“Shhh.” I put my index finger to my lips and frantically looked around the cafe, praying that no one was paying attention to her.
“Oh, please.” She swung her hand at me like pshaw and made a face that said I was ridiculous. “These townies are all up in our business no matter how loud or quiet we are.” She was right of course. Conway was a small town and in a small town, gossip is just par for the course. We both grew up in Conway. We got thrown together a lot as kids because my dad was the sheriff and her dad was the head of the community emergency response team (CERT) and neither of us had a mom to speak of. We were quite the pair, the drama dork and the prodigy. But I adored her. As kids, everyone but Bev thought I was too smart to be friends with, but she said my big brain made me the only person smart enough to see her charm.
She attempted to lower her voice for my sake. “No, but really like of all the weed-wackers you could run into on your first day working for Eggs … That was perfect.”
Beverly was well aware that I’d been crushing on Wyatt … basically forever. He was pretty much the only guy to ever be nice to me in high school and he was funny, and well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he was smoking hot. He clearly won the genetic lottery, by far the tallest and the biggest of the Morgan brothers, and honestly on a normal day the Morgan genes were already the cream of the gene pool. Everything about Wyatt screamed strong. God, he had hands like the Jolly Green Giant’s, only not green. I couldn’t even imagine how it felt to have him touch or hold me. And his lips. Damn, I got horned up just imagining them. Beyond his heart-stopping good looks, he was wily, but in a good way. For me, Wyatt was emblematic of the kind of wild fun I never got to have. Honestly, he was a smiling, silly brute of a man, and I so wanted him to ravish me.
I looked around again and then totally unprofessionally said, “I had to touch it.”
Bev’s jaw dropped and suddenly our conversation became a game of fill in the blank.
“No, you didn’t. How did you …?” She shook her head in awe. She was asking me how I managed.
“I was dying, Bev. I mean, I was a professional, but on the inside ...”
“Did he ...?” She raised her eyebrows, silently asking if he got hard.
I nodded.
“OMG. What did he …?” She was totally flabbergasted at this point.
I was actually pretty impressed with this part. We had both acted like adults when he became erect and just moved on.
“We ignored it.”
She laughed. Then she said, “I told you he’s into you.” Bev had been trying to tell me that Wyatt was into me for at least a decade.
He was not.
I was certain of this. Wyatt Morgan had a chance to kiss me and he didn’t. A number of years back when I was in medical school, I came home to Conway to celebrate Bev’s twenty-first birthday. We went to a local bar, Sadie’s. I was the DD, and well, Bev got plastered. I couldn’t manage her alone. Wyatt helped me usher her to the car, and even followed us home. It was the second time in my life he played the role of Caroline’s hero. Once we had Bev tucked safely in bed, I walked him back to his truck and we stood on Bev’s front lawn just chatting. The conversation between us flowed naturally—which is basically not a thing that happens to me. Usually, when I’m talking to people, I have to work really hard to not blow through normal social cues. I blame it on going to college at sixteen, always studying, and not experiencing the normal markers of social development, but secretly I wonder if that’s just who I am. Anyway, he was so close and at one point he picked up my hand and wove his fingers through my fingers. I was leaning against the door of his truck, talking about an appendectomy, I think, when Wyatt said, “You look so beautiful, Caroline.”
Startled or maybe just straight-up shocked, I questioned him. “I do?”
He brushed a hair out of my face and leaned in like he was gonna kiss me. I let my eyes close and dragged in a shaky breath, both amazed and terrified about what was about to happen, and then suddenly the warmth of his closeness dissipated.
When I opened my eyes, Wyatt was a good two feet away from me and he said, “It’s been a long night. I should get going. I’m sure you’re tired.”
I wasn’t. But he was gone before I could stop him. Obviously, Wyatt thought I was cute but didn’t want to get mixed up with the likes of me for whatever reason. Maybe because I was a big dork. People would talk. Or maybe because my dad was the sheriff. Or maybe because he thought my big brain was a lot of work. Or maybe he just wanted a fling and people didn’t think of me that way. Who knows? All I knew was that I felt stupid and I’d never mentioned it to Bev because I was embarrassed.
Rather than break and catch her up on all the sordid details of that night with Wyatt, I said, “Will you stop it with that? Wyatt Morgan is not the type of man who lets what he wants sit on the shelf and spoil. If he was into me, he could have had me when we were teens and he knows it.”
Bev took a bite of her salad and then still chewing, she said, “Yeah, but when you were sixteen, you were the sheriff’s daughter, and he was a hooligan. Now, you’re adults.”
“Am I?” I whined, subtly complaining about my dad.
“The sheriff still on your case?” Bev asked.
“Yes,” I groaned, although I was a tiny bit relieved that she’d taken the bait and we were no longer talking about Wyatt. “He just doesn’t understand that I’m happy to be home.” I poked my fork at my chicken pot pie, which was beyond good. Hazel was an amazing cook. “He says that I am squandering my potential, wiping snotty noses and doing checkups, when I could be working at a world class medical facility, doing extraordinary things. He’s not wrong. I have offers, but I’m just not sure it’s for me.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“I tried, Bev, but you know how he gets, all preachy. Telling me I don’t know what’s best, and that if I stay here, someday I’ll look back on this moment filled with regret.”
Bev put her fork down. “Argh, I’m sorry but that man just doesn’t see you. If you want to move home and be a Podunk snot-wiping local doc and not a world class pediatric orthopedist, that is your prerogative. You are a grown woman, Caroline. I don’t care if he’s your dad or the town sheriff. Hell, even if he was the president, he cannot dictate your path. Can. Not. Do you hear me? Tell me you know that,” she said emphatically.
I smiled. I loved when she got righteous. I knew she would support my choice no matter what because she was totally that kind of friend. The kind of friend who told you when you were being an ass but also stood by and defended your right to be an ass if that’s what you wanted.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. I mean, I can help so many children. I have a unique skill set.” I paused and sighed, a big part of the reason that I hadn’t just decided to stay home was because I felt guilty abandoning possible kids in need. I looked down at my pot pie. I just couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with her.
“It’s your life. You get to choose. And who knows, maybe there are kids right here in Montana that need you.” She reached across the table and took my hand and ducked her head down so I was forced to look at her. Once she knew she’d regained my attention, she said, “There are perks to living in Conway, ya know?”