Page 9 of I Love a Good Challenge

As I scrub the espresso machine, I let my mind wander. It’s a dangerous game. The thing about messing up in love is that my mind races with what could have been. Why do the good memories seem to filter through our minds unless we strategically hold onto them, yet the mistakes we make seem to stick to our minds like super glue? We can’t seem to scrub them away, no matter how hard we try. Graham annoys me because I can’t get him out. And I try to be as prickly as I can to keep him from seeing that my heart has been bleeding out since I hurt him. Since I hurt us. Since he hurt me.

I pick up a ceramic cup and steam milk for my second latte of the day. I’m going to need it. Maybe I need my head examined for revisiting the places in my mind where Graham lives rent-free, but I often feel like an investigator. I have to take out all of the pieces of our relationship, spread them out, walk through the memories, and try to see if I missed something. I look for anything to make me feel better about the choices I’ve made.

Watching Pride & Prejudice without ugly crying is impossible still. Sparrow thinks it’s because I love Mr. Darcy so much. Oh, because that’s the other thing: I’ve never told Sparrow how I first met Graham. Every time I want to, I can’t bring it up. My pride won’t let me. After I returned from LA and invested everything I had into supporting her with the bakery, months went by. By the time I saw her emerging from her cloud of despair, I didn’t want to weigh her down again.

I didn’t think I’d have a reason to bring him up, believing that my brief romance in LA was a time capsule I would politely try to forget. But Sparrow is now getting married to Rafe. Since Graham ironically (or tragically) is Rafe’s best friend, the man is not only back in my life, but he’s also front and center. I’m seeing him around town more and more. I have it on good authority from Rafe that Graham used to travel more. As Sparrow and Rafe’s wedding approaches, he’s been more visible.

While I love my friends (yes, I include Rafe now), I don’t think they can ever understand my troubled history with Graham. Best-case scenario, they will look at me with pity. Worst-case scenario, they choose Graham over me. He is the nicest one of the two of us. Since this wedding will inevitably throw us together, I plan to let them think he just annoys me and not that I fire him up to keep him distracted from my true feelings for him.

The more I act like I detest him, the more Graham will realize he’s better off without me. Maybe it will blur the lines of his own memories of me—of that brief time when I freely shared my affection with him. I plan to continue until all he remembers is this version—the woman who harbors what once felt like love in the vault of my heart. It’s my secret. It’s our secret. He doesn’t want to do this again. So, we won’t. Case closed.

Chapter Five

Graham

If you ever meet a woman named Lily, run. That’s it. That’s my advice. After thirty-two years of life, this is the greatest lesson I’ve learned. If your name is Lily or you know a Lily who doesn’t live in Birch Borough or visit LA for a chocolatier-intensive course, fine. I’m sure she is fantastic. But this Lily, the Lily who lives in Birch Borough, has ruined my life.

The stool I’m sitting on shifts uncomfortably as I look out into the street. I rest my elbows on the high-top counter, the glass in front of it giving me a clear view of the edge of town closest to the post office. It’s not the busiest section, but it’s not the outskirts either.

A barely touched cappuccino sits in front of me. It looks deflated, the bitterness of the brew a reminder of the best cup of coffee I’ve had in this town and which I haven’t tasted since I first arrived. As if on cue, a couple walks past the window with to-go cups and pastry bags, unknowingly taunting me as I sit in a coffee shop that isn’t Sparrow’s Beret. The signature sparrow logo on the cups and small white bags mocks me, especially since I was told never to enter the bakery again by Lily herself.

I used to feel like I could succeed at love. But falling in love with her, much like the sub-par coffee I’ve been consuming, nearly crushed me. I can still smell her perfume and hear her laugh in my dreams. It’s nestled between my mind and ribs (however that science works) and has almost made me forget who I am. Because no matter how hard I’ve tried, no matter how many times I’ve told myself to move on, she’s still stuck in my system. And there’s nothing I’ve been able to do to get her out.

Is she the reason I decided to leave my home in Boston and make the move to Birch Borough? Possibly (that’s a “yes”). During our weeks together in LA, Lily described her small, quiet hometown. It was obvious she loved it, but she also thought the sheer number of town events and how everyone was in everyone else’s business was pure insanity. I knew she co-owned a café called Sparrow’s Beret. According to Lily, they made the best maple croissants in New England. When she repeatedly mentioned her best friend and another woman named Lucy, who gave her extra ice cream at some local diner, I heard the affection in her voice. She made it all sound so . . . charming.

Oh, and Lily’s declaration that her town was the place to go if I was ever heartbroken? Yeah, that stuck.

After Lily left (for grand adventures around the world, she said), her words stayed on repeat in my mind, especially when I felt burned out with work, or during a late-night commute from Boston to New York, or over a long flight back to LA. There came a day when, suddenly, after months of thinking about Lily every day, small-town life seemed like the cure for me too.

It may have been a poor decision, but after one particularly long week in court on too many cases, I sold both of my homes in Boston and LA. On a whim, I found an apartment in the town I remembered her speaking so fondly of, which conveniently runs daily trains to Boston. I was looking forward to the slower pace of life, the peace. Everything was working out perfectly. Until . . . I saw her again.

I never thought Lily would be in Birch Borough. Adjacent? Possibly. She had to have family nearby. But living here? Lily told me at least a dozen times that we were going to travel the world for the next five years. She would make all the chocolate things. We would see the world together. We’d go on safari to see “real life” elephants, visit Buckingham Palace to harass the palace guards, and eat Thai food in Thailand just to say we did. Oh, yeah, just so it’s clear, I was included in those plans.

Soon after I moved to town, my best friend, Rafe, arrived to stay while I traveled on business. By the time my head cleared and I realized I still had feelings for Lily, it was too late. Rafe was in love, and I had already messed up any chance of reconciling with Lily.

It happened just after I landed from LA. I was waiting for the moving truck and wandering through town to kill time. I stumbled across Sparrow’s Beret. By some twist of fate, I was helped by someone named Anna, with neither Sparrow nor Lily at the register when I went in. So, there I was, outside my new apartment, full of the best French croissants of my life and buzzing with coffee. I was unloading items from the back of the moving truck, and then I saw her standing in front of me like I had wished so many times. The burning in my limbs and chest told me that nothing had changed. I was still in love with her—maybe more than ever.

When she opened her mouth, the words that crept out of mine were to tell her I couldn’t do it again. In reality, I was talking to my own heart. If she tried to explain, it might have destroyed me. When it came to Lily, the only thing I could control was refusing to hear another word about us. Lord knows I had already thought through every scenario for her reasoning for breaking up with me. None of it could be good.

Her response was anger and a warning to never step foot in her shop again. And so, as the months have passed, I haven’t, no matter how much I’ve wanted another croissant.

Now, our best friends are getting married. My duties as best man must be my priority, even if I’ve managed to land in the middle of wedding planning with the bride’s maid of honor . . . Lily. Tonight is the first time we’ll be near each other for any length of time without something else going on as a distraction. It’s the future bride and groom and us—there won’t be many places for our attention to go.

I wander toward the tiny stone church where Rafe and Sparrow wait. The church is at least three hundred years old and is where I’m meeting the people (besides my mother) that I hold most dear. As I walk up the mossy stone steps, I ask myself how I’ve managed to get into the mess that putting myself within Lily’s orbit again will create. My eyes catch on her immediately when I enter the nave of the church, the back of her high blonde ponytail hanging over the wooden pew toward the front. The sight of it nearly crushes my resolve.

I lean against the stone wall at the back of the church, preferring to stay out of sight for now. Lily and I seem to be the only ones from our party present and accounted for.

You wouldn’t know the strength of my feelings for her from the way things are now. It once only took a week of being hypnotized by her otherworldly grey eyes and the sway of her ponytail as she walked, moved, laughed, or fought. In the right light, her eyes take on a subtle hint of dried lavender. I was quickly on board with trying to love her for the rest of my life. Was it fast? Very. Stupid? In my case, also, very.

I’m not an impulsive man. I make careful, calculated decisions. And though I can see in hindsight that we moved quickly, I can also see evidence that she felt the same. I bought a ring. A vintage one with light purple stones around the diamond because the color reminded me of the shade that I used to see when the sun hit her eyes just right. I still see her face when she spotted the jewelry box in my pocket.

I lost my best friend and the love of my life in a single night. And my soul knows there is nothing in me that is over her or ever could be.

It also doesn’t help that I tossed the ring box toward the ocean and have tried to forget it exists. I wouldn’t return it. I couldn’t keep it. And she didn’t want it. It’s probably drifted far out into the ocean by now and is friends with a sea turtle at this point. I hope they’re happy.

Suddenly, my mouth tastes bitter, even though I’m only drinking water. A choir is rehearsing on the stage of this admittedly charming setting. I’m guessing Liam is somewhere nearby. He owns The Music Shop and is good friends with Rafe and now me as well. I’m thankful to have another friend in town. It was a rough start when I landed here. I’m still being vetted by the townspeople. While I’ve got the best job in the world now that I’m managing Rafe’s music career (which is going splendidly, if I do say so myself), and I have an apartment that’s not in the city, in a town that is perfect for adopting a big dog when I find the right house, it’s clear that everyone in Birch Borough loves Lily. (They also seem to fear her.)

While no one knows the full story between us—shockingly, not even Sparrow or Rafe, for that matter—I’m the odd one out. The tension between us is palpable. As a result, people are staying at a distance. Everyone is nice but cautious. They clearly don’t know what to do with me. And since we reunited in the oddest of circumstances, I don’t know what to do with myself either.

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