Chapter 8
Rory
Nate’s arms tighten around me. I’m shaking from my fall down the stairs—damn it, Spam—but I’m dizzy and having trouble breathing for entirely different reasons.
His eyes are the same deep brown, but that’s the only thing that hasn’t changed.
Everything else about his body is different.
He’s solid now, all man, and he’s at least four inches taller than he was back in high school.
His dirty blond hair is shorter, the strands on top arranged in a messy style that my fingers itch to touch.
Corded arms pull me into the muscles of his chest, sending a rush of heat through me. He smells different, more subtle and more manly and oh so intoxicating. I let my lips part slightly as I relax into him, my breathing slowing, and watch his gaze settle there.
This should be awkward, right? We haven’t seen one another since graduation. I didn’t exactly leave things in a good spot between us. We should be all elbows and hard angles and uncomfortable, even though he’s the one I’ve seen in my dreams for years.
It’s not awkward, though. Not at all. I fit in his arms, like this is where I’ve always belonged. Despite our history, maybe the undercurrent of friendship runs so deeply that time can’t erase it. That’s why this is comfortable, safe.
Nate clears his throat, breaking the spell, and reality jolts into me.
The first time I’ve seen this man in ten years, after breaking his heart, and I’m swooning in his arms, fantasizing about whether he’d kiss the same?
Get a grip, Rory.
I scramble out of Nate’s arms and smooth a nonexistent wrinkle from my shirt.
“Sorry about that,” I say, taking another step back as heat rises in my cheeks. “And thank you for catching me. That could have really hurt, huh?”
He looks a little dazed, too, but maybe I’m imagining it.
“No problem. I’m glad I was there.” He shakes his head and narrows his gaze on my dog, who’s sprinting back and forth across the living room like he didn’t just try to murder me.
“He needs some training, Rory. I can help if you want. But he can’t do shit like that.
One of these days, he’s going to really hurt you. Or someone.”
He’s right. I hadn’t actually given much thought to training Spam. Or making sure he was housebroken, for that matter. I’m starting to see why he wasn’t adopted quickly. Maybe I should have read through the information about him before I took him home.
See, this is why I normally overthink things.
Nate is being way too nice to me for someone who opened his house on short notice and is dealing with the disaster situation that is my dog. I almost wish he’d get mad or yell at me or something. He has every right to, after what I did to him.
I look at the dogs. Nate’s German shepherd is sitting quietly on a dog bed monitoring the situation. Spam hasn’t stopped moving.
“He has a lot of energy, huh?”
Nate runs a hand over his chin. He has stubble there. Back in high school, we thought we were so grown up—eighteen years old and off to run the world once we left this small town behind. But when I look back at us now, I realize we were just kids, in more ways than one.
“I think a lot of energy is putting it mildly.” Nate looks like he’s about to say something else, but he closes his mouth and pulls on the back of his neck for a second before he continues.
“Want to take them for a walk? We can let them off the leash in the football field at the high school if you trust him to come back. They don’t mind as long as the dogs don’t dig and we pick up after them. ”
Nate grabs a leash off a hook by the front door. He points at the ground next to him, and Ollie comes immediately.
That’s one well-trained dog.
Spam, on the other hand, looks like he’s contemplating climbing the curtains.
“Yeah, getting them outside is a good idea. I have his leash in the truck.” I chase Spam around the living room until I corner him, then scoop him into my arms.
He’s fast, but he’s small, so I have the advantage here when it comes to brute strength. “Gotcha, you little weasel,” I say under my breath.
A twinge of regret stabs at my belly. I may be in over my head with Spam, and it’s really not his fault.
I know a lot about animals, thanks to my college major, but they taught us things like how to breed animals and the physiology of different species and how to run a business. There wasn’t much on how to train a dog, let alone an older one who’s set in his ways.
The high school is just over half a mile from Nate’s house, and as we walk, I’m struck by another reason I love High Lonesome. It’s cooler up here than in Denver, the perfect low 70s temperatures in late August.
Even though Denver is a mile above sea level, making it cooler than lower areas, High Lonesome is almost twice the altitude, at closer to ten thousand feet above sea level.
With the sun now below the horizon, the town is in the magical time of twilight, when the light is almost gone but not quite. It’s always been my favorite time of day.
When I was little, my mother told me she had a fairy of her own while she was growing up, and that she found her in the backyard at twilight.
The story stuck with me, and somehow this time of day has always kept that magic feeling, like if I look hard enough, I may find my very own mythical creature.
I take in the neighborhood, what I can see of it in the fading light. Most of the homes are familiar, unchanged in the past decade. There’s some new construction, too, though. It’s more densely populated than the town was when we were kids.
I point to a short, square building that I don’t recognize. “What’s that place? It doesn’t look like a house.”
Nate follows my gaze. “That’s the pizza place. Mountain High Pizza. Remember them? They moved from their old storefront maybe…three years ago? The owner’s daughter took it over, and it’s gotten even better. I’ll take you there one of these days.”
I can’t fathom their pizza being better than it was, because it was delicious back when they were in a tiny storefront off High Street.
There’s not a lot of choice when it comes to restaurants in HiLo, though.
Besides Mountain High Pizza, there’s an Italian restaurant—Luigi’s—and Jack’s Diner.
Or at least, that’s what they were last time I was here.
There’s also Lone Brews, which sparks a memory.
“How’s Marge doing? Is her shop still in business?”
Nate laughs. “Oh, she’ll never leave. Or retire. She’s a fixture.”
An array of memories floods through me. “She was always so nice to me. I should go say hi.”
“I think there are a lot of people who’d like to see you while you’re in town, Rory,” Nate says lightly.
I’m silent for a minute while I think. He’s right.
There are old friends still in town, although I’ve lost touch with a lot of them.
My parents, once they get back, and my brother.
My old riding instructor. Staying away from High Lonesome didn’t just keep me away from Nate and the memories.
It kept me away from so many of the people who knew me best.
“Yeah,” I manage.
We reach the football field. Spam is struggling against the hold of the leash, but since he weighs all of eight pounds, it’s not exactly a struggle to keep him in check.
I look down at the little guy. “If I let you off the leash, will you come back?”
“He has tags, right?” Nate asks.
“Yeah. They have my phone number.” Thanks to the automated engraving machine at the pet store. I picked out one in the shape of a bone, in pink. Boy dogs can rock pink stuff, too.
Nate shrugs as he lets Ollie off the leash. “Then it should be fine to let him go for a bit. If he refuses to come back, someone in town will find him.”
“Or he might get eaten by a bear.”
Nate lets out a loud laugh. It’s deeper than the laugh I remember—one more thing that’s changed—but the way it lights up his face is the same.
“I’m not sure he’d be worth a bear’s time. He’s fast, and there’s not much meat on him. Plus, Ollie’s a herding dog. He’ll corral Spam back to us if I tell him to.”
I think about it for another few seconds before I remember my resolve to stop overthinking.
Why not, right? I unclip the leash and let him go. Spam takes off like he’s been shot out of a cannon.
Nate scratches his jaw as we watch the dogs prance in the field. “When will your parents be back? You’re going to see them, right?”
I nod automatically, even though my stomach clenches the tiniest bit at the thought. Of course I’m going to see my mom and dad. They’re my parents. But there’s a tiny sliver of self-doubt in the back of my mind, the one that grows when I compare myself to Dylan.
“They’ll be back in a little over a week. Just before the reunion.” A soft breeze ruffles my hair, and I push a strand out of my face. “Just not looking forward to telling them that I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m sure it’s not something any parent wants to hear from their kid.”
Nate’s eyebrows pull together. “Why do you think you’ve hit rock bottom, Rory? You got let go from a job. It’s not the end of the world.”
Maybe he’s right. But everything I do gets compared to Dylan, at least in my mind. My brother is the golden child.
Dylan is the one who excelled at baseball in high school and college, while I barely made the JV field hockey team.
He’s the one who came back home to put down roots, the one who has a great job as the principal at the high school, the one who owns his home right here in High Lonesome.
If he ever gets married, he’ll be on a pedestal so high that I’ll have no hope of ever reaching it, since every relationship I’ve had since Nate has ended well before there was any talk of marriage.
“You don’t have to tell them everything. They just want to spend time with you,” Nate says. He looks over to where Ollie is prancing in a happy circle. Spam is nowhere to be seen. “Maybe don’t introduce them to Spam.”