Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

Diana couldn’t deny she was relieved to see Carter’s rented SUV pull into the driveway the following Wednesday. Since the incident with the bear, she’d been so jumpy on her daily jogs that she finished each one more anxious than when she’d started. Consequently, she was sleeping worse than ever.

And then there was Emily. Working with her every day was more difficult than Diana had anticipated. Whenever she saw her, Diana’s palms got damp, and her focus slipped. She’d never felt this way about a woman before. Ironically, Emily seemed completely unaffected by Diana’s presence, which only increased Diana’s discomfort.

So, she was glad to have a familiar face around the house for a few days. She enjoyed Carter’s company, and maybe he could even be a buffer between her and Emily at the inn while he installed the new system.

“Hey, Aunt DD,” he called as he stood from the car. “You weren’t kidding when you said this cabin was in the middle of nowhere. ”

“Not even a little bit.” She smiled, holding the door open for him.

He lifted his backpack out of the car and followed her inside. “I mean, I looked at it on Google maps when I booked the place, but it’s not really the same as seeing it in person. Not sure I’ve ever been this far off grid. I don’t even have a signal on my cell phone!”

“No, you’ll need to connect to the Wi-Fi and make sure you’ve enabled calls over Wi-Fi too.”

“Got it.” He dropped his backpack on one of the kitchen chairs and looked around. “Cool place. Looks just like the pictures. Seen any more bears?”

“Luckily, no.”

“I want to see one.” Carter walked to the back window and looked out. “But from, like, inside the house where it can’t eat me.”

“This from the person who reassured me last week that the bear wasn’t going to attack me,” Diana teased.

“I know, I know, but I still don’t want to come face-to-face with one.”

“That makes two of us.” She already felt more relaxed, having him here. Maybe she’d actually sleep tonight, knowing there was someone else in the house. When had she become a person who preferred having company to living alone?

“I’m starved,” Carter said dramatically. “Can we have lunch before we head to work?”

Diana nodded. Since he’d told her to expect him around noon, she’d come home on her lunch break, anticipating his request. “There’s a café on the way to the inn that has good soups and sandwiches.”

“Great. Just give me a minute to get ready.” He took his backpack to the guest room, and then went into the bathroom. When he came out, his hair was neatly combed and the stubble that had been on his cheeks when he arrived was gone.

She felt a tug of something almost maternal as she saw the effort he’d made to look professional. He’d been consistently impressing her since she hired him. She still thought he’d made a mistake dropping out of college, but she could also see that he was happier now, looking more confident and mature every day. Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world if he helped her get her business off the ground before he went back to school. And there were options, once he was ready to discuss them. Perhaps he could complete his degree part-time or online.

A few minutes later, they were in the car.

“I had no idea places like this really existed,” Carter exclaimed as she drove. “Look at that, an actual red barn! And okay, I guess I see why people get excited about fall leaves, because wow…yeah. That’s pretty.” He talked all the way to the café.

Diana smiled more than she had in weeks.

Inside, they ordered sandwiches and sat at one of the tables in back to wait for their food. The table beside theirs was occupied by a young man of Asian descent who looked vaguely familiar. He wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of an electrical company and was halfway through a roast beef sandwich. Diana stared for a second too long, trying to place him. By the time she’d remembered that he was part of Emily’s adventure group, it was too late to look away. He’d seen her and was smiling.

Please don’t let this be awkward.

“Diana Devlin, right?” he said, standing from his table.

She nodded. “That’s right. I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name when we met last week. ”

“Drew Nguyen.” He extended a hand, his gaze shifting to Carter.

“Nice to officially meet you, Drew,” Diana said as she shook his hand. “This is my nephew, Carter. He’s my admin and IT guy with the new business.”

“Hey, Carter.” Drew turned to shake his hand too.

“Hi.” Carter gave him a shy smile. It was remarkable to Diana how mature he seemed one minute and how young the next. Twenty-one was such a transitional age.

“How long are you in town?” Drew asked him.

“Through the weekend,” Carter said. “Maybe longer, depending how long it takes me to get the new system installed.”

“Cool,” Drew said. “A bunch of us are going out after work tomorrow. It’s trivia night at the pub, which is a lot of fun. You’re welcome to join us.” He swung his gaze to Diana. “You too, Diana. Emily will be there.”

“Yeah, that sounds awesome,” Carter enthused. “I’d love to come.”

“Great.” Drew’s smile widened. “Can I get your number? I’ll text you the details.”

Diana pursed her lips. She was fairly sure Drew was just being friendly, but the Adventurers were a queer group. Despite her hesitance to send her nephew off with a group of people she barely knew, trivia night might be a good experience for Carter. He’d led a rather sheltered life in her brother’s home. As far as she knew, he’d never had a boyfriend. Maybe he needed some queer friends.

Drew tapped Carter’s information into his phone and returned to his own table.

“Who’s Emily?” Carter asked her as soon as they were alone again. “Have you met someone here in Vermont?”

Diana dropped her gaze to her hands. “No, Emily works at the inn. Her grandmothers used to own it. She’s part of this adventure group that does a lot of hiking around the area, which is how I met Drew.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “You, hiking?”

She huffed. “For the record, yes. I did go hiking when I first came up here, but lately I’ve stuck to jogging on the roads near the cabin, although even that’s been questionable since I ran into that bear. I’m not part of their adventure group. They came to see Emily at work one day last week, and she introduced us.”

“Okay,” Carter said. “I think I want to go to trivia night. It sounds fun.”

“Sure.” As much as Diana wanted him to have new experiences, she also felt a tug of melancholy. She’d been looking forward to having him around for a few days. Now he’d been in Crescent Falls all of five minutes, and he’d already made a friend and plans to go out, while Diana had been here for weeks and had no friends or plans.

Carter would probably prefer if she didn’t go to trivia night, and that was probably for the best. The last thing she needed right now was to spend time socially with Emily.

And if she was a little bit disappointed to stay home alone tomorrow night, she would never admit it to anyone, not even herself.

Emily was counting down the minutes until her shift ended. Working the front desk at the inn just wasn’t the same now that her grandmas no longer owned it. Sure, the inn looked the same, but it didn’t feel like home in quite the same way. She didn’t realize how much she’d enjoyed being able to sneak back to their apartment on her break and share a cup of tea with Gram or go for a stroll around the grounds with Grandma.

Things were still strained between Emily and Diana. If she wasn’t mistaken, Diana was avoiding her as much as possible, which had prevented Emily from having the opportunity to undo the damage she’d caused when Diana first arrived. At this point, Emily just wanted to quit her job and paint.

Heels echoed down the hall, and Emily’s body did its familiar dance of confusion as she prepared to face Diana…her pulse quickening while her shoulders tightened, a combination of excitement and discomfort that seemed to take over whenever they were in the same room.

She pasted what she hoped was a casual smile on her face as Diana approached the front desk with a man at her side. Who was that? He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved tee that somehow managed to look both casual and expensive, and he was younger than she’d initially thought, maybe not much over twenty. There was something familiar about him…

“Emily, I’d like you to meet my nephew, Carter,” Diana said. “He’s here to oversee the installation of the new website and reservation system.”

Her nephew. Of course. Emily’s mood lifted as she took in Carter’s shy but hopeful expression. He was probably fresh out of college on his first real job.

“Hey, Carter. It’s great to meet you,” she said enthusiastically. “So, you’re updating our system?”

He nodded. “I’ll be rolling everything out tomorrow morning, just getting familiar with your local software this afternoon.”

“Great. It can certainly use an upgrade. Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with. I’ve been using this software for years, and I know the town really well too, if you’re looking for things to do while you’re here.”

“I actually just met one of your friends while I was at lunch with Aunt DD, and he invited us to trivia night tomorrow?” Carter darted a glance at his aunt, who was drumming her fingers against the edge of the counter, watching their conversation.

“Oh yeah? Which friend? Trivia night is super fun. You should definitely come. You too, Diana.” She tossed the invite out there, hoping Diana might take it, hoping it might be a way for them to find common ground, or maybe they were doomed to spend the rest of Diana’s time here in Vermont tiptoeing awkwardly around each other.

Also, she was inexplicably swooning over the way Carter called her Aunt DD. Was DD her nickname or just something he called her? Emily had so many questions. If only she and Diana were friendly enough for her to find out the answers.

“Drew,” Carter said, just as Diana said, “I’m busy tomorrow evening.”

Emily bit back her disappointment. It might have been fun to see Diana at the local pub, but then again, Emily wasn’t sure she could imagine Diana in a weathered booth, drinking a beer. The mental image was smokin’ hot, though. Diana in jeans and flannel? Okay, she had to stop this line of thought, especially while she was standing in front of Diana’s nephew.

“Definitely come, Carter,” Emily said. “We’ll have a lot of fun.”

The following evening, Emily found herself sitting next to Alex at a booth in Maude’s Tavern, with Drew and Carter across from her. Frankie hadn’t been able to make it tonight…or so she said. Frankie rarely joined them at trivia night, but it had left them with an open spot on their team, which Carter had filled.

“Did you graduate this year?” Emily asked while they waited for their burgers. She was curious to get to know him. He seemed a lot more laid-back than Diana, but there was something hesitant about him too, like maybe he hadn’t quite adjusted to life after college.

At her question, Carter dropped his gaze to the beer in front of him. “I, um, didn’t graduate. I’m taking some time off to rethink my options.”

“Good for you,” Drew said. “We’re so young when we pick our majors. It’s so easy to get stuck in the wrong track before we’re old enough to figure out what we actually want to do with our lives. I have a biology degree I’ll probably never use now that I’m working as an electrician. But hey, I finally found something I’m good at and that I enjoy.”

“Yeah…that’s…that’s it exactly.” Carter nodded, as animated now as he’d been subdued before. “I let my dad push me into an engineering track when I was a teen. We have, I mean…my family owns Devlin Hotels, so it was always a given that I’d work there too, and my dad thought this would be a good fit for me, but it wasn’t. I was terrible at it, and the further I got into college, the more I realized how miserable I was.”

“Sounds like you needed a break to figure things out,” Alex said.

“Well, my dad thinks I’m a total failure.” He ducked his head again. “He kicked me out of the house. I mean, things had already been strained between us, but this was the final straw, I guess.” He looked simultaneously devastated and also like someone who’d finally found a friend to vent to about something that had been weighing on his mind for a long time.

“That’s tough.” Emily’s heart went out to him.

Carter took a big swallow of his beer. “Yeah.”

“So you’re working for your aunt while you figure things out?” Emily asked.

He nodded. “Living with her too. She basically saved my ass after my parents threw me out. It turns out that it’s a lot harder to find an affordable apartment in Boston than I thought, and there aren’t many good paying jobs for college dropouts.”

Emily’s heart filled with warmth to know that Diana had been there for him when his parents hadn’t. Emily had spent a lot of time with Carter today while he got the new system up and running, and she had noticed the easy rapport between him and Diana. She seemed softer around him, almost maternal, a side Emily wouldn’t have suspected Diana had.

“It’s hard. I hear you.” Alex gave him a sympathetic look. “I have a degree in culinary arts, but I work in my girlfriend’s gift shop. My situation is sort of the opposite of yours, though. I always wanted to be a chef, and somehow I just never made it happen.”

“Being an adult is hard,” Carter said with such a dramatic sigh that the whole table burst out laughing.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got a job with your aunt for now,” Drew said. “You’ll figure the rest out. That was the biggest thing I realized after I graduated last year. Like, there’s so much pressure to decide your career when you’re eighteen, but really, you’ve got your whole life to figure it out. People change careers all the time.”

“That’s so true,” Emily agreed.

Their burgers arrived, and they chatted about lighter topics while they ate. This weekend, they were all going apple picking at Alex’s parents’ orchard, and Carter agreed to come too. Emily hoped he could convince Diana to join them. She kept wondering what it might have been like if Diana were here at the pub tonight. Would she have had a good time? Would it have been anything like the time she and Emily shared drinks at the Beaumont?

Talia, Tom, and Maddie were in the next booth and kept leaning over the seat backs to exchange conversation. The whole thing was loud and chaotic and everything Emily loved about her Thursday night tradition.

“Five minutes until trivia begins,” Megan the bartender called. “Team captains, see me for a scorecard.”

“Any good at trivia?” Drew asked Carter, whose eyes rounded at being put on the spot. “Because we’d really like to kick those guys’ asses tonight.” He jabbed an elbow toward the booth behind them.

“I heard that,” Tom called, “and you haven’t got a chance. We’re unbeatable.”

“Humble too,” Alex called, but she was grinning.

Emily went to get a scorecard from Megan, but as she slid back into her booth, she paused before writing their team name at the top. “Uh…” She glanced at Carter. “We’re usually Team Gay All Day, because…well, the Adventurers is a queer group, but, um…we could use a different name tonight if it makes you more comfortable?”

Carter did his best impression of a deer in headlights, and Emily wasn’t sure how to read his expression. Honestly, she had no idea of his sexuality. Surely he wasn’t homophobic, not with how close he and Diana seemed to be, but not every young straight guy wanted to be on a trivia team called Gay All Day.

They sat in a moment of awkward silence while Emily tried to think of a less flamboyant team name. Then Carter cleared his throat. His neck had gone a bit splotchy. “Um, that’s fine. The team name, um, applies to me too, so…”

Something about the way he said it made Emily think he hadn’t come out to many people yet, that this was a big deal for him. That Emily’s and her friends’ reactions might be a formative part of his coming out experience. She broke into a huge grin just as Drew slapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Right on! I had a hunch when I invited you to join us tonight.”

Carter’s blush had spread across his cheeks now, but he was grinning at the reception to his news, looking almost giddy. Suddenly, Emily remembered that he’d said things were strained between him and his parents even before they kicked him out, and she could only hope that didn’t have anything to do with him being gay.

Thank God he had Diana.

“Between these two booths, we have all the letters in LGBTQ,” Emily told him. “So you’re in good company here with us.”

“Cool,” Carter said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “That’s really cool.”

“Did I hear you mentioning letters?” Tom called over the seat.

“Officially welcoming Carter into the group,” she called back.

Tom’s face appeared over the seat. “Oh yeah? You’re one of us?”

“Yeah.” Carter smiled at him, confidence growing by the minute. “I’m gay.”

“Pansexual trans guy here.” Tom gestured to himself. He pulled out his phone, and Emily knew without asking what he was going to show Carter. It was a photo from last year’s Burlington Pride. The five of them had their arms around each other, wearing matching rainbow tie-dye shirts. Alex’s shirt was emblazoned with a big L, then Drew with G, Emily with B, Tom with T, and Talia wearing Q. Emily had a framed copy at home. She was pretty sure they all did.

“I love that.” Carter was beaming now. “We didn’t have anything like that at my college. This is…awesome.”

“You’re welcome to join us next year,” Emily said. “We can always use two Gs.”

“When I’m around, we have two Bs,” Maddie said.

“And my girlfriend Frankie makes two Ls,” Alex added.

“I’m only here for a few days, but maybe I can visit again,” Carter said. “I’d love to have more queer friends.”

“You’re welcome any time,” Alex told him warmly. “We’d love to have you.”

“All right, folks,” Megan’s voice echoed through the bar, amplified by her microphone. “It’s trivia time. We’ve got five teams playing tonight, so it should be a lot of fun. Our first category is geography. Everyone ready?”

A round of cheers went up. Based on the exuberant energy in her booth, Emily thought Team Gay All Day might actually have a shot at winning.