Chapter 8
The engine groaned as the ascent continued. My steed was growing tired. “Come on, you can do it . . .” I coaxed.
The journey to Avila Falls took a couple of hours, even going at a good clip. As I drove farther up the winding road into the mountains that I knew so well—the wild road I’d traded for the overpopulated avenues of the city—I let my mind recall the events of the last week.
I had texted my dad a few days earlier to tell him that I’d be there.
He’d replied via email with a few party emojis and an offer to pick me up, which I’d refused, since I didn’t want him making the hour and a half drive down the mountain.
I’d booked a last-minute flight to Colorado, which had cost me a pretty penny.
There wasn’t any need to alert Carmichael, since I didn’t have any meetings at the office coming up.
Less than a week later, here I was, returning to the mountains that I hadn’t laid eyes on for half a decade. And yet, they were just the same as I’d left them. Still and strong and resolute as they’d always been.
I turned up the volume of my music. In the background lilted Aria Winters, the indie singer-songwriter whose vivid lyrics articulated my inner world perfectly.
And suddenly, just the sight of these towering peaks felt like taking a long, deep breath after an exhausting marathon.
As much as I considered myself a New Yorker these days, there was a certain familiarity in these wide-open spaces, soaring pines, rough boulders, and crystal clear skies.
Another hour and a few Spotify playlists later found me turning off the highway exit that would take me into Avila Falls. Fifteen miles, a never-ending thicket of trees, and a gradual descent later, I passed the old wooden welcome sign that stood guard at the town’s entrance.
I’d chased the sun on my way here, but it had just barely slipped behind the Rockies and tucked itself in for the night as I rolled into town. Dusk stood in its place, announcing its arrival with hues of rosy pinks, soft golds, and rich purples, the mountains a deep indigo.
I cranked up the heater. The car grunted its way through the last of the uncleared forest and onto the town’s main road, where every business could be found, including Jack’s Diner, Avila’s Ancient Antiques, Dawson’s Market, Hardware Haven, and of course, And Then There Were Books.
Avila Falls’ shape made it so that the main street formed a sort of circle, engulfing Colores Park, a small park with benches and a playground. Smaller residential streets splintered off in every direction.
I caught sight of the old-fashioned white gazebo that sat smack-dab in the middle of the park. A group of high schoolers hung out right by it, chasing each other with snowballs, frenzied and giggling.
Avila Falls was nestled inside the mountains, a small valley with a sprawling lake at the north end—what my younger self had liked to think of as the Lake of Shining Waters, inspired by my first read through Anne of Green Gables—and hiking trails at the south end.
To the northeast was the high school, where every single kid in town went.
The turn for my parents’ neighborhood, just a short drive up the mountain, was swiftly approaching just up ahead. My stomach sank. I wasn’t ready. For the questions and comments and their polite yet fundamental misunderstanding of my life and why I’d chosen it.
I just don’t know how you live in that city year round.
Have you thought any more about that program I emailed you about?
Another memoir. That’s nice.
Don’t you ever miss Colorado?
Maybe a few laps around town would help.
I pushed on the gas and turned left to head back into the center of town, passing Jack’s Diner, where the vast majority of Avila Falls residents could be found on any given Saturday morning for strong coffee, crispy hash browns, and old-fashioned pancakes.
And then I saw it, just down the road. The old green Chevy pickup that I knew belonged to Noah Elliot.
Effortlessly cool, always the center of attention, and somehow everyone’s best friend, Noah was the It Guy back in high school.
The kind of guy who was invited to every party.
The kind of guy every other guy wanted to be and every girl wanted to be with.
In other words, he and I were on entirely different ends of the social hierarchy.
My heart leaped up into my throat. A million memories that I didn’t even know I still had flooded my mind, from walking down the hall and watching him joke with his friends, to listening to his band play Bon Jovi covers at Battle of the Bands and secretly thinking he was the best one, to accidentally brushing hands in the cafeteria once when we both reached for the same chocolate milk carton.
In the span of two seconds, I was no longer a professional woman, a successful writer visiting from New York City. I had suddenly morphed into the nerdy loner with a silly crush—the girl I could’ve sworn no longer existed.
By all accounts, my crush on Noah Elliot had never made sense.
We were opposites in every way imaginable.
I was the wallflower while he was the life of the party.
I was the straight-A student while he couldn’t have cared less about his grades.
I was the girl who sat alone every day at lunch while he was the guy who was always surrounded by an entourage.
There was no world in which we belonged at the same lunch table, much less the same planet.
And yet, there had always been something magnetic about him, to the point where I couldn’t keep my stomach from lurching whenever I saw him down the hall—despite my protests against myself. I’d found him charming, captivating, even cute, and I couldn’t stand it.
I shook my head. Surely that wasn’t him driving. There was no way.
The pickup pulled off to the side of the road and parked.
Within a few seconds, Noah emerged from the truck.
Ten years older but no less boyishly handsome, despite the full beard that made it clear he was no longer an eighteen-year-old.
His warm honey hair had grown just past his chin—longer than it had ever been in high school.
I pulled up my collar and gripped the steering wheel tighter as my car crept closer to him, every fiber of my being hoping that he wouldn’t look my way.
To my relief, he disappeared into the hardware store before I could even reach him. I lowered my shoulders, releasing the breath I hadn’t noticed I was holding.
Things hadn’t changed one bit in Avila Falls in the last ten years. And I was beginning to wonder if the same was true about me.
I finished my lap and put my foot on the gas, making a right onto the street that would take me home.