Chapter 7
Nick
She tips her head up and scowls at me, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Knock it off with the nickname.”
“Why? You used to like it if I remember correctly,” I respond with a smile.
“Well I hate it now so I’d appreciate it if you called me Noelle. Actually”—she catches herself and makes a face—“I’d prefer if you called me nothing.”
“Yeah, you tell him girl,” Eve barks. When I look at her closely, I see she’s wielding a very large knife and eying me like she’s about to throw it at my head.
“What’s with the knife?” I ask before taking a defensive step backwards. She’s hardly five foot three but Eve Barns isn’t someone you want to cross.
Noelle turns around to look at her friend before turning back to me with a smirk. “She’s using it to butcher tonight’s dinner. According to her, we’re having testicles.”
My eyes go wide and shoot back to Eve who gives me a ‘come at me’ look. Swallowing the lump that’s formed in my throat, I cover myself with my hands.
“What are you doing in my inn, Nick?”
Dragging my eyes away from the cleaver Eve is holding, I finally look back at Noelle and clear my throat.
“Uh, I, uh, I wanted to talk with you. Actually, I wanted to offer to get you a fresh cup of coffee since the last time I saw you, I caused you to drop yours on your shoes.”
She raises a brow at me. “You want to take me to get a coffee?”
“I’d offer to replace your shoes if I thought you’d let me,” I add.
Curling her nose up, she gives me a once over and makes me wait a painfully long time for my answer.
“No,” she finally says as a full sentence. She starts to walk towards the front of the inn and I follow close behind her. Her two sidekicks aren’t far behind us.
“Come on, Noelle. Let me take you to get coffee, I want to talk to you. Please.” I reach for her arm and spin her around so she has to look at me. “It’s only coffee.”
I see her look towards her friends who are behind my back. When she makes a confused face and shakes her head I turn around to look at them. When I do, they suddenly stand straight up like they’ve been caught and Eve scowls at me again.
I turn around to look at Noelle and I have to stop myself from brushing away the stray piece of hair that’s fallen in front of her face.
As I wait for her to respond, I count the three small freckles that make a triangle just below her left eye.
I remember when I would kiss the spot whenever I saw her before giving her a proper kiss hello.
The things you do when you’re young and in love.
The thing I wish I could do right fucking now if I didn’t think Eve would filet me like a fish if I tried.
“It’s only coffee,” I repeat.
She takes a deep breath and looks up at me.
“Fine. But I’m getting the largest size they have and all the extra toppings so it’s a ten dollar drink. It’s the least you can do for making me drop mine last week.”
“I’ll buy you two drinks if it will make you happy,” I say as she reaches into the office space for her coat. What she doesn’t know is I’d do literally anything to make her happy after I royally fucked things up between us.
When she has her coat, she looks towards the other two who are still watching us. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Noey—” Eve warns.
“It’s only coffee,” she says, cutting off her friend. “Belle, you’re in charge until I get back.”
“You got it. Have a good time.” Belle smiles between the two of us.
Before I know it, Eve has broken free of Belle’s grasp and is pointing a finger in my face. “I want to remind you that I have an entire set of state of the art, professional-grade knives at my disposal. Understand?”
She’s standing on her tip-toes to meet my eye level.
“Completely.”
She lifts the knife in her hand to the side of her face. “Don’t try me, Winters. I know where you live.”
“Well then it’s a good thing for me then that I’m not staying at home while I’m here then, isn’t it?”
I feel a hand around my wrist and let it pull me away.
“We’re leaving, goodbye, you two. Eve, no more theatrics in the kitchen please. I need you alive or else our agreement is off,” Noelle directs as she pulls me through the front door.
“If you aren’t back in an hour I’m sending a search party!” Eve calls out before Noelle can shut the door behind us.
Pushing out a short breath, she looks up at me with a shy smirk. “She’s only a little dramatic.”
“She’s just looking out for you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not some fragile girl anymore. I don’t need anyone looking out for me,” she mumbles as we head into town.
Many of the trees are starting their annual shed and some of the dried up leaves that have already fallen crunch under our feet as we walk. November is only another week or so away and the temperature is starting to reflect that fact. She pulls her coat tighter around herself and shivers.
“Are you cold?” I ask while instinctively reaching an arm over to try and warm up her back. When she flinches at the gesture and moves away from me, I retract my hand quickly. “Sorry, old habits.”
“It’s fine,” she mutters, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. “And I’m not cold, my body is starting to adjust to the colder weather. That’s all.”
“It is that time of year. End of October into early November always was your adjustment period. It’s also your favorite time of the year to dress, if I remember correctly. ‘Fall clothes are the best clothes of the entire year,’ you used to say.”
She stops suddenly and looks at me with a blank expression.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
I shrug and can’t help but smile. “You’re a hard person to forget, Noelle.”
Her face falls into a scowl, almost like she’s questioning something I’ve said, before she continues to walk down the sidewalk.
We walk the rest of the way in silence until we reach the coffee shop.
Thankfully this time it’s a little less crowded than when we ran into one another last week.
We order our drinks—she gets the largest and most fancy option available like she promised—and move to sit in the corner.
The shop is small and decorated with photos of personified pastries and coffee cups.
Sitting in front of the large window that’s been adorned with pink and green striped curtains, you can see the entire town from here.
With Halloween being next week, signs with trick-or-treating information and costume contests are plastered to light posts and in the windows of some of the businesses.
She has her eyes fixated out the window, taking in the tiny town we both grew up in as if she’s looking at it for the first time.
That was something I always admired about her—how she could see something for the hundredth time yet still see so much wonder and joy in it.
When she takes a sip of her coffee my eyes fall to her lips and how they wrap around the brim of the cup.
“What are you staring at?” she scoffs, scowling at me from across the table.
Blinking quickly, I bring my eyes back to hers. “Nothing.”
Her jaw tightens and she brushes a hair out of her face. “So if you aren’t staying with your parents, where are you staying?”
“I’m staying at Chris’s place, in one of the rental cabins they have for tourists. Cabin 2B,” I explain, bringing my own cup to my lips and sipping on my coffee.
“You’re paying him for your stay, right?” she asks. “Because I can see him trying to let you stay for free and knowing how well you’re doing for yourself, that would be cruel. The Wyte’s need the business these days.”
“You keepin’ tabs on me, sugar?” I tease, pulling the corner of my lips back.
“One, I told you to stop calling me that. And two, your grandmother is best friends with my grandmother. They have a meal at the inn at least four times a month and pull me into their conversations every time. You’re bound to come up in conversation every now and then,” she replies with a heavy dose of snark in her voice.
“Especially if you’re asking about me,” I tease.
“I promise you, I haven’t asked anyone about you in years,” she says flatly. The air between us grows thick once more and she takes another pull of her coffee. “What do you want, Nick?”
I stare at her for a beat and know that if I’m going to say what I need to say, it’s now or never.
“I wanted to apologize.”
“You already did,” she says, lifting her cup of coffee up and shaking her head at me.
“No, not for last week. For, well, for how I left things…” I say, trailing off at the end. She sets her coffee down and wraps both hands around it like the paper cup is some sort of shield. Her eyes fall to her lap.
“Oh.”
I set my cup down in front of me and sit up a little straighter. “I meant to reach out, to check in, but after I made it to Boston and got settled, I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right. Especially after your grandmother told me you didn’t want to see me.”
The sting of having to leave Evergreen without saying goodbye is still fresh after so many years.
I know I was the one who broke us up but I still wanted to be able to say goodbye before I left for school.
Knowing that she was home and she told her grandma to send me away broke something in me that day.
“Why would I want to see you? After what you did, after what you said? What made you think I would want to see you again, Nick?” she asks, her eyes piercing straight through me like dual daggers. Behind the bite in her voice, though, is pain.
I chew my lower lip. “I don’t know. I guess when you’re hardly eighteen and your prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed it’s hard to make logical decisions, which is why I’m here now, to apologize. For what I said and…for what I did.”
She looks away and pins her eyes on the ceiling, blinking a few times. Her way of pushing back the tears that are threatening to spill over the edge. Clearing her throat, she grabs her coffee and takes another drink.
“Well, thank you. I didn’t need your apology but I guess it shows some sort of character growth which you’d hope to see in a man after nearly twelve years away.”
I chuckle at her statement. “I did try to do some growing up while I was gone. And I really am sorry, Noelle. For how I left things, for disappearing. For all of it. You never deserved that.”
As I speak, I realize that I needed to say these words almost as much as she seems to have needed to hear them.
I was an ass for leaving her like I did and an even bigger ass for never trying to apologize sooner.
We had something special, something magical, and I went and screwed it all up because I got scared.
Now that I’m back in Evergreen, though, I want to try and make things right with us and this is the first step to making that happen.
“Well,” she says after an awkward silence. “I should get back to the inn. I’m sure Eve has cut off one of her fingers by now.”
She pushes up from the table and I reach to take her hand in mine. Her eyes fall to where we are connected but she doesn’t pull her hand away.
“I really am sorry, Noelle. I hope you know that.”
“I—I know.”
“And I hope you know that I’m here if you need anything.
I mean that. Anything you need, I’m here for you.
But I won’t bother you anymore while I’m home, unless you come to me first, of course.
I just didn’t want things to be weird between us since I’m going to be here for the next couple of months. Small town and all that.”
She pulls her hand away finally and shoves it into her pocket. Her cheeks have a faint hint of pink to them as she looks at me.
“Thanks, Nick. For the coffee,” she clarifies before turning away and beelining for the door.
I watch her go through the front window and disappear down the sidewalk.
When she’s gone, my eyes focus on a figure standing on the opposite side of the street.
It’s looking directly back at me with its arms crossed in front of it and a signature scowl I’d recognize anywhere.
Storming across the street, Chris comes and glares at me through the window having seen who I was just with.
Fuck me.