7. Sarah
Chapter 7
Sarah
The quiet of my home was doing nothing for the thoughts that kept running through my mind. I rolled over and checked my phone on my nightstand.
Eleven twenty-three. Ugh. I had to get up in just over five hours, but I’d already been rolling around for the past two hours with no success of feeling even an inkling of fatigue.
I grabbed my phone.
Are you awake?
Three dots appeared in the lower left of the screen.
Deacon
Yup. Just working on the cabin.
Can I come over? I need a beer.
Sure. Just drive straight out to the cabin. It hasn’t rained in a while so you should be able to make it over the hills without a problem.
Okay. See you soon.
I closed my car door and looked up at the moon hanging brightly in the sky. Countless stars were shining down on me and I wished I had chosen a home where I could see them the way I could tonight. My house was everything I dreamed of on the inside. A bright white kitchen with plenty of space for me to make a mess. The living room was cozy with a large hearth where I watched the flames of fire dance on sleepless nights. But the street lights in my neighborhood made it nearly impossible to see the stars at night.
A chill settled over me and I wrapped my coat tightly around my middle before heading toward the cabin. A faint light shone inside and I could hear the sound of a hammer pulling something apart. Careful to miss the rotten floorboards on the porch, I hopped around them and clung to the doorknob as I teetered on the one good plank right in front of the door.
“You sure you shouldn’t be working on the front porch first?” I asked as I swung the door open, seeing Deacon on my left pulling wood panels off the wall. I wondered how the hell he was shirtless with the temperature being in the low sixties tonight, but then I noticed the glint of sweat shining from his skin under the work light.
He wrapped gloved hands around the wooden frame and tugged. Dust flew everywhere as the piece came loose and he tossed it onto a pile of them on the floor. Waving my hand in front of my face, I tried to keep the dust particles away from me but ended up hacking up a lung anyway.
“Sorry,” he grunted before leaning over to turn on the standing fan next to him. “Come stand over here. The fan will keep the dust away from you.”
I made my way over to stand next to him and the fan while he grabbed a beer from the cooler on the kitchen counter. As his arm stretched across, I noticed a brutal scar that ran from his right collarbone down over his pectoral muscle and under his ribcage area. The skin was tight and puckered with peaks and valleys. It looked like a burn and I’d only seen it once before when we had a party at the lake a few years back.
“Thank you,” I said as he twisted off the top and handed me the bottle, distracting me from the thoughts of his scar.
I took a swig as I looked around the small space. The kitchen was to my left. The vinyl countertops were stained an unfortunate shade of yellow and most of the edges were peeling away. There were two empty spaces where the fridge and oven should have been and most of the tiles on the backsplash were cracked .
The rest of the place was fairly empty except for a small fireplace on the wall next to the back door.
“Um, where’s the bathroom?”
“The original owners never put in plumbing even after the first renovation. There was an outhouse next to it, but I think one of the winter storms did it in because it was only a pile of broken wood when I bought the place. I’m going to get someone to come out to put in plumbing and then I’ll build a small bathroom in that corner.” He pointed to the opposite corner.
“And you’re doing all this to turn it into an Airbnb right?”
“Yup. Badger Creek has a ton of great fly fishing. I figured this could be a good way to share a little more of our town and culture.”
Deacon didn’t grow up in Pebble Brook Falls like most of its residents, but he’d found a home here and I was thankful for it. We’d become good friends. The kind where there was little pressure to be anything but ourselves. And the fact that he loved our little town as much as I did made me happy he’d found peace here after being in the military and working as a firefighter.
“I think that’s a great idea, Deacon. Is there anything I can help with tonight?”
“Nah. I was just wrapping up. Wanna go sit by the creek?”
“Sure!”
He grabbed the cooler and his beer while I held the back door open for him. The steps leading to the back open area were just as precarious as the front porch, but I managed to get down them without breaking a leg.
I took a seat in the oversized Adirondack chair next to Deacon’s on the small dock built along the edge of Badger Creek.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
I blew out a long breath, the moisture clouding in front of my face. “We had family dinner tonight. The first time in years.”
“I take it things didn’t go so well.”
“Yeah. My parents basically insisted that I was leading my cousin, Stephanie, down the wrong path because she decided to forego college and spend another year learning the ropes with me in the kitchen. They said that I was pushing her down the wrong path.”
Deacon whistled. “Damn. That’s a pretty harsh statement to make. It’s not like you gave her a bag of heroin or something.”
“I might as well have. They’ve always looked down on people who don’t have savory professions.”
“I don’t get it. You’re not even thirty years old and you own a business. How is that not savory?”
“According to them owning a business without some kind of doctoral degree is risky and irresponsible. If I don’t have a title with fancy letters behind my name, I’m not good enough.” I spit out the words, feeling the flame of anger and resentment eat at my insides.
Deacon took a pull from his beer before resting the bottle on the armrest of the chair. He was silent for a few moments and then he asked, “Does it bother you?”
“Most of the time I think I manage it pretty well. Knowing that I’m nothing but a disappointment to them. Sometimes I think I imagined my entire childhood because I remember a time when they didn’t care what I was interested in. They never gave me doctor kit toy sets or anything like that.” I laughed to myself. “The ironic thing is that my mother actually gave me my first Easy Bake Oven for Christmas one year and now she can’t stand the thought of me being a pastry chef.
“I just want to live my life without judgment. I want to be free to make whatever decisions are right for me without feeling like I’m disappointing someone.”
The moonlight illuminated Deacon’s face and I could see the way his eyes narrowed slightly, like he wanted me to pay attention to what he was about to say. “There will never be a day on this Earth when you aren’t judged for what you do, Sarah. That’s the nature of being human. If you’re in the presence of someone else, they will have their thoughts about how you live your life, the actions you take, and the words you say. The only thing that’s in your control is whether or not you allow other people to dictate how you feel.”
“I don’t think I let them dictate how I feel a lot of the time.”
“Yes you do,” he said firmly.
I looked away from him, watching the churning water rushing over the rocks. Was Deacon right? Did I spend too much mental energy taking in what others thought of me ?
As I thought back to the past year, I realized there were a lot of moments when I felt upset about my mother intervening on the biggest baking account I’d ever had. Any time I heard a customer complaining to Stephanie about one of my baked goods, I took it like a bullet to the heart. And I always made sure to do my hair and makeup before leaving for work, even if I was bone tired and needed the extra sleep.
“Okay, yeah,” I said, feeling deflated. “I guess I do take on people’s judgments and let them impact how I feel.”
“What’re you going to do about it?”
“Since you’re so smart and insightful, why don’t you tell me?” I raised a brow at him and he snickered.
“Well, I think you’re doing good with the bakery to start. But what’s something else you want to do? Something that would be just for you?”
I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought about it. The very first thing that came to mind was Ranger Adams and his delectable lips. God how I wished I could kiss those lips and feel his hands run through my hair as he pushed me against a wall and…
“Sarah?” Deacon’s voice cut through my thoughts.
I cleared my throat. “I think there might be one thing.”
He looked at me expectantly. Heat crawled up my neck. “You have to promise not to make fun of me.”
He bobbed his head back and forth like he was playing with the idea. “Mmm. Okay. Fine. I promise not to make fun of you.”
I swallowed against the knot in my throat. “I think there might be a guy I’m interested in asking out. Or maybe not ask out, but I want him to ask me out.”
“Who?”
“Ranger Adams,” I whispered like my mother might hear his name all the way across town.
“He came to my bonfire two summers back, right”
I nodded.
“He seems like a standup guy. Why wait around for him to ask you out? Just do it yourself?”
“That wouldn’t be weird?”
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows at me. “I thought the whole point of this exercise was to not care what others thought.”
I groaned. “Why do you have to be so obnoxious?”
He shrugged. “It’s what I’m good at. But seriously, if you like the guy stop fucking around and ask him out.”
“Just ask him out,” I repeated, mulling over the words in my mind to get used to the idea of them. “Yeah,” I said after a few moments. “I can do that.”
“It’s settled then.”
“So, I just go up to him the next time I see him and ask him out on a date?”
“Don’t think too hard on it or you’ll talk yourself out of it. You’ve made up your mind. This is what you want. Now, do it.”
“Okay.” I felt my head bob up and down as my mind tried to make sense of what I just agreed to. “Not going to overthink it.”
“Exactly. ”
The look on Deacon’s face told me he was sure of the decision I made and there was no reason for me to think he’d support me doing something stupid, so I let it rest. Ranger Adams was the man I wanted and if I could go against my parents and build an entire business from the ground up then there was no reason why I shouldn’t allow myself to pursue Ranger.
I settled back in the chair feeling at peace with the decision. Deacon opened the cooler and grabbed himself another beer.
“How’re you still shirtless? It’s freezing.”
“It’s in the sixties,” he deadpanned.
“Yes. Us normal folk consider that cold.”
“Compared to the Middle East desert in the middle of winter, this is nothing.”
As he leaned back, my gaze found the scar on his chest. “Are you ever going to tell me the story behind that scar?”
“Nope.” He took a long pull from his beer.
Deacon never really talked about his time in the service unless he was around Johnny. Even then, they usually just made jokes about the other branches and poked fun at one another. They never talked about the pain of it all—at least not around me. So, I respected his privacy and found comfort in knowing that I had a friend in Deacon. I knew he valued that just as much as I did and the best part was that there was no pressure to talk about things we didn’t want to. We could just be.
And so we spent the rest of the night sitting side-by-side staring up at the sky and at the rushing water below.