“I hate you,” I muttered, pushing my hair back from my bleary face. She rolled her eyes and handed me a cup of coffee, which I grasped like a talisman. “I love you.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“I agree.” I sighed, sinking into a chair at her table. “How long did it take you to get used to sleeping with all that racket?”
“What racket? I didn’t hear a peep.”
“Yeah, that’s the other thing. It’s either as loud as Mardi Gras out there, or the sound of silence. What’s up with that?”
“I grew up with it so I barely notice it anymore. Of course, I don’t sleep much anyway.”
Roxie had had insomnia since she was a kid. “That getting any better?”
A content look crossed her face. “It’s funny, but ever since Leo and I, you know . . .”
“Started fucking?”
“Started seeing each other is what I was going to say,” she said, her cheeks pinking. “I’ve been sleeping better. I mean, I’m never going to get eight hours, but I’m definitely getting more sleep than I ever used to.”
I sipped at my coffee, nodding. “It’s all that fucking.”
“It’s more than the fucking,” she insisted, hooking a chair over with her foot and sinking down next to me. “It’s the before and the after, you know?”
“Ah yes, the sweet nothings and the afterglow.” I picked a stray yarn on my sweater. “I’m usually wondering when the fucking will be starting back up again.”
“Oh, the fucking starts back up again,” she said, her blush deepening. “But there’s just something about sleeping next to him. It’s . . .” She paused, searching for a word.
“Amazing? Incredible? Out of this world?”
“Nice.”
“Nice?” I asked, shaking my head. “That’s all you got, is nice?”
“It is nice. It’s so nice,” she replied with the most perfect sense of peace and contentment I’d ever seen. “I don’t get to sleep with Leo every night; some weeks there’s only one or two nights we can have an actual overnight due to Polly’s schedule. So when we’re together, of course it’s full of slap and tickle, but then, when that’s through, and it’s just him and me and the quiet—that’s the nice.” Her eyes looked right through me; she was in her own world now. “He always drifts off first, of course, so I get this time with him to just . . . be with him. Watch him sleep, listen to him breathe, listen to him snore, for God’s sake, and just feel this big, warm man next to me, his body wrapped around me, those big callused hands on my hip or on my belly, and it’s honestly the best feeling ever. It’s just . . .” She trailed off, dreamy and faraway.
“Nice,” I breathed, understanding.
“Yeah,” she replied.
I’d had nice. Once. But then it was so very not nice.
We both mooned for a moment, lost in our own thoughts, and then I broke the spell by telling her I was off to meet her high school crush.
“Tell him I’m still waiting for direction on Logan’s birthday cake. I don’t know what I’m making, but if he doesn’t tell me soon it’ll involve Walmart fruit cocktail,” she called out to me as I headed down the stairs and off to the Jeep.
“I’ll do my best, but I’m sure with all the flirting going on, it’ll be hard to remember,” I teased, knowing how she felt about her high school crush.
“I loved that man since puberty; you better watch your ass, city girl,” floated out to me through the open kitchen window. As I turned back I could see the curtains fluttering, and I pantomimed my finger doing something inappropriate to the hole my other hand was making.
I couldn’t wait to meet this guy . . .
“How adorable are you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Excuse me, but you’re the second beautiful man I’ve seen in this town since arriving last night. What is in the water upstate?”
“You must be Natalie,” replied the beautiful man who was exactly as Roxie had described The Chad Bowman to be. Tall, handsome, confident but not cocky, the guy was worthy of many a high school crush.
“And you are definitely Chad Bowman. You’re as gorgeous as Roxie described.”
“Back at you—she gave me the lowdown on you as well. As soon as you strutted through the door, I knew it was you,” he said, pulling out a stool for me.
“I don’t strut.” I gracefully lowered myself onto the seat. Adjusting, I winked. “Okay, maybe a little. I prefer to think of it as sashaying.”
“Either or, you’re killing me with the shoes,” he said, gesturing to my heels. “How many accidents did you cause walking in here this morning?”
I thought back to the two blocks I walked after parking the Jeep. A couple of dropped jaws from some teenage guys, one shy wave from the little old man at the barbershop I sauntered past, and a whistle from the gentleman who was walking out of the butcher, right before he dropped his pork loin. Nothing crass like I’d get in the city, no hoots or hollers—but definitely some nice, respectable ogling. “A few near misses, but no fender benders.”
“I can imagine.” He ordered up two coffees and I pulled out my things to get started.
I studied him while he interacted with the server, talking to her, not at her. Something that I made a mental note of. He was handsome in that “is he real?” sort of way that all high school crushes are made from. I imagined him and Roxie back in the day, her fawning all over this godlike creature, and him causing heart failure everywhere he went.
The diner was packed with a steady breakfast crowd; everything from singles to couples, moms and babies, and a pair of grumpy old men who sidled up to the counter looking so old that the town was probably built on their backs.
Ideas had started swirling late last night when I was flipping through local commercials. You learn a lot from the ads that small towns create. From the small fifteen seconds of Karla’s Klip ’n’ Kurl to the robust ads that the Bryant Mountain House put out to court the weekender, this town had a little bit for everyone. The plan was coming together.
“So tell me, what do you think of our little Bailey Falls?” Chad said, blowing on his hot coffee before taking a sip.