“Sorry about getting us stranded here,” I say when my bowl is empty. I set it aside and lean back on my hands to enjoy the warmth and a full stomach.
“It’s a detour. We’re not stranded. It’s only going to make a two-hour difference when it all shakes out tomorrow.”
“Thank you for being nice about it. And for even coming in the first place.”
“Of course.” He shrugs like it’s not a big deal to go hours—and days—out of his way. He glances around the cabin. “It’s pretty great to be back here.”
“How long have your parents owned this place? I can barely remember a time that we weren’t coming up with y’all at least once a year.”
“Since I was in third grade. They saved forever. Like, we never traveled much when I was a kid, for example. We took cheap camping trips where we brought our own food—or fished for it—and it was always somewhere you could reach on a single tank of gas.”
“That’s funny. I always think of your family as being pretty comfortable.”
“They are, but you don’t remember how aggressively cheap they were when we were growing up.”
“I remember you didn’t have cable.”
He laughs. “We didn’t even have Netflix. We checked out movies from the library. And my mom would always go to the day-old shelf at the grocery store before she’d hit any of the other aisles. It meant we got piano lessons from Hailey down the street for ten dollars each lesson because she was only fifteen and didn’t know how to protest labor exploitation.”
“You can’t blame her that you were bad at the piano. You never practiced until you learned to play that Bruno Mars song for Mirai Khatri in tenth grade.”
He grins. “Oh, yeah. But it paid off big-time.”
I shake my head at him. “Shameless.”
“Any more shameless than you bleaching your hair that summer because you heard Justin Reilly liked blondes?”
“Let us never speak of it.” It took a full year of regular hair masks to repair that damage. Also, blonde hair had made me look like I was a Victorian tuberculosis patient.
“Fine. Change of subject.” His expression loses some of its humor, and that weird, almost nervous feeling bubbles in my stomach, so I cut him off.
“Games? Yes, I’d love to.”
He pauses. “Okay. I’ll clean up dinner. You pick the game.”
The games are in the cabinets of the large entertainment system that covers the opposite wall in the living room, and I sort through them until I find one I like. I set it up in front of the fire, and when Levi walks in from the kitchen, he cracks up.
“Marble Drop? Really?”
“Yes. It’s fun.” It’s also the one game that I’m sure he can’t turn into a reason to flirt. Levi has always been like that with other girls. He almost can’t help being charming, but he’s never tried it on me until now.
Why don’t I like his jokes about making out? Or sleeping “together”?
There’s something about him turning his charm on me that makes me kind of sad. Like we’ve shifted from being old friends to more like friends who knew each other a long time ago.
It also gives me that nervous feeling, and I hate it. As we take turns removing plastic spokes from the marble-filled cylinder, trying not to let any of the marbles drop, I force myself to think about why.
It’s because that kiss at game night reminded me of how much I liked the first time we’d kissed. Here. I’d semi-successfully turned it into a hazy memory, but it’s no use now. I know the exact texture of his lips and the taste of cinnamon when his tongue brushes mine.
At this very second, I’m wondering if he kissed me again whether I’d still get cinnamon or the faint herbiness of the tomato soup.
There is real danger lurking here. Emotionally, anyway. The crush warning signs are obvious, but somehow, the fall feels further. Like if I tip this time, I might keep going.
But so will he. Back to Europe. Central Asia. North Africa. Scandinavia. Freaking Patagonia, for all I know. But come January, he’ll have a new assignment, and he’ll be off. For weeks. Months. Maybe another four years.
I can’t deal with that. My life is in Creekville. And whoever I fall for, I want them to be in Creekville too. That’s what having a life together looks like.
“Taylor.”
