Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Charlotte
T he old diner had shut down at some point just after I’d left town, but fortunately, a new owner had revitalized it. Lovingly named Diner just like before, it had a warm, friendly feel. The menu had all the basics, but the little note at the top caught my eye. Menu rotates seasonally so be sure to check back soon!
My parents had raved about the food. Not to be a naysayer, but burgers and fries could rarely send me into raptures. That said, my mom and I had visited Rise & Shine for breakfast yesterday before working on my apartment and I’d eaten the best cinnamon roll bread of my life. I’d made some rather unladylike sounds that didn’t even begin to express the glory of Rise and Shine’s owner, Sadie Miller, and her baking prowess. I’d even made a mental note to suggest Jonas or Julian or someone try to steal her away and have her bake for the little European breakfast the hotel offered and maybe even recruit her to work in the kitchen when the restaurant reopened next year.
“Can I get you anything?” Catherine Hewett, my waitress and a familiar face as per the nature of a small town, asked.
“Oh, hey Catherine. Thanks for the water. I’ll wait for Cody before I order, though.”
“Good to see you, Charlotte. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said in that quiet, steady voice of hers.
She was shy. Shy, shy, painful shy, so the fact she was waitressing seemed odd. But she’d been a few years ahead of me in school, and I hadn’t seen her since I left. We weren’t exactly friends, just friendly in the way everyone in a small town was.
“Sorry I’m late,” Cody said as he slid into the bright red booth across from me.
I swallowed the water I’d planned to sip with a gulp, sputtered, and tried to regain my handle on the whole air-in-lungs situation.
Because Cody’s hair was wet where it was longer on top, his jaw unshaven likely since I’d last seen him. He wore a zip-down gray fleecy jacket and a T-shirt underneath—a Keller Accounting T-shirt that stretched across remarkably well-developed pecs.
“Uh, yeah. No problem.” Great start, Charlotte.
“You been here long?” He flipped open the menu on the table in front of him, skimmed the offerings, then shut it.
“No. Just a minute or two,” I said, tilting my own menu up just enough that I couldn’t see his chest. Why am I staring at his chest?
Thing was, I didn’t have to ask myself that. I knew. I’d always thought Cody was cute. My introverted best friend had been adorable and sweet and such a support for me. He’d had a gap between his teeth until braces started, and once they were off for good, he’d had one of those devastating smiles he never let anyone see because he’d gotten so used to hiding behind his closed lips.
But he’d never been quite my type . I mean, I would’ve dated him—I wished he’d ask me to prom more than once, but someone else beat him to it and I’d ended up with some decent boyfriends thanks to those dates. The guys I’d dated in high school tended to be the bulkier variety. Not to be contrary or anything. It just happened that way.
Whenever I’d made it home during college, we’d caught up. He’d gotten even taller our freshman year, and somehow looked thinner than ever. As years passed, he gained a little weight, but never bulk. He had a running build, very fit and almost wiry.
Now? He’d packed on muscles. Pounds and pounds of dense muscle, and I honestly hadn’t seen enough of him to know how much other than he filled out… everything. The shirt, his forearms where he’d pushed up his fleece, his dang neck even looked thicker. Not in a weird, woops, my traps ate my neck kind of way, but in a… a—I swallowed and closed the menu.
He sat with his head tilted slightly to the side like it always did when he was waiting for me to say whatever it was I had to say. I couldn’t exactly say, “You’ve really filled out,” but I did wonder. It wasn’t like he’d grown a potbelly. As far as I could tell, he still had that wiry athleticism, just a different version of it.
“So, you’re big now.”
He burst out laughing, one of his wide, loose laughs he normally reserved just for me. Or, years ago it’d been mostly mine. He wouldn’t have laughed like that in a crowded room for anything. When he leveled me with a pleased grin and ruddy cheeks, my heart flipped.
“Sorry, guess that was a little abrupt.”
“It’s true though. I outweigh the guy you used to know by quite a bit.” He notched his chin in Catherine’s direction when she set down a water for him.
We both ordered—he got a burger and fries, and what the heck, I did too. After living in Germany for the last year, Croatia a year before that, and Italy for the two prior, I hadn’t had a truly great American cheeseburger in a long time.
Or, if I’m being honest, in a few days. Because I will admit that I ate basically everything I’d been missing withing twenty-four hours of landing. But that’d been like… seventy-two hours by now.
Catherine left us with a promise that everything would be right out, and quiet settled between us. The clink of dishes and the low din of the other patrons filtered around us, but it didn’t feel awkward. At least it didn’t to me. It felt like a pause, a natural breath in a conversation that’d stretched over our entire lives.
“Is it weird?”
I raised one brow.
“That I bulked up. Do you not recognize me?” He squinted a little, his signature move for hiding where his expression wanted to go. Could be a slow slide into a smile, or could be a forehead-wrinkling frown. He staved them both off with that squint.
“Obviously, I recognized you. But it’s different. And you didn’t say anything about it the last few months.”
He raised his glass to his lips and gulped down half his water, his Adam’s apple and the movement of his throat mesmerizing what had to be my jet-lagged, dehydrated, altitude-sick brain.
“Not bad, in case you’re wondering. I mean, not that you’re worried what I think of you, but you look really good. Really. And I don’t mean to sound like that’s some huge shock. It’s been forever, and I know people change. And obviously we didn’t talk about every little aspect of our lives.” I grabbed my water and guzzled as much as I could, the ice clinking against my teeth and making me cringe at the cold.
“I wasn’t too worried,” he said, one side of his mouth kicking up.
Ohh. Okay. Cody had some calm and cool and dang. That was borderline a ladykiller smile. Straight out of the Italian hot guy playbook and here it was in Silverton, Utah.
“I’m glad your ego has grown along with your biceps.”
He chuckled. “Well, thank you. And for what it’s worth, it started with that accident when I tore up my knee.”
All humor fled at that, and I reached for his hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come back. I didn’t?—”
“You shouldn’t have. You couldn’t have done anything anyway.”
The response shouldn’t have felt like a dismissal, but it did. If we’d really been best friends, wouldn’t he have wanted me there? I’d been heartbroken when I’d heard, but I’d just started a new job in Tokyo, one of my first with the company I’d spent the last ten years with, and I couldn’t leave without losing the job altogether. By the time I had enough leave, it was way past the window I could’ve been helpful and he’d made me promise I wouldn’t come back.
“Well, I hated not being here.” I reached for and squeezed his hand, which stayed notably still under mine, then retreated back to my side of the booth.
He waved my words away. “It’s fine. They did the surgery to fix things, and after, I did physical therapy. The therapist told me if I built up my quads, hamstrings, and glutes, the knee would be better off in the long run. He’d hinted that running might be pretty difficult if I didn’t put in some effort beyond what we’d done together, so I got a personal trainer and… well, long story short, I’m a beefcake now.”
I laughed at his pose. He’d spread his long arms wide, giving me a good look at what used to be a lanky form now turned solid. It made perfect sense that he’d focused on strength after someone told him he couldn’t do something—that he might not run anymore if he didn’t. He’d always loved running, and I couldn’t imagine him giving it up without a big fight.
Handy that the fight, in this case, had resulted in a very appealing outer shell.
And so far, the inside was looking as good as it always had. Maybe a little more confident, but that only made the pull toward him stronger.
I blew out a breath, working as hard as I could to dispel those thoughts. They weren’t productive or helpful in any way. Sure, Cody had gone from cute to gorgeous in the last decade. And yeah, he made my stomach tumble. But he was here, and always would be. He was set to take over the family business—Keller Accountancy—when his dad retired—he really, truly wasn’t going anywhere. As a second-generation accountant who loved living in his childhood hometown, he had no reason to. And me? I’d simply never felt that same tether to home.
“So you can still run?”
“I can. I do more trail running now, and I like triathlons. In winter, I’ve found other things I like doing indoors, which works out since I hate running in the snow.”
“Yeah, that’s a level of dedication I’ve never possessed for anything,” I said.
His brow dipped. “Not totally true.”
Catherine delivered our plates with a promise to check back in a few, and he dug right in. I had the strangest feeling of the moment slowing down—like we’d done this a hundred times before and yet he was unfamiliar now. Someone different—older, grown, and with thoughts and opinions I didn’t know like I knew my own.
I picked up a fry, but couldn’t eat before bringing us back to his statement. “I haven’t ever trained for a race. I don’t have that in me.”
He finished chewing his bite and his expression made my heart sink. Somehow, I knew this would hurt, and that didn’t make much sense since being with Cody had felt good and a little disorienting in a weirdly fun way.
But the slight turndown of his lips and the furrow of his brow had me bracing.
“You may not have dedication for training for a race, but is there anything you wouldn’t give up for your professional goals?”