Cass examined her feet. “I didn’t know I needed help until you walked in. Earlier, we had a steady line, but not a rush.”
“This close to Valentine’s Day we’re gonna be slammed. From now on, you let me or Yaci make the decision. We have your back.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why aren’t you going to the high school dance?” he asked, his expression earnest. He truly cared.
“No need. I’m not interested in any one guy, besides I have my best friend David to hang out with.”
She sounded like Lyse at that age.
“You’re lucky.” He tapped a finger to Cass’s nose. “Don’t be foolish like me and let your best friend slip between your fingers.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Good question,” he muttered under his breath and turned toward Lyse and the ice cream counter. “How about some?”
She took in each of the flavors in the round containers. One in particular tempted her since she dished the first spoonful. “I want that one.” She pointed to the greenish color with mint and peanut butter chips, named “
Lyse Find Me
.”
****
Coop didn’t miss a beat. He couldn’t with Lyse inspecting him so intently. He had some explaining to do, lots of it. He grabbed two cones, filled them both with “Lyse Find Me” ice cream, and handed one to her. “Are you good?” he asked Cass.
Cass, a sweet girl about seventeen or eighteen years of age with a nature where she would do anything for anyone, smiled. “Yes.”
“You get slammed again, call Yaci.”
“Yes, sir.”
He winked and headed to a corner table, isolated from customers who hadn’t returned to the bus.
“I love your work, I…” Lyse broke off as she licked the ice cream and sat in the seat beside him. “Delicious! Peanut butter, chocolate, and mint explode in my mouth at once. “You remembered…” She sucked in her bottom lip and blinked. “…my favorite flavors.”
“I did.” The grin on her face undid him. He adored it.
She swiped her pretty, pink tongue across the ice cream again, and he wished she’d swipe it somewhere else.
He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “Um, you were saying.”
“I work at my father’s travel agency in Nashville. Next door is my mom’s quilting shop. Dad wants to sell it or lease it, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
His heart dropped, fell to the pit of his stomach. If he didn’t have a cone in a hand and holding her hand with the other, he would pop himself in the head. No wonder her father refused to give it up. The deed to the property was in Carl Haynes’ name, the previous owner Alexus Shawl. Neither he, nor his marketing department connected the two.
“You know how I am about superstitions, legends, myths, I don’t like going against them.”
“I remember. Sometimes, though, you have to do what your heart says instead of doing what you think you should.” He referred to her hang up on the FIND ME myth. Even with the chemistry flowing between them, he feared she’d give him up if she found someone with the candy.
“You’re right. I always do the right thing, what I’m supposed to do, and with the candy I branch out some, but…” She regarded his ice cream shop. “I loved working behind the counter, talking and laughing with your customers.”
“Don’t you interact with clients at your business?”
“This is different.” She took another lick of ice cream and eyed him around her cone as she did. “Have you ever considered opening a store in Nashville and having a partner?”
Did lady luck just dump at his feet? “I’ve thought about it.”
“This is the type of business I’d like to have in my mom’s store.”
“Really?”
“Maybe, possibly, once I know why you withdrew from life.” She bit into her cone with more force than he thought necessary.
He trashed the rest of his in the bin near the table and sighed. “Around you, I couldn’t concentrate.”
She hesitated then threw her cone in the trash, too. “You’re referring to why you withdrew. I need more info.”
“I had to figure out a way to make enough money to pay for college.”
“You worked weekends.”
He nodded. “Yes. The money I earned didn’t come close to how much I needed. My parents couldn’t help. So I abandoned my friends, well you, and bought supplies with my savings and built a lab in my parents’ basement. The experiments I conducted, I wrote about, and they were published.”
“Impressive, but I’m not surprised. You always were bigger than life.”
He shook his head. “Really?” Then held up his hand. “Never mind answering.” Today, he needed to focus on what he did to her and why, not her boosting his ego. “I regret not telling you my reasons, but I was embarrassed.”
“Why though? We were friends. I would have understood anything you had to say.”
“You think so? What if I told you, you were a distraction? That I dreamed, thought, and did everything for you?”
Her mouth dropped open, and she looked between his eyes. Time stretched on until she finally closed her mouth and bit her lower lip. “I didn’t know.”
“I kept it from you.”
He let that sink in a beat and was about to change the subject when she asked, “Why did you say you were okay with me going to the dance with Wally when you clearly weren’t?”
“I had to find myself before I explained my thoughts to you.”
She rested back in her chair. “So we lost years because you wanted money?”
He cringed. The manner in which she phrased his motivation belittled what he knew she held close to her heart. Family. Friendships.
“No, I did it for my family. That day…” He shook his head feeling the sting when her face lit up about going out to dinner. “I realized by being in the picture I prevented you from enjoying life more. You wouldn’t have gotten dinner.”
“You’re kidding me,” she growled. “You said okay cause you thought I wanted something materialistic?”
He was nose-diving. “No.”
“Let me tell you something, buddy, best friend.” She said it in such a low stern voice, he had a hard time hearing her, but her anger was clear. “That evening,” she gritted out between clenched teeth, “was the worse night I’ve ever had. I was attacked!”
“Wh-a-t?” He said, feeling a stab to his chest.
“If you hadn’t been hiding in the bat cave, you would have known!” Tears fell from her eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking by coming here. I knew better. This godforsaken town and their fantasy candy I believed in, trusted, just like I did you. I’m done. I can’t do this.” She bolted out the chair and out of the store.
The life force sucked out of him. He darted out, ignoring the stares from the remaining customers and Cass. He caught up with Lyse as she passed the pink tables and rounded the corner to a grassy area, and grasped her arm. “Talk to me.”
Black marks streaked her face. Her nose turned so red it resembled the faded red heart tied to a pole a few feet from them.
She didn’t move. With her arms folded under her breasts and chin tucked downward, she looked beaten.
Another one of his screw-ups. “Damn, I’m so sorry.” He tugged her against his body. Thankfully, she went willingly, but didn’t move her arms to touch him. “God, please forgive me. I thought I did the right thing. I wanted to get my life straight and have you look at me the way you did Wallace.”
She eased away and searched his face. “Stupid, stupid man. For a genius, you have the IQ of a peon.”
He’d give her that. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. He didn’t.” Her breathing leveled out. “He scared me, and I wanted you, wanted to tell you everything, but you weren’t there.”
He remembered. He’d been so deep into his experiment he didn’t come up for air. That was the night he discovered a new type of ice cream. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? We saw each other countless times before graduation.”
She pulled her lips inward. “I was embarrassed by my actions. I should have told him no immediately.”
He cupped the side of her face and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs.
“I knew better than to go with him.” She sniffled. “He wasn’t the one I wanted to be with. Never was. But when you said go, I…went.”
His thumbs stopped moving. The air sparked. “Really?” He needed to come up with another word, but she kept surprising him at every turn, and his mind went blank with a different response. “You wanted to go with me? Not because we were each other’s backup?”
She covered his hands with hers, sucked on her bottom lip, and nodded. “Yeah, but I still have this issue with FIND ME.”
“So, you’re not letting your heart lead the way? The myth tells who you should be with?”
“Before the myth, I did. Once I heard it, I couldn’t let go.”
He crushed his mouth to hers. All the flavors he loved ignited the kiss from a gentle one to demanding. She whimpered, moved closer, and ground her leg into his hardening length. On the street with everyone to see, he needed to steer them to somewhere private so he could show her with his body she shouldn’t believe in some damn myth. “We should head to the B&B.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I can’t. I have to pursue the myth. I have to find Rill.”
Her words had the force of a gut punch. “He lives on top of the hill at the end of Cupid Hearts Drive.”
“Where we used to ride our bikes?”
“Yes.” He paused. Before she talked to his uncle, he wanted to have a clean slate. “I have more to tell you.”
“More?” She asked in a monotone voice.
Hell, he hated he’d given her so much pain. He longed for a time when she didn’t look at him in disbelief. Maybe it would happen today right after he confessed. “Uncle Rill—”
“Rill Babcock is your uncle?”
“Great uncle, yes. You knew that. The day I introduced you to him, I said so.”
“In elementary school? You recall what you said?”
“I do. He’s my cool uncle and I introduced him to my best friend, so yeah, I remember.”
“Oh.”
Though her posture wasn’t rigid, she had an edge about her that she wanted to flee.
How could he blame her? He wanted to escape himself. “Uncle Rill lied about the FIND ME story.”
Her jaw dropped open.
At every turn, every possible path to erase the friction between them, he botched it.
When he’d questioned Uncle Rill about the verity of the story, his uncle never let on he lied. Coop knew the truth. No evidence supported the myth. If it had been true, surely someone somewhere would have known. For a brief moment, when Uncle Rill had come to his house the day after he told Lyse the story, he let himself believe.
Rill had given both him and Lyse a box of candy hearts that day. If the myth had been true, then the Valentine’s heart fairies or whatever the hell they were would have brought him and Lyse the FIND ME candy. Since they didn’t, it fermented his disbelief in all myths. He trashed his box.
“Why make up a lie?”
“He read me like a book, knew you talking to Wallace bothered me. Not that I said anything, I didn’t have to, Rill saw the two of you on the street.”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“Ah, but your eyes said all. You looked at him the way I did you.” There, his feelings were out in the open.
Her solemn features didn’t give anything away. He didn’t know if he got through to her. If she understood his frame of mine or if she thought he was a flaming lunatic. “Will you go to the dance?”
“I have a lot to think about.” Without a blink or a smile, she turned on her heels and headed toward the B&B.
****
Two days had come and gone, and she wasn’t anymore sure what she needed or wanted. Coop had been scarce since she left him at Heathercream. She’d asked Felicia about him, and received a shoulder lift with, “He’s busy on last minute details for the reunion.” Her gnarly attitude, opposite of her friendly one previously, left a lot to be desired. Evidently, her brother had confided what transpired between them.
Other than talking briefly on the phone to her father, and in great lengths with Natalie to check on Scotty, and having to endure her friend’s bad sense of humor when she called her PIP every few minutes, she hadn’t chatted with anyone else. The streets crowded with people eager to see the famous Valentine’s town, yet she didn’t see the first classmate. Not that she cared since the PIP situation kept occurring in her mind, thanks to her obnoxious friend. She didn’t feel like dealing with whatever name one of her classmates came up with if they remembered. Hopefully, the graduation incident would be forgotten.
At six tonight, she’d either let her heart lead the way or she’d put her faith in a myth. She’d postponed talking to Rill. Figured, why bother since he lied. But here she was, turning off of Cupid Hearts Drive and onto a grassy driveway with Rill Babcock’s name on the mailbox.
The long, windy driveway crossed a small stream, and ended at a rustic log cabin. Trees surrounded the place. Field grass covered the yard. The place resembled a scene out of
Deliverance
more than a friendly man’s home. She parked the car and climbed out.
“I wondered when you’d grace my doorstep,” a husky voice boomed.
She started. On the porch, a balding man stood with his hands shoved in his jeans pockets. A flannel shirt covered his potbelly. “Hi, Rill.”
“Come on in. No sense standing out here in the dropping temperature.” His tenor was deeper than she remembered.
She tugged on her sweater, glad she’d decided to wear jeans and tennis shoes today. His little oasis seemed a little cooler than the rest of Heather Ridge. She walked up the stairs and followed him inside the house. The scent of wood and bacon assaulted her senses, but not the rancid odor of cigarettes. She scanned the room searching for a sign he still smoked.
“Stop looking. I grew tired of Coop’s constant nagging and haven’t taken a drag in years. Man, that boy can be a little old lady at times. Worse than my wife was.”
She grimaced, recalling how his family died and took in the large room. A kitchen to the left and a living room on the right. Framed pictures covered the walls.
“I’ll fix us some tea.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I should thank you for visiting an ole bird like myself.”