Chapter 5 #2
What’s that? he typed back. I can’t hear you above the sounds of bacon being chomped and my fluffy down pillow being plumped.
You’ll get plenty plump eating bacon. You really ready to go home to Lovetown?
“Luview,” Dennis muttered to himself.
Hell, no, Dennis texted back. My mom is sending me texts warning me about driving on snow. She’s treating me like I’m ten.
You drove at ten? Badass.
Shut up, Rafe.
Don’t make fun of your ma. She’s a nice one, Rafe chided him. When his parents had visited him in Germany a few years ago, they’d met Rafe. Insisted on taking them out to dinner at a biergarten. His dad picked up the tab.
Both of them were colonels. Dennis probably made more than his parents.
Still, even Rafe knew not to argue with Dean Luview.
Who said she isn’t nice? She is. She’s also nosy. Overbearing. Hovering.
That’s called love, Dennis. You know. An emotion you lack.
I have plenty of love in me.
Only thing I’ve ever seen you love is every stray animal that comes across your path. Bet you picked one up last night.
“Oh, man,” he muttered as he stabbed eggs onto his fork and ate them quickly. Tempted to tell Rafe about Ana, Dennis held back, knowing that was a genie he couldn’t shove back in the bottle once it was out.
Rafe would tease him mercilessly. Grill him endlessly for details. Probably search databases to find every detail about Ana.
And then team up with Dennis’s mother to make him find her.
Rafe was an old-fashioned romantic. The guy could pick off a sharpshooter from 700 feet with a clean shot, but he also read Nicholas Sparks novels for fun, and thought 50 First Dates was the best movie ever.
A study in contrasts, he was Dennis’s best friend through thick and thin. Which meant Dennis wasn’t going to say a word just yet. Once your best buddy knew about a woman, it was fodder for teasing.
Forever.
Found a cat in a dumpster last night, Dennis confessed, which he knew would make Rafe whoop with laughter.
In response, he got a string of laughing emojis.
Only you, man. Only you would pick up a cat and not some nice–
His next word started with P and was a euphemism for cat.
Maybe I did that, too, Dennis shot back, hitting Send before he realized what his temper was doing.
His phone instantly rang.
Not Rafe.
Mom.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Dennis!” When Deanna Luview was happy, she gushed, like a geyser of love. “I can’t believe this is really happening! I get my boy home!”
“Been home plenty of times before, Mom.”
“Not for forever!”
He sighed. “Are you calling to tell me that for the seventeenth time, or is there something else important to tell me?”
“It’s always important! We’re so excited. Harriet made this beautiful banner to hang on your porch. It says Welcome Home, Uncle Dennis.”
“Original.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry. Let me guess. It’s covered in glitter?”
“Of course. And Kylie made you her special unicorn muffins!”
“Edible glitter.”
“Yes! How’d you know?”
He didn’t have the heart to explain that Colleen poked fun at Kylie’s glitter obsession, so he just replied with, “Lucky guess.”
“It’s so sweet living here, Denny.” The old nickname made him feel two feet shorter and a hundred and twenty pounds lighter. “Everyone has coffee together in the mornings. We run to the store for each other. Harriet gets so much attention. Even the animals benefit.”
That made his heart sing.
“Mel is going to be so happy to have you helping her, too!”
Once all his retirement paperwork was in process, Dennis had reached out to Mel Chassi, the woman who ran the animal sanctuary in Luview, Maine. Her ex-husband was Darren Duarte, the local veterinarian, and the family was interwoven with the town.
“Glad to work with her,” he said. “Strictly volunteer. My time learning the tree business is my highest priority, Mom.”
“Dad and I are just so thrilled! You cannot fathom how happy you’ve made him. I mean, Kell’s been working with him since he came back from D.C., but…”
“I know. We’ve talked about this before. Kell wants to focus on his poison ivy business.”
“And we’ll have lots of family dinners. Kell, Moore, and Luke can help you renovate your cabin. It’s going to be so much fun!”
“Mom. I’m sold. You don’t have to convince me.”
She laughed. “Some part of me thinks I do.”
“I’m checking out soon. Headed to the dealership straight away. Be home around two, maybe closer to three if there’s a lot of traffic.”
“Your truck is ready?”
“That’s what the dealer says.” He smirked, though she couldn’t see it. “And don’t worry, Mom. It has brand new tires. I won’t slide off the road.”
“Don’t joke about it! Colleen nearly died.”
“I know. Her accident was terrible. Doesn’t mean I’ll get into one, too.”
“But you’ve been living without snow for so long?”
“I see plenty of snow, Mom. I just don’t talk about it.”
“You mean you can’t talk about it.”
“Same thing.”
“Well, young man, that’s all over. Working with us at Luview Tree Service means talking about all the work, all the time. No secrets!”
“Governments aren’t going to topple because I tell you about a termite infestation in an oak tree on the common, Mom. Or tree roots invading the sewer pipe to the coffee shop.”
“The world might end if that happened! What would poor Rachel do if she couldn’t get her daily Love Bomb!”
“What’s a Love Bomb?”
The question triggered a sharp inhale.
“It’s a coffee drink Rachel practically invented, and Reef put it on the menu.”
Every time someone in his family mentioned a Luview local, his brain short circuited for a moment while he mentally morphed people to their current age.
In Dennis’s mind, Reef Matthews was a dinky little kid in an oversized Little League shirt, regardless of the fact that he’d seen the pierced and tatted-up dude a few years ago on a trip home.
“I’ll have to try it,” Dennis said slowly as he finished his second cup of coffee.
Ana’s breakfast treat.
He’d much rather taste her.
“Rachel will make you.”
While he knew Rachel Hart had moved to Luview some time ago, in his mind, she was brand new to the family. All sorts of new realities would hit when he got home.
In just a few hours.
“Sounds great, Mom, but I really need to get packing.”
“Having breakfast with that woman from the picture last night?”
Although he knew her intention was good, the question was a gut punch.
“Uh, no. That was just some woman in the background.”
“Oh.” Deanna’s disappointment was clear. “Well, maybe you’ll find love right here in your hometown.”
“Mom.”
“What? A mother can’t hope for her son to settle down and be happy?”
“Mom.”
“Don’t take that tone with me!”
They laughed together before he hung up.
And stabbed the rest of the food, shoveling it in until he was full.
The shower was hot, steamy, and exactly what he needed to transition between last night and his departure. Washing away all traces of Ana was both miserable and liberating.
She didn’t want anything more than what they had last night.
That had to be enough.
Dressing in layers, he prepared himself for the drive north, a turtleneck under a merino wool sweater and socks from the same company, nice and warm. While much of his career had been spent in warmer climates, he was still a Mainer, born and bred.
Adapting to the snow wouldn’t be hard.
Packing was a quick process and soon, he found himself scanning the room for any stragglers.
Nope. All his items were secured.
Time to check out.
Unable to help himself, he grabbed the pillow on Ana’s side of the bed, taking in a deep breath, a trace of her perfume still there. Or at least, it was there in his imagination, elicited by hope.
As he tossed the pillow back on the bed, he squared his shoulders and laughed at himself as he pulled a bill from his wallet and left it as a housekeeping tip.
Maybe Ana was the transition.
A bridge of sorts between Colonel Dennis Luview and plain old Dennis, the tree guy in Love You, Maine.
Thinking of her that way felt better than viewing their night together through a lens of rejection.
No one else was in the hallway as he rolled his carry-on to the elevators, housekeeping carts standing outside open doors, women inside vacant rooms chattering about sheets and soaps.
Between two pairs of elevators at the end of the hall was a section that was like an observation deck, so you could watch the glass elevators run.
Looking down, he had a moment of vertigo before he fully oriented.
Glass capsules shuttling people in a vertical line made him ponder the engineers who designed it all.
Thousands of people pushed through space daily.
Plenty of them probably had bruised egos like him.
One of the elevators was way up, close to the top floor, and he watched it descend. As it began to slow at the floor just above his, he waited patiently. This one would be for him. Looked empty.
Like his bed this morning.
“Whatever,” he muttered aloud to himself. “At least you had last night. More than you deserve, bud.”
The rejection still stung, though. He’d thought there was more than just a good shag to what he had with Ana.
Guess not.
Then the elevator arrived and he realized that maybe, just maybe, life was giving him a second chance.
Because it wasn’t empty, after all. It had an occupant.
One who was about to get his undivided, perfect attention.