Chapter 19
My car won’t start. A clicking noise sounds every time I turn the key, so I stop, drop my head back against the headrest and let out a sigh before reaching for my phone. It’s a gorgeous Saturday morning and I just finished up a twelve hour shift. I need a shower and a nap and to not deal with AAA.
But when I pull out my phone, instead of clicking on the app to call for roadside assistance, my thumb hovers over Stevie’s contact. I shouldn’t bother her, but her words from last weekend ring through my head.
I can’t even be someone’s back up call.
The phone is ringing before I can think better of it, and she picks up on the second ring.
“Hey, what’s up?” She sounds groggy, like she just woke up, and when I glance at the clock, I curse myself because I somehow forgot it’s only seven in the morning. She’s an early riser, but she must have slept in.
“Sorry, did I wake you?”
“Yeah,” she says, and I hear the rustling of sheets in the background. I can imagine her sitting up, rubbing her eyes, pillow creases marring her cheeks. “But it’s fine. Are you okay?”
“I need a jump, but I can call AAA. Go back to bed.”
“What? No, I’ll come. Just give me a minute. Are you at the hospital?” I hear more rustling and then a loud thump and a muttered curse.
“Are you okay?”
She curses again. “Yeah, I just hope I don’t need a pinky toe to keep hiking because I’m pretty sure I just banged mine hard enough for it to fall off.”
My lips roll against a smile. Stevie is a morning person. She gets up early to run or hike or make an elaborate breakfast, but I’ve learned that until she has a cup of coffee, she’s clumsy and a little grumpy.
“Damn it,” she hisses, a second after another thump.
“What now?” I ask.
“I hit my hip on the bedpost. It’s fine, but I’m going to hang up before I injure myself on any other furniture. You’re at the hospital?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Okay, be there in fifteen.”
“Hey, Stevie,” I say before she can hang up. “Thanks for coming.”
True to her word, Stevie shows up fifteen minutes later, dressed in flannel pajama pants, an oversized T-shirt with a hole in the neckline the size of a thumbprint, and a worn, green barn jacket.
Her hair is down—a rarity for her I’m learning—and hanging down her back in a heavy mess, and she’s stuffed a beanie on top.
Her eyes are still a little heavy, although I can see her travel mug of coffee in the cup holder. There’s a pillow mark on her cheek.
I don’t realize I’m staring until she’s out of the truck standing in front of me, shielding her eyes against the morning sun. “What? Do I have drool on my face?”
She’s stunning, plain and simple, and my hands itch with the desire to touch her. I shouldn’t, I know that. I’ve already decided not to act on this little crush I’m harboring because I want to keep her in the only capacity that is fair to both of us. Friends.
But still, my self-control is only so strong. So I nod, even though it’s a lie, and lift my hand to the corner of her mouth, and rub my thumb there. Her skin is so soft, and cold from the chilly morning air.
“Right here,” I say.
“Well,” she responds, cheeks turning the shade of a ripe strawberry. “That’s embarrassing.”
I shrug. “I’m a nurse. A little drool doesn’t bother me.”
She swipes a hand over her mouth, wiping at drool that isn’t there, and I let my own fall limply to my side, wishing I could reach for her again.
“C’mon, let’s jump your car. It’s cold.”
It’s the last weekend in October, a few days before Halloween, and the temperatures have officially dropped. The mornings and evenings are more than just chilly now, but the days still feel crisp beneath the sunshine. It’s the best kind of weather.
We attach the jumper cables to each of our batteries, huddled beneath the hoods against the wind, before hopping in the cars and cranking the engines. Thankfully, mine starts up, and Stevie hops down from her truck and lets herself into my car, coffee in hand, while we wait.
“Thanks again for coming,” I tell her, my eyes drawn to the imprint the pillow left on her cheek, crossing through one of her freckles.
She shrugs. “Happy to do it.”
I left the radio on when I shut off the car earlier and old country plays softly through the speakers, barely loud enough to be heard over the idling engine.
“I’m sorry I woke you up. What are your plans for the day?”
Stevie draws one of her knees up and sets her mug on it.
“It’s Harvest Festival day,” she says. “You’ve probably seen the signs for it.
It’s this huge festival the town throws every year on the last weekend of October.
My family and I go every year. It’s honestly one of the busier weekends on the farm because they have pumpkin picking, but my parents have always taken it off and made it a point for us to go as a family. ”
A wave of nostalgia crests over me. It’s the kind of family thing I always wanted to do as a kid, but Mom was so rarely off work.
I didn’t appreciate all the ways she made magic for us at home though, all the ways she sacrificed to make little things special, and I wish I could go back and see it now.
“That sounds fun,” I tell her.
She gives me a sentimental smile. “It is.” A pause, her eyes searching mine, as if she’s weighing something in her mind. Then she says, “You should come with us.”
I blink, taken aback for a moment. “To the Harvest Festival with your family?”
She nods. “They loved you when you came to the house. They’d be thrilled if you came.”
It feels dangerous, letting myself get even more entangled here, like I might grow roots I’ll have to tear up in another three and a half weeks. But I find myself saying, “Okay,” anyway.
And when she smiles, her eyes bright in the morning sunshine, I know I’m screwed. That I’ve already let myself sink too deep. But I can’t bring myself to be upset about it.
“After you sleep, of course. You look beat.” She extends her coffee in my direction, and I accept it, letting the heat of the mug seep into my hands before I take a sip.
It’s warm and rich and just the tiniest bit bitter. My gaze locks on hers, a smile lifting my lips. “You used the moka pot.”
She shrugs. “It’s grown on me. I tried to use the Keurig yesterday, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
“I knew I’d leave an impression when I left.”
“Yes,” she says, with a roll of her eyes. “You’ll leave, but I’ll always have good coffee.”
She says it as a joke, but the words fall in the space between us, heavier than I’m sure she intended.
“Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get a grinder.”
I catch her eye. They’re more amber than hazel today, the color of expensive whiskey, and just as drugging. “I’ll send you beans.”
The grin she gives me is small, tentative. “I’d like that.”
“Maybe I’ll bring them to you, if I’m ever in the area.”
Her gaze searches my face. In the early morning sunlight, she looks diffused, her edges softer. Like a mirage, a dream. “You think you’d be back around here again?”
“I don’t usually go back to the same area more than once,” I say, sliding my hand along the bottom of the steering wheel, the worn leather slick beneath my fingertips.
“I’ve always liked to just keep going, seeing new places.
” I hesitate. “But I like it here. I’d come back.
You know, to see what Myra and Melissa are performing at karaoke. ”
A grin starts out small on her face and stretches slowly, the way the sunrise comes over the horizon, brightening everything in its path. “Last holiday season they did ‘Santa Baby.’ It was fantastic.”
Laughter punches out of me. “I bet it was.”
“Come on, Justin,” she says, opening the door, letting a gus of frigid air in. “Let’s get home.”
We unhook the jumper cables and she throws it into the back of her truck.
It lands with a loud thump. When I try to hand her back her coffee, she waves me off and tells me I can make her more at home before she climbs back up in her truck and heads for the exit, leaving me standing beside my car watching her.
Another gust of chilly wind whips at me, and I finally get in the car. My phone is sitting in the cup holder, and I stare at it for a long moment before reaching for it. Pull up a contact I haven’t texted with since I got to Fontana Ridge.
My recruiter, Amy.
I type out a text and press send before I can talk myself out of it, before I think through what I’m asking. The blue bubble sits there, staring back at me.
Any chance I could extend my contract in Fontana Ridge?