma sits at the dining room table, steam swirling up from a cup of hot tea on the table in front of her.
“That was quite a run you went on,” she says, leveling her knowing gaze on me. “In the rain, no less.”
Walking to the table, I grip the back of a chair and say, “It started pouring while we were on the trail. I ducked into Brady’s cabin to get out of it.”
“Is that right?” A smile tugs a corner of her mouth, causing the wrinkles around her lips to fan out.
“Housekeeping is doing a good job. The place was clean and the linen closet was stocked with fresh towels.” Every afternoon a team of ladies shows up and tidies the rooms. My grandma used to do it, but the labor became too much for her. I tried to tell her she could also pay them to wash the sheets and towels, and she was offended by the very notion that she could be too old to do something so basic, which of course wasn’t what I was saying. Attempting to get her to understand what I meant was futile. Instead, I try to get to the laundry before she can.
She smirks. I can tell she won’t be deterred by my report of the cabin’s cleanliness. “And tell me, Addy, how were the sheets? Soft? Comfy?”
I sigh, lifting my hands off the chair only to lean forward and rest my forearms. “Grandma…”
Her shoulders shake with her chuckle. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, granddaughter. I know a sated face when I see one.”
A blush warms my cheeks.
She lifts her tea to her lips and blows across the top of it. “How are you feeling about it?”
“I was feeling great about it actually, until a moment ago. Now that I’m away from him,” my forehead meets my cupped hands, my weight supported by them, “I’m starting to feel like it wasn’t such a good idea.”
Grandma’s chin tips to the side. “Why not?”
“Warren.” I feel a little stab as I say his name. “I wasn’t thinking about him at all while I was with Brady, but then on the walk up here, I just…” I trail off, shrugging. “I don’t know.”
“You came back down to reality?”
I nod.
Grandma shifts in her seat, leaning forward. “Does the way you’re feeling right now make you want to hop on the next plane to Chicago and rush to sit beside Warren?”
My arms cross in front of my body, my hands gripping my skin. I feel uncomfortable.
Grandma keeps her expectant gaze on me, and because she’s waiting for me to answer before she continues, I say, “No.”
“Tell me then, what good is feeling guilty doing for you?”
“Warren deserves a person to feel guilty. A person who feels like it’s wrong to move on. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“Nobody deserves what happened to Warren. Not him, not his parents or his sister, and certainly not you. So now you get to make a choice.” She raises her palms into the air, lifting one higher than the other. “Do you lie down and give yourself over to a lifetime of pain,” she lowers one palm and raises the other “or do you let yourself continue on with the same things you once enjoyed?”
I know what the right answer is, I just can’t seem to make the words leave my mouth.
“Do you still like reading a book in the sunshine on a warm summer day?” Grandma’s expression is an odd mix of stern and gentle.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Then go do it and don’t feel guilty because you’re alive to do it. Do you like what it feels like when Brady touches you?”
I nod.
