CAMERON
Look. Sex was easy. Sex was the easiest thing in the world. Sex, in Cameron’s purview, was always the end. The goodbye. It was the thank you and take care between two people. It was the exclamation point on an evening of flirtation. A weekend of banter. Not that he didn’t take it seriously. He did. Of course he did. But sex made everything simple. Biological. It left out the brain and it left out the heart.
The brain and the heart were where things got messy.
And everything with Josie was messy and the last thing he needed was to think about sleeping with her. And it was all he could think about.
He watched her that night with the family as they ate dinner. He watched her laugh with Helen and tease her brother about his hair. She and Delia sat back with glasses of red wine and talked, the Christmas tree lights reflected in their hair and eyes.
What a shock to realize he still wanted her. He’d chalked up all the feelings he’d had for her to boyhood. To young love and constant proximity. But a day alone with her in that truck and he was feeling it all again. But sharper. Fiercer.
The breaking of her breath when he pulled her hair in the bathroom. It would have been so easy to tug her closer by that bun. Against his body. He could have shut the door and pushed her against that sink. Or at any point today he could have pulled that truck over on the side of the road and kissed her in all the ways his teenage self had dreamed of.
That list was in his head, the carefully crafted list with all the places on her body he wanted to touch and kiss and bite.
Yep.
Maybe this was how they could have the goodbye they should have had. Without the shame. Without the anger. And all the years of silence. Maybe this was a way to rewrite their ending.
It had a kind of poetry to it. A do-over in the best possible way.
And it had the added benefit of putting everything in order. His feelings. His thoughts about what she’d said in the truck about being a person who tore things down rather than building them up.
He didn’t understand how she could be so wrong about herself.
“They make a pretty sight, don’t they?” Max asked Cameron as he cleared dishes from the table. He and Alice had served Mateo’s smoked ham with green beans and Alice’s legendary Gratin Dauphinoise.
Cameron felt himself blush, uncomfortable to be caught by Max staring at Josie with these thoughts in his head.
“Hey,” Max said, his hands full of dishes. “You want to give me a hand in the kitchen?”
Yeah, Cameron was no dummy. He knew what waited for him in that kitchen, and there was no way he was going in there for a heart-to-heart.
“I’m not your employee anymore,” he said, as cold as he could be, and he got up to join Helen by the fire.
The next morning was much the same as the day before had been.
The smell of coffee pulled him from his bed and down into the kitchen with Alice. Who greeted him with a smile, a mug, and a list of things they had to do.
“We’re supposed to get a storm later today,” she said, looking out the windows at the low sky.
“Then we better get moving,” he said.
They began to assemble the lasagnas and pulled the focaccia out of the fridge where it had been kept for its second rise. The cold kept the rise slow and created a better flavor.
“Hey,” Alice said. “I want another shot at Five Questions.”
He thought of what Josie’d said about him and people with whom he had chemistry. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. So when can we do it?”
“Well, we’re a little busy right now,” he said, hedging.
“I won’t bring up your mom,” she said, and he glanced up at her. She looked as contrite as Alice ever looked. “I’m sorry I did last time.”
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. I mean…it just surprised me is all.”
“We can pretend like we don’t even know each other,” Alice said in a cheery voice that made his soul cringe. “We can—”
“Alice,” he said quietly, needing to put a stop to her so cheerfully vowing to pretend she wasn’t the person who’d put him on this path with food. “Let me just…think about it.”
“Sure,” she said, her voice in some strange octave. “Let me know.”
They worked in awkward silence until the back door flew open and there was Josie, wild-eyed and wrapped in cables, holding her laptop.
Her phone was pressed to her ear and she waved at Alice and Cameron as she walked through the kitchen to the living room. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds fine. But does it have to…okay. But if the optics are bad, isn’t it just bad? Like, can’t we try for good optics? Fine. Yes.”
The door closed behind her, and he and Alice shared a knowing look.
“That girl is wasting herself on that stupid show,” Alice said.
Cameron tended to agree, but kept his mouth shut. He thought of her new idea and he hoped it would happen. She deserved to be proud of her work.
“She helped me do a Five Questions with Mateo yesterday.”
“Mateo gets five questions and I don’t?” Alice cried.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said with a laugh.
“Was it nice? Working with her?” Alice asked, spreading ricotta mixture over the noodles in the silver pan in front of her.
“Different,” he said. “I mean, working with anyone would be different, but she’s so smart, you know? And insightful.”
Alice nodded and the conversation faded because she wasn’t going to push and he wasn’t going to say anything else.
Three hours later the foil-wrapped bread and pans of lasagna had been loaded into the back of the van. The bread was still warm from the oven and he could feel it through his gloves. Smell the garlic and basil and tomatoes through the wrap. His stomach growled despite his having just eaten a giant slab of lasagna for lunch.
But he’d reverted to his teenage self here at the Riverview—he was hungry. Hungry for food and for the girl he never got to have.
He’d spent the last three hours looking for reasons to go out into the living room to see her. Talk to her. He took her coffee and fresh focaccia. A piece of lasagna for lunch. And each time he’d gone out, there she’d been, on the phone, but her eyes were warm with thanks and…awareness.
It buzzed between them.
And having her now felt inevitable.
It was the most logical thing. And the idea made his blood leap and his dick hard, and there was a kind of righteous symmetry to the whole thing.
They would have sex and say goodbye to the kids they’d been.
It was enough to make a guy smile.
She was not, he could tell, opposed to the idea. He’d learned a thing or two away from the Riverview. And he knew when a woman was interested in him as a man. And every time he got close to her—setting the coffee cup down, his fingers brushing hers when he handed her the focaccia—her interest practically sparkled and fizzed in the air.
Yeah. As plans went, he liked it.
With the van full of the food for Haven House he went back into the kitchen, where Alice was finishing up the dishes. “You got everything?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“You sure you don’t want help?”
Oh, I want help. Just not yours.
“I’m good,” he said. He left the kitchen and went back to the dining room and the chair and table where Josie had set up camp. Working, it seemed, nonstop. Empty cups of coffee. A plate with smears of lasagna left on it. She’d put on glasses, those big, thick black ones that a certain kind of woman wore.
That certain kind of woman—bookish and serious—was his catnip.
The tree was on, the fire was lit, and she looked like a Christmas angel sitting there.
“Hey,” he said, coming up on her side.
“Hey,” she said with a careful smile.
“Can you take a break?”
She looked at him like she’d never heard those words before.
“All right. You clearly need a break.” He picked up the laptop that she used as a barricade and set it aside. “Let’s take a ride.”
If there was a person on this planet who needed to relax, it was his old friend. She was wound tight and holding herself so still and so carefully she was about to crack.
Did she know that? he wondered. Could she feel it under her skin, the way her sharp edges were grinding together?
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Alice needs me to deliver the lasagna down to Haven House,” he said.
“Times have not changed, have they?”
“Not at the Riverview. Not with Alice.” Make the food and deliver the food had been a way of life for him at the inn when he and Helen and Josie were organizing the lunch program at the elementary school. That felt like a lifetime ago.
“You want to come with me?” he asked.
From her half-shut laptop came a chorus of muffled chimes announcing messages and emails. The never-ending pressure of her job.
Say yes, he thought. But she was silent.
Clearly, the weight of that laptop was heavier than the temptation of what might happen between them.
“Of course,” he said, stepping back and waving his hand like he could erase the invitation. “You’re busy. I was already interrupting.”
“No,” she said, and practically jumped to her feet. She fully shut the laptop so it wasn’t binging at her, but picked up her phone and slipped it into her back pocket. So, not totally untethered. “I’d love to help.”
“Well, full disclosure, Alice said if we showed up down there Daphne and Jonah would put us to work wrapping presents.”
“Oh my god, remember that year we had to wrap all the presents for the Haven House families? We were there until four a.m.”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “I remember all the years, Josie. All of them.”
In the truck Josie sat as far from him as she could, practically leaning into the passenger-side door. “So? Tell me the truth about Netflix and your YouTube channel.”
He turned onto the road leading toward the highway down the mountain to Athens Organics and Haven House.
He liked that she watched his show. Maybe more than he should. For a guy with a million followers, he always—every single time he uploaded a video—wondered if one of those million was her. And he’d wanted it to be. Ached for it to be.
“The truth about the show,” he said, “is that I’ve had some luck. And every once in a while, I have a few good ideas. And then…some more luck.” He shrugged.
“Do you like it?”
“I like cooking and talking about food and learning about food. But the bullshit around a show…”
“Yeah, that’s not really your style.”
“Not even a little bit. But it’s kind of a machine at this point. It runs itself. I mean, I don’t mind the idea of branching out and trying new things. But what Netflix and YouTube want from me doesn’t feel like me.” Big fat flakes of snow started to twirl down from the gray sky overhead. The beginning of the storm they were supposed to get.
“What about your job?” he asked. “Whole lot more glamorous than making coffee on some mountainside.”
“Nothing about what I’m doing is glamorous. Or even interesting.” She sighed.
“Then quit.”
She laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“And do what?”
“Literally anything. You can do literally anything, Josie. Take Common Ground someplace else.”
She rolled her head across the window.
“You used to say that to me all the time,” he said. “The night of your graduation you said it, and it was like I heard you. And I believed that you believed it, but I just could never believe it myself. And if I hadn’t left this place…I might not have ever believed it.”
“You’re saying quit my job and belief will come?”
“Yep.”
“Said by the guy who doesn’t have to pay rent in Queens.”
He laughed. “True, but so is what I’m saying. Sometimes you have to let go of one thing to grab onto another.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yeah, it is. You just don’t want it to be.” She was silent and he glanced over to see if she was glaring at him, but she was looking out the window, chewing on her lip. A classic Josie tell that she was thinking deep thoughts.
“Hey,” he said. “Alice wants to do a Five Questions.”
“That’s a great idea,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet.”
“Well, I started one yesterday but she brought up my mom and I stopped. And she said today that we could try again and she’d pretend she didn’t know me.”
“That would be awful,” Josie said.
“For her?”
“No. Awful TV.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Oh, I think you know what you should do,” she said. “You should do a Five Questions with her all about your relationship. And how you came to be at the inn and what she taught you and what you learned from her. It should be a total reveal about your beginning in the kitchen.”
“No one wants to see that,” he said.
“Everyone wants to see that. And you should be peeling potatoes while you do it.”
“You make it sound easy,” he said.
“It is. You just don’t want it to be.” She smiled at him like it was nothing how coy she was being. So coy he wanted to pull this truck over and get his hands under her shirt, teach her a lesson about what happened to girls who smiled like that.
God, the things I want to do to you.
He turned from the road onto the winding driveway that led to Athens Organics and Haven House.
“Wow, it’s gotten a lot bigger,” he said as they pulled up to park in front of the farmhouse.
He had a painful déjà vu. The last time he was here had been the night of Josie’s graduation. Helen had had a fake ID and sneaked out of the house to join Josie at the parties, but then got drunk and called her mom to tell her she loved her. Classic Helen.
He felt all the years, all at once. The years he’d been here. And the years he was away.
Part of him had believed that the inn and the farm and Haven House would sort of hang in suspended animation. Unchanging. And he was glad there had been progress, of course he was glad, it was just strange not to have seen it. Not to have helped.
Yeah. That was it. There’d been a lot of changes he hadn’t been a part of.
When, for a lot of years, all he’d wanted was to help this place grow.
There was a giant greenhouse behind the farm now. Daphne was experimenting with hydroponics. And one of the sheds he knew was devoted to her mushrooms. Behind and beside the greenhouses, the fields were all sleeping under the snow. The orchard, too. Next door was Haven House, built when he still lived at the farm. He’d had one summer job helping the contractor clear the area. He’d gotten poison ivy so badly he’d blown up like a balloon.
Don’t you know what poison ivy looks like? Josie had asked, rubbing calamine lotion on his arms.
I do now, he’d said, the excruciating embarrassment giving the itch a run for its money.
Haven House looked like a cross between a stately manor home and a very beautiful hotel. There were porches and balconies outside every window. White gingerbread nestled into peaked roofs. And all of it right now was covered in Christmas lights. Some blinking and flashing. Some steady and plain white. It was like a patchwork quilt of lights. Daphne’s doing. She didn’t like uniformity or themes the way Alice did. She liked a little mayhem.
“Another water slide?” he asked. The new one burst out of the fourth floor and snaked around the building only to disappear through an exterior wall on the ground floor.
“Helen said they got it a two years ago.” She shook her head, smiling the same smile he imagined he had on his face. Like it was all just so damn good. Good to see. Good to feel. “I’d forgotten how big this place is.”
He turned off the car, and in the silence the truck felt smaller. Snow landed on the windshield and melted, running down the glass.
“Why haven’t you been back, Josie?”
She looked over at him and he saw how complicated it all was. The same complicated that had made him want to leave the other morning.
“It’s not…all because of me and that night?”
“That’s part of it,” she answered. “But part of it is also my job.”
“Because you’re busy?”
“Yeah, and my mom just can’t keep her opinions about it to herself. And defending my choices every time I see her is a drag. And…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know. I guess…I’d put the Riverview away.”
“Away?” he asked with a laugh, like he didn’t know exactly what she meant. Like it didn’t strike some deep chord in him, too. No, he thought, he didn’t want to fall backward into that place they’d occupied—knowing each other’s thoughts before they were words. Knowing each other’s experiences because they shared such a similar way of being in the world.
“I made them come to me,” she whispered. “Visiting me in the city because I was so busy. They were busy, too, building this place…”
“But they visited you?”
She nodded. “I acted like my work was more important and, I mean, look at how wrong I was.”
“Not everything has to be important,” he said.
“That sounds ridiculous.’’ She rolled her eyes at him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sure I Do/I Don’t is important to its viewers. You know, who are looking for something mindless to take them away from whatever hard reality they’ve got happening.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then smiled. “You always were good at that.”
“At what?’
“Making me feel better.”
The front door of the farmhouse was thrown open, and there was Helen looking nervous.
“She planned this, you know,” he said, leaning forward so he could see her out of Josie’s window. He felt Josie’s breath on his cheek, the skin of his neck.
“Helen is always planning something,” Josie said.
“You mad at her?”
“Are you?” Josie asked, turning to look at him, and their faces were inches apart. Not even.
“No,” he whispered, his eyes on her mouth. Remembering so clearly what she’d tasted like that night. Artificial fruit salad. And now she would taste like Chapstick and coffee. Maybe the lasagna he’d made with his own hands. “I’m glad she brought me back. I missed this place.”
And you. He didn’t say it. Largely because it didn’t need to be said. It just was. Like breathing. Like the beauty of Christmas at the Riverview Inn.
“We…we should go,” she said, opening the truck door and letting in the freezing cold air. She was about to slip out but he grabbed her hand. Too much, maybe, but he had to know where things stood. It felt a little like he was pushing on something that he shouldn’t be pushing on.
But at the touch of his hand on hers, she stopped.
“I wish I knew how to not hurt you,” he said, and she looked up at him.
“You’re not hurting me,” she whispered.
“They why are you running…?”
“I’m not hurt,” she said. “I’m scared.”
“Of me?” He sat back, putting as much distance between them as he could. “I’m sorry. I swear—”
This time it was her hand reaching for his. The cold air made plumes of their breath. But when her fingers touched his they were warm.
“I’m scared of what you make me feel, Cameron,” she said with a wry twist to her mouth. “I always have been. And that…I mean, I can’t believe it, but it hasn’t changed.”
“What do I make you feel, Josie?”
She smiled, but it shook at the edges. She blew out a long breath and it, too, was shaky. “Everything,” she answered. “You make me feel everything. Everything I told myself I didn’t want to feel anymore.”