Page 12 of Autumn on My Mind

This good-smelling stranger just caught me sniffing him.

Why did I do that? Who sniffs a total stranger, anyway?

If I leave my shoes here, I could make a run for it. My dress might fly up a bit, but that would be a small price to pay, wouldn’t it? If it meant I could get out of here right now?

The ideas only flit halfway through my head before the guy reaches for his hat and pulls it off of his face, dropping it into his lap and turning to face me more fully.

Green eyes. Long lashes. Light brown hair, mussed from the hat.

And my humiliation goes from a river to a flood as recognition hits me, because I know this person.

“Have we met?” the guy says, even as his name is already front and center in my mind.

This is Dominic Harper. Dominic Harper from Autumn Ridge, several years older than me, one of the most handsome guys I’ve ever met.

Of course, I use the word “met” very loosely. I’m not sure he knew I existed up until this moment; our relationship was one where he passed my locker and I watched moon-eyed.

He was never the popular guy or the ladies’ man or the rich kid—I think he was too introverted for that kind of attention. He was the one who looked like he could lift a bale of hay over each shoulder with no problem. Like he belonged behind the wheel of a tractor, muscles flexing, sweat on his brow, undeniably manly and strong⁠—

Stop it, I tell myself firmly as heat rises in my cheeks. I can feel them burning, and I sort of wish they would catch fire and erase this moment from history.

“Were you smelling me?” Dominic says now. His brows are twisted low in confusion, his lips braced in a frown, but there’s genuine curiosity in his eyes.

I think he recognizes me.

“Sorry,” I say. The word pushes out in a little squeak, so I clear my throat. “Sorry.” Then I straighten up and try to act normal. “I was smelling you, which was weird and inappropriate and it won’t happen again⁠—”

“Oh!” He cuts me off with a snap of his fingers, his brows jumping. “You’re the Berkeley girl. Right?”

“Reese Berkeley,” I say as I die inside. “Yes. That’s me.”

I might change my major and study time travel in hopes that I can go back and fix this situation. Stop myself from sitting next to Dominic Harper on this stupid metal bench that clearly didn’t allow him to sleep deeply enough.

He nods and rights himself, sitting up instead of slouching. I have to look upward to meet his eyes once he does, but thankfully he doesn’t seem annoyed or upset. His expression does fall a bit, though, something shadowed rising in his eyes.

“I was sorry to hear about your dad,” he says. “He was a great guy.”

My dad. I swallow the sudden knot in my throat and hum my thanks, because even though it’s been a couple years, I still can’t talk about it or think about it too much without crying. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop missing him. I delayed my freshman year a few semesters to give myself time to fall apart, but here I am now, about to start my sophomore year, and I still can’t imagine a world in which I don’t feel his absence so keenly it hurts.

“How did you know him?” I ask Dominic instead, like I don’t already know that he came to the shop sometimes.

Good grief, I tell my teenage self. Were you a stalker or what? You should not know this much about someone who didn’t remember your name.

Teenage Reese was a daydreamer. I like to think that while I still daydream, I now also have a healthier sense of boundaries.

Sure enough, when Dominic answers me, he says what I expect. “I was in and out of your dad’s store a lot,” he says with a shrug. He plays with his baseball hat, curling and uncurling the lid in a motion that’s clearly been repeated a thousand times. “I did a bunch of fixing and handyman stuff to earn some extra money in high school, and I still do some when I’m home in the summers.”

“I think I remember you now,” I say in an absolutely shameless lie. But it’s not like I can tell him I had a crush on him in school, in that dreamy, it-will-never-happen sort of way that teenage girls experience. “You were a couple years ahead of me. You guys did the senior prank with the fish in the vents.”

A small smile tugs over Dominic’s lips. “Our legacy lives on, I see.”

“It does…” I say, drawing the words out. “In the girl’s bathroom.”

The smile vanishes. “What?”

“In the girl’s bathroom off the cafeteria,” I say with a nod. “It still smelled like fish when I was there.”

Now his eyes narrow. “It did not.”