Before I can reach the café, the door jingles open.
Cole steps out. With Noah. And Elaine Hudson.
They’re each holding iced drinks and looking very committed to the “sip and stroll” part of today’s festivities.
Elaine is every inch the small-town belle in her fifties: elegant, composed, and not a strand of her bun out of place.
She’s always been polite to me. Pointedly polite. The kind that coats judgment in honey. Once, during dinner, she looked me dead in the eye and asked if I was friends with “Caspian, the wonderful, darling boy Cole likes so much.”
I said, “Not really.”
Cole said, “Mom, come on.”
Her hair is wavy underneath all that smoothing spray. Just like Cole’s. Just like Lizzie’s. Like Noah’s.
I step behind the statue of Mayor Billings, feeling half like a stalker and half like a ghost.
Cole’s in sweatpants, low on his hips, clinging just right. That alone would knock the air out of me, but then someone squeezes past him, and his shirt rides up, showing just a flash of bare skin. A sliver of sunlight on his stomach. It’s such a Cole thing: bold without meaning to be, leaving me wrecked without even noticing.
The memory montage crashes in before I can stop it. Every kiss, every push and pull — him straddling me one moment, blushing and bolting the next. I should’ve told him yesterday: it’s not just him looking at me. I do too. Always have.
But it’s not just lust. It’s everything.He’s my everything.
I watch them head the other way.
Stay rooted for a while. Breathe in. Square my shoulders.
I have a job to do.
COLE
After sipping and strolling until our feet begged for mercy, we had dinner at my parents’.
Noah, who usually treats anything green like a personal insult, ate three helpings of what my mom proudly called Jurassic Sunset Surprise. It was roasted carrots, glazed Brussels sprouts, and some kind of sweet potato mash sculpted into what looked exactly like a stegosaurus.
“You know,” Mom told Noah conspiratorially, “they found fossilized squash seeds in a T-Rex’s nest once.”
“Wow,” Noah said. And ate every bite. I felt like taking notes.
Later, while I was loading the dishwasher, Mom gave me a folded sheet, tapping her nose in conspiracy. The sheet was color-coded and titledAcceptable Lies for Nutritional Success.The same one she apparently used when Lizzie and I were little.
It was a parenting masterpiece. The columns included dish names, real ingredients, suggested backstory and appropriate age range. One, underlined asCole’s favorite,read:Space Ranger Fuel Pasta= Kale pesto + zucchini noodles. Backstory: Official dinner of astronauts aged 5–7.
I glanced at Mom admiringly. “You’ve been weaponizing vegetables for decades.” She just sipped her wine and said, “All is fair in love and vitamins.”
Dessert came with gossip.
“Steve Pell’s latest plan is to turn the old garden center into an open-air nightclub,” Mom reported between bites of chocolate cake. “Luckily, Harold’s already banned open-air clubbing within town limits.”
Without a pause: “Earl’s Finnish friend is visiting in September, and poor Earl is beside himself, trying to build a guest room into that glorified shed he calls a bachelor pad. I’m taking over that project. Taupe walls. Timeless. Soothing. Neutral, like the Finns.”
“Isn’t Switzerland neutral?” Dad asked mildly.
“That’s what I said. Europe,” she replied. Then: “Did you see the scantily clad man James was strolling with? James looked one step away from dragging him behind a rose bush for disciplinary action.”
I coughed. Hard.
The house is dim now, lit only by one lamp. The warm light glances off the beveled coffee table, the antique stools Mom scored at an estate sale, the crystal candy dish perched on its lace doily. I cringe, remembering how I once filled it with walnuts. Xaden was coming over — the first time as my boyfriend — and I was so nervous I accidentally became Martha Stewart.
