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“Yeah, I really do,” I said. “This one time, I was pretty sure that my parents had gotten me a Barbie Dream House for Christmas. I had been asking for one for Christmas, and there was a present that was exactly the right size. I started begging them, weeks before Christmas, to let me just open one present early, just that one. And eventually, on December twentieth or something, they caved. I opened it up, and sure enough, there it was, the Barbie Dream House. But then, on Christmas day, when I opened all my other presents, it was just a big let down, because the best thing about Christmas, I’d already used up.”

“Yeah, that’s it exactly,” he said. “So, we should just be careful. I think about kissing you all the time. Constantly. But I think we should wait.”

“Definitely,” I said, nodding. “Yeah, if we wait, it’ll make it better. All the waiting will mean it builds up, and then it’ll be more intense.”

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Me either,” he said. “It’ll be our first kiss.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, liking that we’d do this together, him and me.

“What’s a good age for our first kiss?” He looked off over the river. There were lights distant docks, rippling bits of brightness over the water. It was dark and warm and beautiful. I was close to him. Everything was amazing in that moment.

“Sixteen,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Good.”

“But you’re older than me,” I said. “So, when I’m fifteen—”

“No, we’ll wait until you’re sixteen,” he said.

“But fifteen is fine,” I said. “Sixteen is… that’s three years.”

“I want it to be perfect for you,” he said, very serious. “I want to do everything right for you. I want to make you really happy. I want…” He searched my gaze, looking helpless. “It would kill me to disappoint you, Leona.”

“You don’t disappoint me,” I breathed. “You’re more than I ever could have dreamed of. I must disappoint you, though.”

“No.” This was vehement. “You’re perfect.”

I knew I wasn’t. But it felt good to hear him say things like that.

And we definitely did not make it three years before we kissed.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE PRESENT, I swam back to the dock, leaving Vincent out there in his canoe, and I wrapped myself in a towel and went back to the cabin. My dad’s car was there now.

He hugged me right in the doorway, even though I was sopping wet. He said we should go out for dinner to Roma’s, because he had been caught up with the goat business and couldn’t get to the grocery store.

I said that sounded nice, so I showered and changed, and we drove in his car down to the old town square. It was right in the middle of Riverside, which was very close to the Red Moon River, up on a hillside, looking down on it, in fact. The square had been built back in the 1600s, before cars, so it was narrow, anyway, and it hadn’t even been easy to navigate for modern vehicles. Probably twenty years ago, they’d closed down the main streets to cars and made this part of town into a pedestrian-only area. You could walk the narrow streets here, do some shopping on foot in various craft stores—it was super touristy, made for the people who would come and stay in the cabins on the river in the summer.

This was where all the bars and restaurants in town were, though. Pretty much any other place of business (except for the car repair shops and the big grocery store on the outskirts of town) had not been able to make it if they’d been located anywhere besides the old town square.

Riverside wasn’t a big town, and its lifeblood was the tourism industry. The other thing that kept it going was community, and that was really facilitated by the wolf pack. Packs took it very seriously to take care of their own. It was like an extended family.

And it wasn’t all handouts or anything like that. If you were down on your luck, the wolf pack would find you a job, they would set you up with a place to live, they would arrange for people to take you to your doctor appointments. Everyone just assumed that this was what a pack did to protect each other.

I missed it in the city sometimes, I had to say, but in the city, there was less need for these sorts of things. You didn’t need a ride to the doctor when you could ride the metro. You didn’t need people to find you jobs when jobs were plentiful in the city.

Roma’s Brick Oven was a pizza joint that also served pasta and other Italian food. They had a brick oven where they baked all the pizzas and made their own bread. The food was good, and it was briskly busy there, not too crowded, but most of the tables and booths were full.

My father went to the bathroom and didn’t come back for a long time. Eventually, I spied him across the room, leaning over a high-top table, talking to some other locals from town. That was the way of it here in Riverside. Everyone knew everyone, and it was common for people to stop in the middle of anything and have a conversation. Hell, sometimes, you’d be driving down the road and two cars would be parked right in the middle, windows down, just chewing the fat with each other.

You could hit your horn all you wanted, they’d take their time saying their goodbyes, even if they were holding up traffic.

It was a small town. It had its charm. It had its drawbacks.