“You know what, I’ll show you where the supplies are. How about that?” I ask. I don’t want to step on her toes or make her feel like I know more about this place than she does, but I can’t sit here and watch her spin in circles trying to figure everything out either.
She wraps a few loose strands of hair behind her ears and glances toward the back room. “Okay, good idea.”
I lead her into the back, where we have bins for labels and other supplies needed for shipping. Her eyes dart from bin to bin and from wall to wall, seeming more lost than she was before. Maybe this is all too much too soon. “What were you doing before you moved home, for a job, I mean?”
She slides a bin out from the wall and peeks inside. “I was a script editor. Well, I am a script editor,” she says without looking up. “I’m just working at night right now while I get things sorted out with the shop. I like to keep busy anyway, so it’s totally fine.”
I haven’t heard Melody talk a mile a minute for ages, actually not since we were kids. She was the queen of speaking in circles when she was nervous or excited about something. I remember being able to listen to her talk for an hour straight, barely taking a breath between paragraphs. She made me feel inspired, and enamored by every single word that left her pretty lips. Opinionated about almost everything, some of her logic was pure craziness, but I loved listening to it anyway. Since she’s been home, though, there has been more silence than anything else. She isn’t the Melody I remember.
“Do you think it’s too soon to be picking up the pieces, Melody?” I don’t want to be offensive or intrusive, but I want her to know I’ll keep doing what I’m doing until she is ready to take on more. I’m sure it will be a while before I return to the warehouse with Pops, and he knows this, but at the same time, this is Melody’s family business, and I want to be as supportive as I can be without making it look like I’m trying to overshadow her.
“Will there ever be a good time?” She asks.
“I don’t know. You just seem so stressed out.”
“Sorry,” she spouts off like an automatic response and moves toward the back wall where we keep the labels.
Again, she slides the next set of bins out, one at a time, still in search of the shipping labels, but I notice her shoulders rise a few inches up toward her ears. A crack … that’s what I used to call the moment when I felt like I was doing okay and then suddenly, something would hit me. It felt like a crack, as the torment split my mind and body in different directions, leading up to a crescendo of pain. When I got to that point, I was afraid I’d fall to pieces if I moved the wrong way or thought the wrong thought.
With a bit of hesitance, I take a few steps forward and gently place my hands on her shoulders. “If this is okay, I’ll stay by your side and help you through it.”
Beneath my grip, I feel the muscle tension release in her shoulders. “What are you going to get out of it? It’s not your family business. You’ve stepped away from yours to help me with mine. It’s not fair to you or your dad.” It pains me to think she’s concerned about wasting my time, so I explain that I’m happy to be here to help out any way I can because that’s what friends do for each other. As I take my hands off her shoulders and reach for her wrist, my arms brush lightly against hers. Her skin is like silk; soft and warm and I just want to feel her hand in mine. She turns around to face me, but her eyes don’t meet mine right away, giving me time to stare at her beauty; admire her dark lashes, and the shadows resting above her cheekbones. “You’re asking an awful lot of unnecessary questions for your first day running a bourbon shop.” My words do the trick in forcing her to look up at me with her mesmerizing green eyes. “I want to be here, okay? Your father left you the distillery, and it’s yours to do whatever you want with, but until you ask me to leave, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thank you,” she says through a whisper.
“You won’t learn this stuff overnight, so be easy on yourself. Notes are good, but you’ll figure it all out with time,” I offer, knowing I might have picked things up a little quicker because of my experience working at the warehouse with Pops, but she’s smart, she’ll get it all down quickly.
“I hope I’m making the right decision. I don’t want to be the reason this distillery fails either. I don’t know what’s right or wrong,” she says.
There is no way for me to respond to her statements with sound advice because I’m not inside her head and I don’t know what level of emotion she’s enduring. She’s putting her career on hold and it’s hard to tell what her motivation is. Is she trying to heal a wound or start a new life endeavor in memory of her dad? I can’t imagine switching gears in every facet of life as abruptly as she has this past month. Although, I guess I have a history of doing the same thing.
“If you follow your heart, it will be the right decision. That’s what I think.”
It doesn’t take much for tears to fall, or the heavy breaths that follow. I don’t know how she has been handling her grief, but it’s obvious that she hasn’t gotten to the other side of it.
“Every time I think my heart is hurting a little less, the pain comes back with a vengeance,” she cries softly.
I pull her into my chest, much like I did at the church during the funeral service, and I stroke the back of her head. Melody’s arms loop around my back, and she clenches her fist while holding onto me. There is no physical space between our bodies, and no emotional space between my thoughts of consoling her and devoting myself completely to a relationship that was cut short when we were younger.,Maybe all she needs is a hug—a friend, someone’s shoulder to lean on, and I will be that, but I want so much more.
Minutes pass as I search for the right words to say. “You know. The last time we were standing here, in this exact spot,” I begin, pulling back a few inches to study her gleaming eyes. I run the side of my finger beneath her lashes to dry the remaining tears, then sweep my thumb across her cheek.
“I know,” she replies, resting her face against my chest. “I wish I could turn back time.”
I would not turn back the time, not if someone paid me to. I’m here, and it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. I can feel it in my bones. I had to go through the last ten years to find my way back to this moment … this place, and I won’t leave again without a fight.
Melody lifts her gaze to meet mine, and the connection is electrifying. My heart pounds because there is only one thing I want to do—it’s what I need to do. I don’t want to cross a line, or move too fast with her heart so fragile, but maybe this is what she needs right now too. She would have already turned away if she wasn’t thinking the same thoughts that I am.
Slowly, I lean down and brush the side of my nose against hers, pausing before letting our lips touch in case she makes a last-minute decision to pull away. Her arms tighten around my back, letting me know it’s all right, and I do what I have wanted to do for so long; kissing her as if every day of the last ten years have been torturous and painful without her. She is all I need to feel happy again. As her lips melt into mine, the taste of mint from her tongue, and the scent of peach in her hair are intoxicating. I’ve never been a big believer in fate but this kiss is not just any kiss. It’s so much more. It’s the answer to every question I have ever had—why I haven’t been able to find happiness, why I always feel this hole in my heart, and why we both ended up here at this exact place at this exact time. She is the answer to everything.
With the thoughts in my head moving quicker than they should, I explore her lips with curiosity, tasting her top lip, then her bottom lip, and everything in between until I need air.
I inch away, wishing we could stay like this forever. Just as it did years ago, I feel like my entire life has changed in an instant. “That kiss has been bottled up inside of me and aging for quite a while,” I whisper.
Melody’s lips curl up, accenting her adorable dimples—it’s the genuine smile I remember, not the fake one she’s been forcing across her face to fool everyone into thinking she’s okay. This one’s the real deal and it makes my heart happy to know that I just put it there. “If a kiss can bring a smile to your face, I have no problem filling that role in your life until you learn how to smile on your own again.” I comb my fingers through her hair, running my knuckles down the side of her warm cheek.
She presses her teeth into her bottom lip as if trying to hide the smile I have waited so long to see. “I might be okay with this,” she says.
With all of the difficulties both of us have endured, it’s amazing, because for the first time in a very long time things feel better than they ever have. I don’t know where we go from here, but I hope she wants to go there with me. I would do just about anything for her to take the next step and move forward in a new direction, one where we are together and can allow our wounds to heal.
