12. James
JAMES
Everyone flocked to the Green Mountain State in fall and winter, drawn by the foliage and ski resorts, but nothing beat a Vermont summer.
The air smelled like lilacs and fresh cut grass, and the fields were bright with dandelions and loud with crickets chirping and peepers tremolo-ing.
After five months of bitter-cold winter and two months of mud season, everyone was in a good mood, ready to seize the day in cut-off jeans and tank tops.
Well, everyone but Theo, who was just happy to have a proper kitchen to cook in. Without his bestie, Brady, to go “hiking” with, Theo reverted to being a homebody, preferring video games, cooking shows, and guitar riffs to nature.
But if you’re going to live indoors, you couldn’t ask for a better cage than Donna Wells’s lake house.
The place was gorgeous, a six-bedroom, seven-bath refurbished farmhouse.
She’d only spent one night here in the past two weeks, but that was all it took for her to fall in love with Theo.
She’d even put him in charge of outfitting the kitchen.
You’d never know the kid grew up with Goodwill frying pans by the way he shopped the Williams Sonoma catalog. The little shit spent almost five thousand dollars on a twenty-four-piece cookware set.
“It’s got a copper core,” he’d said.
The evening William Chapman was set to arrive, I came into the kitchen for a fresh beer and found Theo hunched over the oven.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m making bread.”
That much was obvious. But why? He’d already marinated enough chicken to feed an army.
“You do realize he’s not gonna murder you in your sleep if you don’t serve him a five-course meal every night, right?”
“You don’t know that.”
We’d already had this argument a hundred times. Over the past couple of weeks, Theo had read every article ever written about William Chapman and was convinced he was Satan reborn. He was positive the only reason William was coming to Vermont was to finish Derek off, and probably Ryan, too.
“He’s a kindergarten teacher, Theo, not a comic book villain.”
Theo scoffed. “That remains to be seen.”
In truth, I was just as nervous, though for different reasons. After the shitstorm Es and I’d unleashed on William, I owed the guy a summer to remember.