Chapter 15

15

Annika

I don't have bike ride around the lagoon on my planner, but I haven't exercised since I got home. Mama's with the mobility specialist at home for the next two hours. Bailey's with her, and Roger's stopping by to check on them later this afternoon.

If I don't get away from the bakery, I'm going to start throwing things.

And I don't know why .

Okay, fine, I know why.

But when it's there are too many emotions that I'm not dealing with well , I don't like to admit it, because which emotion do you start with?

The sadness?

The anger?

The disappointment?

The fear?

The crushing weight of expectations pressing harder and harder every day, because while Mama is re-learning her way around home, around the kitchen, and around the bakery, she'll never be able to decorate intricate cookies or fry donuts, and I can't fix that .

So I decide that the first emotion I'm going to deal with is the run away from it all emotion.

I close the shop early—which is fine, since we're mostly sold out of everything today anyway—and head home. There's a small storage shed at the corner of Mama's small lot, which is where I find my old bicycle.

An hour and a trip to the hardware store later, she's back in tip-top shape, though her purple sparkle paint job has dulled over the years. But her gears work and are greased up, the tires are replaced, and I have a shiny new helmet, so I hop on, tuck my phone into my pocket, and hit the state road that leads out of town and into the preserve between Sarcasm and Shipwreck.

There are other little towns dotting the mountains too, but none of them get involved in this stupid fight that's been going on supposedly since the day "Thorny Rock, The Pirate" founded Shipwreck and his second cousin twice removed, Walter Bombeck, walked into whatever state department is responsible for naming towns and reported that his town was called, "Your mom," to which the state guy supposedly replied, "Seriously?" and good ol' Walter responded with, "No, that's Sarcasm."

Turns out that even in the seventeen hundreds, government employees had more of a devious sense of humor than we give them credit for, and so Sarcasm it became, though Walter never did get credit for inventing the "Your mom" joke.

Which means the story is probably as true as Thorny Rock the Pirate 's story.

I'm easily coasting downhill on my bike as I enter the preserve and head along the bike path beneath the deep green canopy of oak and birch trees toward the lagoon, which is actually a lake nestled in a valley, but like everything else here, it gets a cute name so that more people come visit it.

I like that about my hometown area.

It's quaint.

Most of my time in the Army has been in Texas or North Carolina, plus two deployments to the sandbox and a year in Korea, and the posts were what they needed to be, with their own culture and standards and vibes, but they weren't quirky and warm and home .

And even now, with August bearing down on us, there are wispy streaks of fog dotting the afternoon down here in the valley. Cool little patches of relief from the summer heat that leave my arms and legs and face feeling as though I've been kissed by an angel.

A sloppy, unexpected angel, but it's either imagine the fog as an angel or a ghost, and I'm feeling like going for the positive today.

Which is why I'm not thinking about the bike ride back up and out of the valley to get home.

I really should've considered how much uphill pedaling there would be on the way back before I got five miles from town.

But it's still preferable to thinking about the fact that I still don't have someone to fill Bailey's shoes when school starts in a few weeks, because none of the people I've interviewed have worked out.

Someone has to work out soon, because none of us can keep working six or seven days a week like this.

I catch glimpses of the lake shimmering in the sun through the trees a few minutes before the whole thing comes into view, taking my breath away with the simple natural beauty of the little hideaway nestled in the soft mountains, and socking me in the gut with hot, heavy memories at the same time.

" Maa! " a goat cries indignantly as it darts into the path.

I shriek and swerve, hitting the brakes and heading into a thicket of trees and brush and brambles as a man dashes out from the side path.

"Sue!" he hollers.

Grady .

My bike crashes.

I crash.

My heart crashes, my temper crashes, and my composure crashes too.

" Maa ," Sue bleats as it follows me into the brush and tries to lick my leg.

" Maa yourself," I snap back at it.

It stomps a foot and snorts a goat booger at me. The fact that it's missing one horn and has a brown circle around its right eye confirms what the man yanking on its collar and trying to pull it off the path has already told me.

This is Grady's goat.

His blue-green eyes lift and connect with mine, and I see the moment realization dawns on him.

It comes with brows shooting to the treetops and lips parting and a strangled noise coming from his throat, complete with his cheeks going ruddy.

"Annika," he sputters. "Shit. Sorry. I— Sue . Down."

The goat is down, and he head-butts Grady in the leg to make the point while I attempt to pull my bike out of the bushes, which are probably full of poison ivy.

Awesome.

"Aren't you supposed to be in Shipwreck selling unicorn cookies or tres leches donuts?" I ask.

So apparently I'm grumpy.

Double awesome.

I just love being grumpy.

Makes life so much better.

His cheeks go ruddier, and his chest lifts wide and solid when he sucks in a breath and looks away.

I need to go home. Mama will be done well before I get there, and I don't need all my good memories of this place ruined by another fight with Grady.

"I—I'm sorry," he says.

"Are you?" I need to shut up. My problems aren't his fault.

Most of them, anyway.

But I can't help myself. Because he was my best friend, and now he's my best punching bag, because he offered himself up on a silver platter with everything he's done since the moment he found out I was back in town.

"Are you sorry, Grady? And for what? For your goat being a trail hazard? For baiting my sister on Instagram with unicorn cookie pictures, because a thirteen-year-old whose mother went blind doesn't have enough to deal with ? For being a really shitty friend? Are you sorry for any of that ? Or are you just sorry you didn't have your camera ready to get a picture of this ?"

I pluck a weed out of my hair and dust pollen or dirt or powdered deer poop off my shirt to make a point about him standing there looking like a fallen backwoods angel in black athletic shorts and a gray Fireballs T-shirt and a backwards ball cap covering his dark hair.

He squeezes a tennis ball so hard his knuckles go white, and his Adam's apple bobs. "Yes," he says quietly.

"Yes what ?" Crap.

Crap crap crap.

I learned how to suppress the tears in basic training a decade ago, but here I am, that lump in my throat so thick that I'll need the Heimlich to get rid of it, my eyes so hot I'm suddenly terrified that these tears will burn my retinas off and Bailey will be left to care for two incapacitated adults who are supposed to be making her world safe.

"I'm sorry for being a dickhead." Those blue-green eyes scan my body, and I hate that I don't know if he's making sure I'm going to live, or if he's trying to determine if this is a spy mission, and if I'm wired so that I can seduce all of his bakery's secrets out of him and immediately relay the information back to headquarters so my teenage sister and blind mother can rule this little slice of mountain heaven.

My heart bounces around my chest like a ball on one of those old wooden paddle games, because I don't want to believe we're enemies.

I don't need enemies.

I can take acquaintances, but what I really need are friends.

"I've been an immature brat, and I don't deserve you," he adds.

Now my heart's doing some acrobatics on a backyard trampoline that my safety officer back at Fort Bliss would have a few choice words about, and I really am going to choke on that lead bubble of emotion clogging my throat.

The goat stomps impatiently, bleats, and head-butts him again, propelling him three feet closer to me before he gets his bearing again. He grunts and turns, tossing the ball into the lake, and the goat goes crashing into the water after it.

My jaw hangs.

Grady chuckles wryly, and the sound wraps around my overworked heart and pets it like it's a lost puppy.

"You okay?" he asks softly.

He watches his goat wade back to shore as a cloud passes between the sun and the lake, not looking at me, but my skin is tingling everywhere as though one of those naked nightmares has come true.

I shouldn't feel naked.

But I remember feeling the same when Grady came down with a short-term case of stage fright during our freshman year production of Beauty and the Beast and stood there gaping at the audience on opening night instead of saying his three lines as a townsperson.

Whoever had the next line just glossed right over it, and no one knew, but I knew.

I felt his fear as if it was my own.

And I swear I'm feeling his discomfort too now.

When I don't answer right away, he glances at me.

I finally manage to swallow, and I blink four times before I'm sure I'm back in control of my tear ducts. I open my mouth to tell him I'm fine and I need to get going, and instead, I hear myself whisper, "You said you'd write."

He flinches. "Didn't think you'd want to hear from me. With…you know."

"And I never thought you were a wimp." Shut up, Annika. Shut. Up.

His goat crashes back to shore and charges us, soaking wet with lake water dripping off his fur, and Grady bends to wrestle the ball back from the animal while I sigh softly and finish untangling my bike from the bushes, getting sprayed by the goat's wet shakes and not caring at all. I test the tire pressure, making sure I didn't hit a rock or puncture a tire with a sticker burr, and yep.

I'll make it back just fine.

"Sue. Don't eat the ball. Give it. Annika. Wait."

"Full calendar," I say quietly.

"Can we walk you back to your car?"

I snort. "Long walk back to Sarcasm. And you probably shouldn't be seen there. They have posters up all over town with your mug on them. If you see this man, throw his donuts back at him. "

"I knew I'd miss you, but I didn't know how much."

His honesty surprises me—both his words and the wariness in his eyes that matches his tone and the way his shoulders hunch in, like he's preparing for me to kick him while he's raw and exposed.

He's not the only one feeling raw and exposed. Especially when his goat once again trots behind him and head-butts him closer to me.

He doesn't try to stop it. "You didn't care that I was one of the Rock boys, and you didn't use me to get closer to Cooper or to ask me to get you a job with someone in my family. You just…you were the only friend I had with no strings. No expectations. You let me be me and you didn't try to fit me in a box and most of the time you made me feel like I was pretty fucking spectacular without having to try. And I couldn't imagine my life without you in it every day."

"You were leaving too."

One dimple pops out with his crooked grin. "I'm an asshole with double standards."

The goat bleats out an agreement, then tries to lick inside its own nose.

My phone alarm rings, reminding me I have thirty minutes to get back to Sarcasm before the end of Mama's appointment.

Thirty minutes.

Five miles.

Uphill the whole way.

This was a much better plan when all I wanted was to work out for the first time in a month.

"Pre-alarm, or actual alarm?" Grady asks, and all that wobbling and hardening in my chest goes soft at the edges that he still knows I'd set an alarm to warn me that the real alarm is coming.

"I have to go."

"Need a ride?"

"No."

"Annika."

"No, thank you ."

"It's uphill the whole way."

Yeah, my thighs will be well aware of that by the time I get home, but there's a cooler breeze blowing now, the sun's disappearing behind a cloud, and I have plenty of water.

And there are no emotional land mines involved with biking back alone.

"I need—" I start, but before I can finish, a fat ol' raindrop torpedoes through the trees and lands on my nose.

I glance up to confirm raindrop and not bird poop, and dammit .

" Maaaaa! " Sue says.

Grady looks up too as the wind rustles the woods behind us.

"I could drop you just outside town so my goat and I stay safe from the pitchforks and tar," he says while more raindrops splatter around us. "You'll still be a drowned rat by the time you get home. No one will ever know we were in cahoots to save your thighs."

It's the Grady- est thing he's said to me since I got back, which makes me grateful for the barrage of water droplets picking up and pitter-pattering on the leaves and in the lake, kicking up that rain smell and dotting my cheeks with moisture.

Normal with Grady threatens to make me cry again, but I can blame it on the rain if he looks too closely.

"I'll know," I say quietly. "And how do you know my thighs couldn't handle it?"

"Mine couldn't. I'm projecting."

He's lying, but he does it with a real, full-dimpled smile, rain attacking his hair and soaking his shirt, with warm green-blue eyes that haunted my memories for more years than I care to admit.

I'm struck with the desperate need to hug him.

Just hug him.

No kissing, I tell myself.

Just a hug between old friends who maybe, possibly, if neither of us says the words donuts or cupcakes or cookies or any kind of baked good, really, might be able to be friends again.

The friendly kind of friends who wave and say hi but don't confess to silly little things like crying the night she lost her virginity because even though she went into it willingly, she wished it had been him.

The kind who don't admit that when wildfires swept through the mountains south of here three years ago, she might've logged in to check the Shipwreck news as often as she talked to her family and checked the Sarcasm news.

The kind that you have inside jokes with, like the frog joke, which doesn't make sense to anyone else in the entire world, because no one else was hyped up on Mountain Dew and candy corn and that really awful orange taffy with us on Bailey's second Halloween when Mama dressed her like a turtle and we kept asking her to ribbit all night because I kept confusing frogs and turtles since they were both green.

And we're standing here, with rain picking up around us, already soaking through my shirt and making his dark hair drip into his eyes, getting heavier and heavier with each passing second and blowing in sheets over the lake while we each wait for the other to do something so we can get out of the rain before we're both prunes.

"Okay," I whisper.

I don't know if I'm saying yes to the ride or a hug, but Grady leaps into action immediately.

He swoops my bike up in one hand, grabs my hand with the other, and says, "C'mon, then," and I'm seventeen again, dashing along the path at the lake's edge with Grady and his goat while we head for the boat launch parking lot because he's going to be late for dinner, or I need to get back for a shift at the grocery store, or any of the other reasons the two of us needed to dash out away from the lake after canoeing or paddle boarding or swimming for a summer afternoon.

I miss being seventeen.

I thought all I wanted was to get out in the world, to make something of myself, to help Mama get all her dreams, but right now, I want to be seventeen again.

So maybe, for the next ten minutes, I will be.