But I’d stayed strong. I hadn’t watched her strip down that night on the dock. In fact, I hadn’t made a move all summer long. Not once. Every time my gaze had strayed from her sparkling silver eyes to the swell of her breasts under her T-shirt, I’d kept my urges to myself.
Of course, looking wasn’t really against my rules. So after we’d slipped naked into the dark water of the lake, I’d admired Kira’s shoulders shimmering in the moonlight and the place where the water dripped down between her breasts. She’d held herself low at the surface, preventing me from seeing much. The mystery had made my attraction that much more potent. I’d floated there, close enough to touch her, while the gentle current caressed my bare skin.
Submerged in the water, we’d watched the fireworks shoot up from the other end of the lake, their bright explosions mirrored in the water’s surface. When it was finally time to get out of the water—and after my brain had invented several dozen fantastic ways to appreciate Kira’s naked body—I’d asked her to turn around while I climbed out on the dock.
Usually, I’m a hundred percent comfortable with nudity. But I couldn’t let Kira see the effect she had on me. I didn’t want her to know that my mind had been in the gutter the whole evening. Pulling my dry briefs and khaki shorts over my dripping wet body had been difficult with a rock-hard cock in the way.
“Jonas, it really is a beautiful lake,” Quinn said, interrupting the movie reel of my memories. “I can see why you’d come back.”
“It was the best three months of my life. No lie.”
She was quiet for a moment, and I thought the conversation was over. But then Quinn asked a question. “So… Why did you wait five years to come back?”
I rolled my neck, trying to shake the last of the tour-bus tension from my neck. “Because I’m a goddamned idiot,” I said, rowing toward the little beach. It was the truth, too. If Maine had lost its magic, it wasn’t the Pine Tree State’s fault. It was my fault. I’d been too stupid to see what was right in front of me.
When we reached the water’s edge, I dragged the canoe up onto the gravelly sand. “We can leave the boat right here. Nobody will bother it.”
“Really?”
“Really. That’s how it’s done here in Outer Bumfuck.”
Quinn laughed. “Are you going to show me the town?”
“Of course I am. But it will take about ten seconds.”
I admired Quinn’s shapely legs as she leaned over to stash her oar in the boat. It took surprising body strength to play the drums, and the muscle looked good on her, especially in her bathing suit and Daisy Dukes.
My drummer and I were truly just friends. We’d met eight years ago at work in a Seattle bar. Years ago—when I was hammered on Jack Daniel’s—I once kissed Quinn, in just the kind of dumbass move that can ruin a good friendship as well as a good band.
Luckily, after about five seconds of stupidity, we pulled back and sort of stared at each other. I’d said, “Okay, nope” at exactly the same time she’d said, “Ewww.” Then we’d burst out laughing, and never tried that again.
Thank goodness, because I was usually too impulsive for my own good. Quinn and I would’ve never worked as a couple, anyway. Two moody artists? That’s just a bad idea.
Besides, Quinn shied away from romantic relationships. She was happiest when she was scribbling music into her notebook or tapping out a rhythm with the drumsticks that she never seemed to put down.
From the public beach, we made a left toward Main Street. “So…” I gestured like a tour guide. “Here you see downtown metropolitan Nest Lake.”
The only living being in sight was a golden retriever sleeping on the sidewalk. As I began to talk, he opened one lazy eye to look at us.
“You have your post office, which is open about a half an hour a day, but don’t bother trying to figure out when, because they haven’t updated the sign on the door since 1986. And there’s the soft-serve ice cream place, the Kreemy Kone. Open until nine. The crown jewel is here—Lake Nest General Store—where I ate dinner every single night for an entire summer, even though it isn’t actually a restaurant. And that’s it. You’ve seen the whole town.”
Quinn raised a finger, counting the cars. “Four.”
“This is busy, actually. A big crowd for Memorial Day weekend.”
“Wow.” She smiled. “And your fans are about to rush you, I can feel it.”
Right on cue, a woman came out of the general store with a gallon of milk. She dismounted the wooden stairs, turning away without giving us a second glance. Then she tucked herself into one of the cars and drove away.
“And then there were three,” I said under my breath.
Seeing Main Street brought me into a strange reverie. In spite of the sunshine, I felt as if I was having a very vivid dream. I’d thought about this place so often, and now I was here for real.
Crazy.
“I can see why you came here to write,” Quinn said. “But how did you find it?”
“My mom used to come here when she was a little girl. One of the few pictures I have of her is on the porch of the general store.”
“Ah,” Quinn said. And because she knew I didn’t like to talk about my parents, she left it at that.
I’d lost both my parents when I was seven. Coming back here five years ago was a way to try to remember my life before everything had gone wrong.
Did it work? I guess. But the cure was only temporary. Lately I’d been feeling just as lost.
Five years ago I’d come here when my band’s new album was overdue. The record label was pissed off at me, so Maine seemed like a good place to hide from their nagging. And my glamorous girlfriend had just dumped me. A tabloid had just run a story about how I’d cheated on her. They used pictures of me with a woman that I slept with the night after we broke up.
I was twenty-five years old and already in a slump. So I’d come to this place my mother used to tell me about. It was one of the only details I could remember about her.
I’d needed some magic, and that’s what I’d found here in Maine.
“God, it’s hard to believe places like this still exist,” Quinn said. “Can we go into the general store? And then I want ice cream.”
“Lead on.” I followed her up the store’s wooden steps, through the screened porch and into the shop itself. What hit me first was the scent. It smelled exactly the same inside—musky and rich, like pickles, salami, and sawdust. And it looked mostly the same, lit by old soda lamps hanging from the ceiling on chains, with half an inch of dust on each one.
What’s more, Kira’s father stood behind the cash register, looking just as grumpy as he had five years ago. The old man proceeded to ignore us both, because he always ignored the summer people. And yet he’d been in business forever, because there weren’t any other stores for ten miles.
Two or three years ago, drunk and in a melancholy mood, I had finally picked up the phone to call this very store. It was a call that I’d waited too long to make, and I’d known it was hopeless even before that surly old man answered the phone in his gravelly voice.
“Is Kira there?” I’d asked, knowing it was a long shot. No girl waits two years to hear from the asshole who’d rejected her. Besides—Kira had always said that she was going back to college after our magical summer.