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Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Brooke

“Did you and Nicole have fun, sweetie?” Mom said, looking up from her coffee at me as I poured myself a cup.

“Yep. And we’re not booking a wedding venue, before you ask.”

The morning was quiet—Mom and I had always been the first to get up around the Carston household, and it had been our mother-daughter bonding time for as long as I could remember. She laughed as I took a seat across the kitchen table from her.

“You think I have a one-track mind, don’t you?” she said.

“I completely do,” I said, smiling to myself as I sipped my coffee. It was sour and weak, not like the café au lait from Smoky Mountain I’d been finding myself craving lately, but it wasn’t bad.

Mom set down her coffee cup, looking out the window at the pre-dawn quiet over the world. “We just don’t get enough of you, you know? We’re really so proud of all the success you’ve had as an artist, but we all miss you. Even Tyler.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

“He’s just not good at showing it.”

“I’d say.” I shook my head. “I know, Mom. And I’m glad I took extra time this year. But it’s just nonstop busy work… I’ve got meeting after social function after meeting after routine work, and some days I’m not sure I ever actually spend any time making music. There’s just not a lot of time for myself in all of it.”

“You have to pursue the things that make you happy, Brooke. Not just what makes things pretty good or helps you get by, but what really makes you happy.”

“I am. Music is my life. It always has been. I love making music.”

She shrugged, sipping her coffee slowly. “I think you have to pursue that thing in the way that makes you happy, too. Sometimes we can be doing the right thing all wrong.”

I studied her carefully for a while, quiet, and I was halfway to a response before sound blared from the next room, catapulting me headlong into sensory overload. I pressed my fingers to my temple as a numb ringing sensation swept behind my eyes, and my niece Ella came rushing into the room with a devilish grin and my own cover of God Bless Us Everyone blaring from her phone.

“Ella, you’re giving your aunt a headache,” Mom said. “What are you even doing up this early?”

“Just celebrating a Brooke Carston Christmas,” Ella said.

“Celebrate it more quietly before my head splits open,” I groaned.

On some level, though, I appreciated the interruption. I didn’t need to think too much about life right now. I was here to relax and specifically not think about what I was doing with myself.

Luckily, the rest of the day held plenty of distractions. Mr. Cosgrove and Mr. Graham were organizing a Mountain Crossing winter market, a new tradition they’d apparently been doing six years now, and Mr. Graham roped my dad into it, which—somehow—involved me helping.

I didn’t complain, though. Heading down to the town square with my dad and helping a dozen different people I hadn’t seen in years set up stalls and decorations was a great way to distract myself from this morning’s thoughts, and my mom would have been delighted to know how much I enjoyed when Nicole showed up halfway through.

I spotted her first, through the opening of a stall Mr. Travis and I were finishing—standing there with snowflakes in her ponytail, wearing a thick white cable-knit sweater and a soft pink scarf, a windbreaker loose on her shoulders and dropping to her knees. She set down two big coffee carafes on another stall, glancing up and exchanging a quick word with old Mrs. Wilbury, and I moved without a word to sneak up behind her.

“Howdy, stranger,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder, and she jumped before she turned back and gave me a dizzying smile.

“Brooke,” she said, hands on her hips. “You can’t terrify me. We’re supposed to terrify the townsfolk together, not each other.”

“Hug to compensate? I’ve heard they’re a currency around here.”

She laughed, accepting my bribe and stepping in for a tight hug. “Love seeing you get so involved in everything. I didn’t know you were helping set up the market.”

“Neither did I. Not until my dad told me we were doing it.”

She gave me another squeeze before she stepped back. “Well, tell your dad I’m grateful, because I love seeing you here. You look beautiful. I love that jacket.”

You look beautiful, too. I love those eyes. Things I’d say if I were smooth—and, you know, interested in picking up Nicole Livingston like half this town thought I was.

Not that I wasn’t interested. We still fit each other like a glove, she paid attention to all the little things about me, and I could have talked to her for years without getting bored—just the same as ever. Didn’t help that she was gorgeous.

I was plenty interested. The problem was that she was here, and I was in Charlotte.

“You look good, too,” I said, reveling in the opportunity to check her out without committing a faux pas. “Although I seem to recall somebody taking a vow of how much she hated pink…”

“Oh, come off it,” she laughed, waving me off. “You’re never going to let me live it down. I was fighting a battle with my own internalized misogyny, Brooke. Pink’s great. Now that I’ve realized I’m less I’m not like other girls and more I like other girls instead…”

I wondered how many girls she’d been with. It couldn’t have been that many. Mountain Crossing wasn’t exactly a hotbed of queer community. Furthermore—why was I even wondering? “Well, you’d be surprised how commonly I like other girls can be just like other girls…”

She got a mischievous little flare in her eyes—I knew every little tell in her eyes, and I knew danger was coming even before she leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m sure you know all about that, keeping your hands busy as you have been.”

Oh, she was playing with fire. Nicole had always been sweet sunshine and a little on the innocent side. Not so for me. I just met her gaze when she pulled back with that challenging smirk on her face, and I said, “Of course. Got to stay in practice. Never know when an opportunity might arise, you know?”

And there—just the tiniest hint of a blush at her cheekbones. Nicole didn’t blush. Yesterday at her cabin, I’d gotten a peek of it after one comment, and I’d felt like a mountain climber reaching the top of Everest. Scoring that goal again felt just as good the second time.

Were we flirting? No doubt about it. Should we have been flirting? Well—probably not. But it didn’t look like we were stopping.

At least, not until Mrs. Wilbury cleared her throat next to us, pulling us out of the intense eye-contact flirting we were solidly in the middle of. “Excuse me,” she said. “Are we getting the coffee, or is it just there to taunt us?”

“Oh—the coffee!” Nicole laughed a breathless laugh that spoke volumes—to me, anyway—about how flustered she was. It was a good look on her. “Oh my god. I am so sorry! I get so caught up in talking to people, I forget everything. I’ll grab the cups from the car.”

We spent the next hour orbiting one another, trading banter and charged eye contact every time our paths crossed, until she finally packed back up into her car, her sights back on Smoky Mountain. She gave me another hug before she left, squeezing me tighter and longer than usual.

“So great seeing you here,” she said. “I was thinking of you this morning while I got ready. Mostly because that little reindeer you painted three eyes onto was staring at me…”

“You said ugly, you got ugly. No take-backsies, Agent Silver.”

She snorted, swatting my shoulder mid-hug. “Ugh, keep the cheesy middle-school nicknames in the past, Code Red.”

“Think Daniel will own up to his?”

She laughed, stepping back from the hug finally. “Still don’t know why he picked Banana. We had a theme.”

“Kids, man. Not that he’s less weird now.” I shrugged. “Well, I’ll catch you around. Tomorrow morning for another café au lait?”

Her eyes gleamed. “Sounds like a plan.”

And it was. The next morning, I found myself in Smoky Mountain again, and Nicole started a café au lait for me the moment I stepped inside. I leaned over the counter and chatted it up with her about what on earth Mr. Travis had done with his house while I was gone, after my dad and I went to his for a thank-you dinner when we’d wrapped up market preparation for the day. Nicole laughed until she was crying trying to tell the story of Mr. Travis’s heartfelt attempt at building a sunroom onto his house, and the comedy of errors that led to the surrealist wood art piece that it had become instead, and we were both breathless from laughter when Daniel came in alongside Mrs. Cosgrove, chattering about his book.

Daniel snuck me aside after I finished placing my order, and he whispered to me that Nicole was really happy I was back. I used my driest delivery to inform him I knew exactly what he was getting at, and I brushed him off, only to have Mrs. Cosgrove sneak me aside and whisper to me that Nicole was really happy I was back.

The people in this town shared one brain, and that brain wanted one thing.

Nicole and I pulled together like gravity. I bumped into her three more times over the rest of the day, running around to help fulfill things for my family and for the market—first in the tool and supply shop run by Mr. Graham’s son, Harris Graham, a sweet man in his mid-forties known for never ending a conversation. I was the one to rescue Nicole from the tail end of a tangent of a side note of one of Harris Graham’s stories, Nicole just nodding with her smile faltering a little, and latching onto me once I appeared.

“You saved my life,” she said.

“That means you owe me your life now, right?”

“Oh, harsh terms and conditions. Well, I trust you’ll be gentle with me.” She winked.

Yep. Definitely still flirting.

After that, it was the Hog’s Head diner just across from Smoky Mountain, where Mr. Travis took me to thank me for my help. We ended up sitting at bar seating right next to where Nicole was engaged in a lively debate about garden gnomes with pensioner Mrs. Hall, and Nicole looked over and lit up at the sight of me.

“Oh, Brooke. You’ve got to get the chili fries here. You’ll thank me later.”

“Miss Livingston’s a smart lady,” Mr. Travis said, a bulky man who looked every bit like the lumberjack he was. He dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “And I’m thinking she likes you, Miss Carston.”

The chili fries, at least, ended up being the right call. When the owner saw me in, though, a man named Lennard Bentley with arms like steel beams and a thick moustache, he gave me a sly grin and headed for the back. When I heard one of my own songs come on over the speakers right after, though, I was just relieved it wasn’t off the Christmas album again.

“Oh, I love this one,” Nicole said, sitting up straighter.

“It’s weird,” I said. “Is this what celebrities feel like seeing their own faces plastered up everywhere?”

Nicole stood up, offering me her hand. “Hey, if Mr. Bentley wants a show, we’ll give him a show. Let’s sing it together. I suck at singing.”

“I see we’re not too old to keep causing chaos,” I said, taking her hand as she helped me to the center of the diner floor.

“You kidding?” she laughed. “I make lifelong commitments, Brooke. I’m all in on being a nasty little imp, as Mr. Wilbury always said. Now come on!”

And that was how a simple lunch visit turned into a live show of me singing along to my own songs in duet with Nicole, standing on a crate like it was a stage. The whole diner clapped along with us, and she took me for a dance through the next song.

By the time I saw her in the crafts store that evening, standing by a shelf and switched out of her dark Smoky Mountain clothes and into a loose green turtleneck, I felt like she was the storm sweeping in—and yet I made a line straight towards her, heading directly for the storm wall.

“Trying to decide what color the twelve-eyed octo-reindeer will be on the next ornament?” I said, and she barely even flinched, just looking back at me with a smile like she expected me to be there.

“I’m thinking it should have this blood-red sort of dripping from its eyes…”

“Very festive. Does this go under naughty or nice on the big guy’s list?”

She laughed, setting the red paint back on the shelf, and she held eye contact out of the corner of her eye with me as she said, “You know I’m always on the naughty list.”

This girl just could not help herself. Did she think she was going to win this one of these times? I arched an eyebrow. “Well, if it keeps those hands of yours busy, Miss Livingston.”

There was her too-perfect smile again. “You’ve seen them at work. I keep them very busy.”

“Very skillful, Nicole. No doubt about it.”

She grinned, turning back to the shelf. “I’m doing a project for a gift, actually. I owe Mrs. Cosgrove a big thank-you for some help with Smoky Mountain a couple weeks back, so I’m doing a special ornament collection just for her. Their son is visiting from up north in a week, and I want them to be able to hang the ornaments together.”

I stepped up to the shelf next to her, nudging her in the side. “Can’t believe my fellow troublemaker’s gotten so sentimental.”

She rolled her eyes, smiling. “Let a girl like mushy stuff sometimes, Brooke. I can be sentimental too.”

I turned my gaze back to the shelves, trailing my fingers over the fronts of the paints. “Like I don’t even know you,” I said, smiling softly to myself.

“I’m still me,” she said, her voice a little softer now. “We all grow with time. I don’t think of it as changing so much as uncovering new sides of ourselves we didn’t see before.”

I glanced over at her, just looking at her for a minute before I said, “Well, you seem happy with what you’ve uncovered. You really feel like you’re at home here in Mountain Crossing.”

“Yeah. It’s really beautiful here. And…” She shrugged. “Oh, you’ll get on my case about the sentimentality again.”

“Go for it,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. “I’m enjoying getting to know this newfound little mushy side to you, too.”

She fussed with the paints on the shelf. “This place is home. That’s all. The people here—they’re all my family. A place like this, it’s all about the people. If you don’t mesh with the people, there’s no sense in any of it. But if you connect with the rest of the community, well… you can never get bored. It’s really a joy, you know? I spend every day just seeing my favorite people.”

I kept studying her out of the corner of my eye for a while before I returned my gaze to the shelves. I’d wondered for a while about something like that—about what community was like back here. I’d never really connected much with it as a kid. It felt different then, shallow then. I’d just wanted to set my sights on the horizon and get out. Nicole had, too.

“I’m glad you found that,” I said.

After another quiet moment, she said, “You might be surprised, Brooke. Everyone here has been really excited to see you again. I think you’re going to like the rest of your month here.”

I dropped my hand down her arm, laying it gently by her wrist, and squeezing. “Well,” I said, “with you around, I can at least attest to being very well-fed this month. Caffeinated, too.”

“It’s what I do,” she said, a twinkle in her eye as she turned and headed for the register, two tubes of paint in her hands. “I’m off the rest of the weekend, so I won’t be the one giving you your café au lait in the morning! I’m sure I’ll see you around, though.”

I was positive she would. We seemed to pull into one another’s orbits whatever we did.

The entire town being convinced we needed to get married five minutes ago didn’t help.

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