“Want to get a drink?”
I blinked at the fading light around us, and at Karl. “Sorry?”
“I mean, not coffee—tea, rather—this time. Want to grab a beer or something?”
I was still holding Karl’s arm like we’d linked up on purpose, but now he was the one directing our traffic.
I must have nodded, because Karl led me to what he claimed as his favorite bar. It was a dive, but in a charming way. Even more ‘everyone knows your name’ than usual for this nosy-ass town. He greeted several people as we ordered longnecks and made our way to a booth in the back.
I took a long swallow from my beer. Setting the bottle down on the table, I cast around for something innocuous to talk about. We’d barely begun to know each other again since I returned to town, and somehow we kept diving into these heavy topics. My abortion and subsequent loss of faith. His troubles with his family. That encounter with Ingrid. “So.”
Karl sipped his beer. I noticed his Adam’s apple bob slowly. “So.” He tried to fight it, but his lips curved into a smile.
I waved my hand. “I guess we’ve kind of covered the deep end already.”
“It’s not that I can’t do small talk. I just seem to keep missing that step with you.”
I scrunched my nose at him. It was weird, being almost comfortable revisiting those tough moments, but not having any banter to fall back on. After a bit, I asked, “Do you like what you do?”
He nodded. “It pays the bills. Well, some of the bills. But yeah, I’ve always loved working with choirs, and the people at St. Luke’s are easy. Most of them. One of the Graces, once we’re sitting with the Church Council, you’d never know she was capable of taking direction from me.”
I could guess which one. I snort-laughed, and we both sank a little deeper into our seats.
“What about you? Are you working while you’re in town? Or is this an extended family visit?”
“It’s both. My dad’s brother has a hotel here, and needed someone with experience during the high season, for office and front desk work.”
“Hence the Market Day advice.”
“Hence, indeed. Right before Thanksgiving, I finished a contract job in Austin—that’s where I live. Or where I lived? It’s all in flux. Either way, I finished that job and Uncle Bill asked me to hire on, so here I am.”
Karl played with the label on his bottle as he listened to me, only looking up when another local clapped him on the shoulder in passing. It was a little funny, how many people kept greeting him while he barely looked around the place for familiar faces.
“So, what’s next for you?” he asked, when I stopped short of laying out my life plans.
I shrugged as best I could with one shoulder against the wall. “I always figured, since I first left Rockport, I’d get my marketing degree and make a career out of that. Make it so I got to travel while I climb some kind of career ladder. Turn myself into a city person. Pictured myself as one of those people who looks like a professional, but with a unique sense of style. I know that’s amorphous, but it was the original idea. And then I graduated in a pandemic, and the company I’d interned at the previous summer said, instead of the full time job I had lined up, they had to take me on as contract labor. So it was working from my bedroom instead of racking up frequent flyer miles, and my brother my only real companion instead of a metropolis full of young strivers. I’ve been jumping from contract to contract for two years now, and never once set foot in anything like an office until the cramped little room behind the reception desk at Uncle Bill’s hotel.”
I checked in on Karl to see if he’d glazed over at my monologue. He nodded like it all made sense. Like he’d heard every nuance even with the bar’s background noise and holiday tunes playlist. “And that’s why you’re not staying once tourist season is over?”
“As soon as those birds fly south, I’m doing the same. Well, not flying south. Probably. I don’t have my next job lined up, and I don’t know where I’ll be. But I do know I’ll be gone from here.”
“Any direction where you won’t run into Ingrid on the street?” He was looking up at me again, leaning forward just a little bit. His eyes were warm even in the low light of the bar, and his intent gaze said he got it. Said he understood the deepest truth of me.
He got that it wasn’t just Ingrid, or any of her cohort—all of whom probably had heard by now about the salon and jewelry store incidents. It wasn’t just the churches or the cramped hotel office or the overwhelming smallness of Rockport.
It was years of feeling I hadn’t found my place. Hadn’t even gotten to start looking. Years of yearning for new walls, new vistas, new challenges. I didn’t want to settle into anything; I wanted to explore everything. It was, finally, my turn.
I smiled into the pleasure of being seen. “Any direction but here,” I said, decisive. Like someone who’s never doubted herself. “And speaking of directions. I wasn’t paying too much attention before. Which way did we come from?”
Karl stood with me. “I’ll walk you. You’re parked near the salon?”
I grabbed my bag and nodded. “Yep. Thanks.”
I tugged down my sleeves against the cool night as we left. And something that wasn’t the December air softened at the sight of Karl standing beside me, hair haloed in the streetlamp’s light.
“Did I thank you for getting me away from Ingrid earlier?”
He chuckled. “Pretty sure you were the one who got us away. My head was still spinning from the shopping and all.”
“Well, maybe. What I noticed was you intervening when I was shaken from seeing her with no warning. Plus, now I have to find a new place to do my hair, and that salon had the best reviews. It was nice you stood up for me. It gave me time to regroup.”
“And then you were more than ready to stand up for yourself.” His voice held admiration, and kindness, and that bit of warmth that always rang true. “As you always seem to manage, no matter the circumstances.”
It was a rosy view of my life, but maybe not entirely wrong. I’d have to sit with that feeling and decide how much I should own it.
But not just yet. Not when we were approaching my car, and Karl put a hand on my elbow to guide me across the street, and the goosebumps on my legs seemed to come from anticipation instead of the temperature.
I drew us to a halt. “So, it was great running into you.”
He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dusky air. “It’s always a festival when I’m around.”
I licked my lips. “You know,” I said, “I don’t think we ever properly finished our last conversation.”
He cocked his head to the side, eyebrows raised in question.
“We didn’t talk about how you asked me out.” I stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat emanating from his body.
His voice was low and a little raspy. “Did I ask you out? I thought I only asked about the handbell choir.”
“It was implied.”
His smile returned, wider than before. “How very forward of me. Did you imply an answer?”
Instead of speaking, I pressed my lips to his. He made a little sound of surprise, but then he leaned in and kissed me back, slow and sweet. His lips were cool and firm against mine. His taste, hops and spice, rooted me in place like my legs were suddenly piers sunk deep into underwater strata. My head was spinning when we separated, and he looked as dazed as I felt.
He spoke quietly. “So if there was a question, I guess that was a yes?”
“Yes.”
Another slow smile, and his hands running gently up my arms. “I’m glad. I think we’re both glad. But it’s … we’ve had a lot happen, a lot come up between us in just this week. I’m not trying to move slow, not with you leaving next month, so don’t think that’s what I’m saying.”
My kiss-buzz was fading faster than my beer-buzz. The man needed to stop talking caution. “What are you saying, then?”
Now it was his turn to close the distance between us, kiss me until my lips were tingling. His touch was firm and warm, hands cupping my face, thumbs brushing along my cheekbones. I shivered as he pulled away and gazed at me like I was hidden treasure.
“I’m saying, I want to make sure we have our heads on straight.” He threaded his fingers through mine and lifted my hand, bringing it to his lips. My breath caught at the sudden intimacy of it all. Our hands, pressed together. His lips on my skin, and his banked-fire eyes locked on mine. “Can we take just a beat? Talk on Thursday, and go from there?”
Damn him for his deliberateness, when I’d just gotten done expressing my need to fly. But also, damn that part of me trying to banish a bad encounter with a good one. And damn the knowledge I’d fly higher if I reckoned with the bad instead of banishing it.
I squeezed Karl’s hand. Brought those long deft fingers to my lips for a quick kiss. “Thursday.”
He stood in the parking lot, hands in his pockets and a renewed tilt to his head, watching me as I drove away.