Chapter 2 #2
“Maddy Sterling is back.” Aspen had not expected to say that sentence out loud, ever. She had spent fifteen years avoiding Maddy’s name altogether. James Sterling was the one who died, but Maddy was the one who chose to disappear. And on a small island like this, that was almost worse.
Grace blinked, tilting her head. “Maddy...” The name landed without recognition for a beat. And then her face lit up when it clicked. “Wait. That chick you had a crush on in high school?”
Aspen rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t call it a crush.
” A crush was the two-week thing Tiffany had on Connor before realizing he was a grade-A douche.
What Aspen had was four straight years of pushing herself to the edge of her own capabilities for the chance to make one specific person look at her for six minutes at a time.
Whatever the right word for that was, it was not crush.
Aspen took another pull of the smoothie and nearly gagged.
Grace snatched the glass back. “You literally told the entire table she was your first crush at my birthday dinner three years ago.”
“I deeply regret that entire night.” The confession had happened four margaritas deep.
The table had been doing the rounds of Queer Awakenings and First Girl Crushes—depending on their respective sexuality—and everyone else had named TV characters—Xena, the Pink Ranger, the entire cast of The Mummy.
By the time the question reached Aspen, she’d blurted out MADDY STERLING.
Then she proceeded to describe Maddy’s ridiculously beautiful face in such vivid detail that a sketch artist could have drawn an exact portrait of Maddy without ever laying eyes on her.
Grace had never mentioned it again, and Aspen had hoped the tequila had erased it from her memory.
Clearly, Grace had just been storing it for a rainy day.
“Okay. So… Maddy Sterling.” Grace did a rolling motion with her hand, her signal for talk faster, get to the good stuff.
“She arrived last night. Bunny—” Aspen walked over to the table in the center of the room and dropped into a chair. “You heard about Bunny’s tailbone?”
Grace took the chair across from her, setting the smoothie on the table. “Of course. The legendary paddleboard incident. Everyone on the island has heard about that by now.”
Aspen blew out a breath. “Right. Well, long story short, Bunny called Maddy’s assistant and made it sound like her incident was life-and-death, so Maddy left in the middle of her production and traveled like six thousand miles to show up at Bunny’s house last night…
while I was in her kitchen baking cookies. ”
“You were there?” Grace’s mouth dropped open.
“Yup.” Her lips popped on the word.
Grace clamped her jaw shut and studied Aspen’s face. “Hm. How did she look?”
Aspen considered how much to reveal to the woman who knew all of her tells.
She hadn’t tried to hide her appreciation as her eyes swept over Maddy the night before.
Even in the exhausted and unshowered state she was in, Maddy did look good.
That wasn’t just a line. Maddy at eighteen had been sharp and bright and untouchable.
But grown-up Maddy? Damn. If anything, she’d undersold it.
Cheekbones a little sharper. Mouth a little softer at the corners.
Crease between the brows a little deeper.
Eyes an even more electric blue than she remembered.
The exhaustion had taken nothing from her.
Aspen had stood at the oven holding a tray of cookies and thought oh, fuck, she got even hotter.
Not that she was going to tell Grace that.
“Exhausted… Worried… Angry. In that order.” Aspen said instead, picking at a chip in the table’s edge with her thumbnail. “All appropriate responses to Bunny’s antics.”
Grace made an agreeable mm sound. “And you?”
Aspen's thumb went still. “And me what?”
“How did you feel about seeing her again?”
Aspen was still trying to figure that out for herself.
Maddy Sterling had appeared in Bunny’s doorway like a mirage, and Aspen’s entire body seized.
There had been a moment of clinical disbelief, the kind you get when you spot a famous person in line at the grocery store, and your brain is still trying to register if that’s really who you think it is.
Followed by a much longer moment of looking at the specific person it actually was.
And then a lot of things Aspen decided to keep to herself.
Aspen sighed. “It was fine. It’s been fifteen years. We were kids. I’ve built an entire life since then.” She didn’t meet Grace’s eye, and she knew Grace would see right through her.
“Oh, please,” Grace said with a flap of her hand. “The one who got away comes crashing back into your life after fifteen years, and you’re just totally fine? Maybe she can shake you out of the love funk you’ve been in.”
Aspen rolled her eyes. “Maddy is not the one who got away. I never had her.” Then the second part of Grace’s comment caught up to her, and Aspen straightened. “And I have not been in a love funk.”
“Riiight.” Grace’s mouth twitched. She tapped her chin, her head tilting with consideration. “Remind me how many dates you’ve been on since Tess?”
Tess.
If anything, she was the one who got away.
Aspen had moved on, truly, but for five years, Tess had been her constant.
Five years together in the bungalow Aspen still lived in.
Five years of someone else’s shampoo in the shower and someone else’s cold feet finding hers under the covers at two a.m., and then a promotion in London had called, and Tess had answered, and Aspen had let her go, because Aspen’s whole world was here.
Her family. Her niece. Her best friends.
Her clients. Her community. She’d never survive nine months of English gloom, and more than that, she’d never survive the guilt of leaving her family behind.
So Tess had packed up her side of the closet and shipped three boxes and kissed Aspen goodbye at the airport, and Aspen had driven home to a bungalow that still smelled like someone who wasn’t there anymore. That was two years ago.
Aspen looked out the window at the glittering ocean. “I’ve dated since Tess.” She had. She’d started dating again about six months ago, and every first date had felt like putting on shoes that didn’t fit. “I went out with that surf instructor. The one with the shoulder tattoo.”
“And?” Grace propped her chin in her hand.
“And she was perfectly nice…and I felt absolutely nothing.” Aspen pulled her phone out and opened the client scheduling portal—Michelle’s next session, she needed to shift it back an hour.
Her thumb moved across the screen while her mouth ran on autopilot.
“Same with the barista before her. And the sous chef before that.”
The pattern was painfully cumulative. They were all perfectly nice evenings with beautiful women where Aspen had searched her body for any sign of romantic interest—a flutter in her stomach, a tingle in her toes, a blossoming of heat in her core—and came up empty.
“Oh yeah, the redhead. You gotta watch out for those.” Grace wagged a finger.
Aspen shot her a pointed look over her phone. “Being a redhead wasn’t the problem. I just didn’t feel… you know, a spark.”
“Ah, yes, the elusive spark.” Grace picked up the smoothie and took a sip, the rim barely hiding the smirk forming behind it. “And what, pray tell, did you feel when the infamous Maddy Sterling waltzed back into your life?”
Aspen rolled her eyes. “Don’t say her name like that.”
“Like what?” Grace’s voice dropped. “Maddy Sterling.” She said each syllable slowly and deliberately, like the name tasted good.
“For an alleged straight woman, you make a lot of things sound very gay.” Aspen plucked the glass from Grace’s hands with a speed that made Grace yelp, and drained the rest of it in one long pull.
The cold and the cloying sweetness hit the back of her throat, and she swallowed before she could think about it.
“Hey! That was my breakfast!” Grace reached for the empty glass.
“You deserve to starve.” Aspen handed the empty glass back, deeply satisfied.
Lena appeared in the breakroom doorway, intake forms in one hand, phone in the other.
“Children. Do I need to separate you two?” She said with a faint smirk before her face returned to professional mode.
“Aspen, can you take a two o’clock next Monday?
Referral from Kessler’s office—ACL reconstruction, post-surgical, four weeks out. ”
Aspen groaned. “Do I need to sign another NDA?”
Most of the referrals from Dr. Kessler were professional male athletes who either hit on her, condescended her, or snapped at her for not miraculously healing their broken body on their predetermined timeline.
Aspen much preferred working with the San Diego national women’s soccer team, who at least respected her and followed the treatment plan she prescribed.
They didn’t push themselves any less than the male athletes did, but they treated her like the solution rather than the problem.
Lena kept her eyes on her phone. “Yep.”
Aspen sighed. An NDA meant the patient was high-profile enough to take priority. They may be jerks, but they were great for business and gave Aspen extra bargaining chips with Lena when she needed a favor. “I’ll see if I can shift my two to three-thirty.”
“Great.” Lena made a note on the intake form, the pen moving in three crisp marks. “Grace, your nine-thirty group is gathering. Someone brought muffins.”
“Lemon poppy seed?” Grace was on her feet immediately.
“I didn’t interrogate the muffins, Grace.”
“And that’s a failure of leadership.” Grace turned her attention back to Aspen and squeezed Aspen’s shoulder as she dropped her voice. “We’re not done talking about Maddy. I need every sordid detail.”
Then she was gone, and the break room went quiet.
Lena hovered, the faint smirk returning. “Lady troubles?”
Aspen dropped her head back. “Not you too.”