He was just a guy named John, who I was crushing on.
One evening, he bought a Maine souvenir pack of playing cards. That’s when we started playing rummy and canasta on the rickety little porch table. The card games somehow made my secrets flow faster. I told him that my on-again off-again high school boyfriend would soon be back from a two-year deployment in Afghanistan, and that I wasn’t sure I wanted to get back together. But I was considering it.
And John confessed that he’d just been dumped by his girlfriend.
“She… left you?” I asked, disbelieving. Even then, when I had no idea that the man sitting in front of me was a rock star, it was impossible for me to imagine a woman rejecting him. Not only was he outrageously sexy, but there was a light in his eyes that I knew was special. He was smart, as well as warm and funny. How could any girl turn that away?
“Well, I was a rat bastard,” he admitted, his voice low.
“Maybe you just slipped up once?” I asked, embarrassed for him.
“Nope. Honestly, I’ve been going through a dark time. I would have dumped me, too. I don’t even know if she ever loved me.”
I was dumbfounded. “Then why are you…?”
“Thinking about her?” He smiled ruefully. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to be the jerk she’s accused me of being. Maybe I want to call her when I get back, just to let her know that I’m not the thoughtless whore she thinks I am.”
“Maybe she’ll take you back,” I said. And he just shrugged, like it didn’t matter.
But after that, I was careful to keep the discussion away from girlfriends or sex. Because I didn’t want him to read my raging crush right off my face.
Each night, after our card game, or a stroll by the moonlit lake, he walked me fifty yards past the B&B, to my front door. Sometimes we’d pass Mrs. Wetzle sitting on the front porch of the B&B. I didn’t appreciate the way the old woman stared at us as we walked by. It made me feel oddly guilty. Like I was a teenager again, and out past curfew.
“She doesn’t like me,” John whispered under his breath. “She actually said, ‘If I’d known you were a musician, I wouldn’t have rented you the room.’”
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah. I mean… it’s not like I’m practicing drum solos, you know? It’s just a little strumming here and there.”
I stopped myself from saying how much I enjoyed hearing the sound of his guitar on the nighttime breeze. I had my pride to maintain. “She’s a little judgmental,” I whispered instead.
And it was true. I’d already experienced Mrs. Wetzle’s judgment firsthand.
When I’d decided to take a semester off after being attacked in Boston, I’d begun helping my father with the grocery deliveries. My ugly little story got around town awfully fast, as these things always do. The first time I brought a delivery to Mrs. Wetzle’s house, the old woman had grabbed my wrist. “You have to learn to be more careful in the big city.”
I’d felt all kinds of shame that I didn’t even have a name for.
“I think she makes me bad lunches on purpose,” John had complained. “She hopes I’ll leave.”
That made me laugh. “It’s not personal. She’s a famously bad cook, with one exception.”
“Really? What’s the exception?”
We’d arrived at my screen porch already, which meant that it was time to go into the sleepy house alone. But we paused for a last bit of conversation. “She makes really good homemade popcorn balls with molasses. She delivers them to the neighbors at Christmastime.”
John crossed his arms over his muscular chest and smiled at me. “Maybe she’ll make me one when I leave in September. But I won’t hold my breath.”
I thanked him for walking me home. He gave me a friendly wave and walked away as I climbed the porch steps.
He did that every night except for the one that changed my life.
And what happened that night hadn’t even been his decision. This whole scandal was all on me.
Three
Jonas
After those precious minutes on the dock with Kira, I herded Quinn back into the canoe, and then launched it, feeling great. I was in the best kind of shock. Not only was Kira in Nest Lake, I could still taste her on my tongue.
I never thought I’d see her again. But some kind of wish-granting goddess had smiled down on me, offering me another chance to reconnect. I wouldn’t let it go to waste.
My elation lasted about four minutes.
“So…” Quinn started from the front of the canoe. There were questions in her voice.
“So.” I repeated flatly. There was no way I felt like sharing. Quinn and I were close, but the hope I was feeling was too fragile for friendly dishing.
“An old friend?” she pressed.
“Yeah.” Please let it go.
“She’s your sweetness, huh? Just like in the new song?”
Fuck. Leave it to a female to overhear that and make the connection. “Quinn, I’m not talking about it, okay? Just let me be. And if you say anything to anyone else, I’ll kill you dead.”
“It’s just that…” She bit her lip. “Did you see her before she turned her car around?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were reading your magazine. Which I brought back with me.” She patted her back pocket. “You can thank me later. But anyway, first she pulled up in front of the general store, and a guy with a baby got out of the car.”
My whole body went cold. “What?”
“You heard me, Jonas. They went into the store together. And then your girl turned her car around and passed us.”
The earth lurched beneath me. “She wasn’t wearing any rings,” I said stupidly. It was the first thing I’d checked when I walked out onto the dock.
“Not everybody likes jewelry, Jonas.” She said it in a perfectly gentle voice, but it shredded my heart anyway. Because she was right. And Kira didn’t go out for bling. She was beautiful in a completely natural, unadorned way.
Fuck.
Chewing on this revelation, I paddled the canoe back across the lake in silence until the front of the lodge came into view. So did Ethan and Nix. My guitar player was lying in a hammock in front of the lodge, and Ethan was doing some pushups on the lawn.
But I didn’t even greet them. I shoved the canoe onto the bank and went inside, looking for someplace to think. I’d rented out the whole place for the weekend, so nobody would bother us. Poking my head into a couple of rooms, I found my luggage beside a quaint double bed. I shut the bedroom door and dropped myself onto the quilt.
Someone—probably Ethan—had opened the windows already, so sounds of my friends’ voices drifted in. The afternoon ticked by slowly. Tomorrow I’d be able to see Kira again. But tomorrow seemed like a long way away. As the light began to fade, the voices on the deck grew louder and more raucous. The smell of burgers on the grill eventually wafted through the window, but I did not get up to join the others.
My mind was too full of memories of that other summer—the one when I’d pulled myself together. All day I’d worked on songwriting, pausing only for Mrs. Wetzle’s lousy lunch offerings and a quick dip in the lake. Then, feeling good about myself, I’d eaten some of Kira’s excellent cooking, and smiled across the table at her for a couple of hours over a beer or four.