Page 9 of Scarred Mountain Man
Summer had issued a challenge, and I’d failed. Well, it wasn’t a complete failure, but it took us a good ten minutes to get up here from the restaurant. Even with the air conditioning blasting, some of the ice cream had melted.
She seemed fine with it, though, and I certainly didn’t care. I wasn’t even all that interested in the fried ice cream, but it made her happy. And that was all that mattered to me.
“Perfect.” She let out a sigh, set the spoon back into the bowl, and sat back, hands propped behind her on the rock. “I need to come here to recharge my mind. Maybe not at night, though.”
“Definitely not at night,” I said. “This is a safe town, but you never know.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her look over at me. “You think someone might come up here to find murder victims?”
She seemed a little excited by the prospect. It puzzled me for a minute, but then I remembered my Aunt Meg and her obsession with murder.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re one of those people who binge-watches true crime shows.”
“Mostly podcasts. They help me relax.”
I frowned. “You relax by listening to stories about murder?”
“Weird, I know.” She laughed. “That’s what my dad says. He doesn’t get it. My mom loves them too. It’s something we did together when I was growing up. Well, not until I was a teenager, of course. And we were more into the missing persons types of stories, so no blood and gore. You just never really find out what happened to them.”
“That would drive me crazy.”
She shrugged. “I guess I like a good mystery. Anyway, this is a better way to let off some steam.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I’m not much of a TV watcher or podcast listener. I’ve never actually listened to a podcast.”
I stopped there. The last thing I wanted to do was sound like some kind of old fogey. It seemed like everyone these days listened to them, but not me or the people I hung out with.
“Stick with me,” she said. “I’ll make you fall in love with podcasts. What are you interested in?”
I looked over at her. My mind was still on the words she’d said.Stick with me. I’ll make you fall in love. Okay, there’d been two other words after that, but my heart had latched onto the hope that the rest of it brought.
“Interested in?” I asked, mostly to buy time. “Every now and then I do a little fishing, but between work and hanging out with the guys, I don’t have time for much else.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I did spend a decent amount of time hiking and sitting on the back porch of the cottage, staring out at the woods. That didn’t sound like an interest, though. And I doubted there was a podcast about hiking that I’d want to listen to regularly.
“There has to be something you want to know more about,” she said. “Science? News? Interesting facts about weird things?”
“History. I’ve always been a sucker for documentaries.”
“That’s it!” she said. “There are tons of history podcasts. I don’t know the names of any of them, but I’ll look them up and load up your phone.”
She was going to load up my phone. “While you’re doing that, make sure you put your phone number in there,” I said. “You know…I might need it.”
That was a lead-in to a reason to need her phone number. I’d call her with any updates. Sure, that was just an excuse to talk to her, but I didn’t tell her that. I sensed I didn’t need to. Suddenly, I had not a single doubt in my mind that Summer was interested in me. This was definitely mutual. I saw it when she looked at me.
“I guess that’s my clever way of getting your digits,” I said.
I smiled and looked over at her. The ice cream was now a puddle, covered up by clumps of whatever that crusty thing was. We’d devoured it at first, but now it sat, ignored, between the two of us.
“Only if you’re getting them so you can ask me on a date,” she said.
Our eyes met and held. My heart beat double time as a result. Oh, yeah. This was definitely mutual.
Her voice was barely above a whisper by then, making me aware that I’d also lowered my volume. In fact, we were speaking so quietly, I swore the sound of my racing heart was drowning out everything else.
“You know, I was pretending that I was taking you to dinner to thank you for everything you’ve done,” she said, again her voice barely above a whisper. “But you didn’t even let me pay for dinner.”
“Of course not. I always pay on a date.”
