Page 141 of Keep My Heart
I smile, watching her. She used to get excited like that back in high school, clapping her hands, jumping up and down. And then she married Chris and her joyful, carefree spirit faded away. It’s back now, along with the other parts of herself she lost being with him. She even let her hair go back to its natural blonde.
I grab her and lift her up in the air.
‘Nick, put me down!’ she says, laughing.
‘Not until you kiss me.’ She does, and I slowly set her down. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
We go back inside and I hear Sawyer ranting about something to Brody and Jason.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask, walking up to Sawyer.
‘You know the new brewery that’s opening?’
‘What about it?’
‘I just heard the owner is Gina.’
‘Yeah? Who’s that?’
‘Gina Slater!’ he says, throwing his hands up.
‘The girl from camp,’ Jason explains.
‘Really?’ I look back at Sawyer. ‘She’s not even from here, is she?’
‘No, but apparently her grandfather owned that building and left it to her in his will and she decided to turn it into a brewery. Who the hell does she think she is? She can’t open a brewery! In my town!’
‘You don’t own the town,’ I say. ‘And why can’t she open a brewery?’
‘What the hell does a girl know about making beer?’
‘Hey!’ Lyndsay says. ‘Why can’t girls make beer? You just follow a recipe.’
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ Sawyer mutters.
‘He’s just pissed because his competition is a girl,’ I say, laughing. ‘A girl who beat him at everything at camp.’
‘She didn’t beat me ateverything,’ he clarifies. ‘I won the spitball competition.’
‘You and your friends made up that competition,’ Jason says. ‘It wasn’t part of the camp.’
‘Who the hell cares? It was still a competition, and I won.’
‘Enough of this,’ I tell him. ‘Get back to work.’
‘Sorry, but I gotta go,’ Sawyer says. ‘I need to get to the brewery and work on my hard cider. There’s no way she’s going to win that competition. She better not even enter it.’
He’s talking about the hard cider competition the orchard has been doing for the past five years. We get people from all overentering it, and this year, since Sawyer’s entering, we’re hiring judges instead of doing it ourselves.
‘He’s really angry,’ Lyndsay says as we walk through the barn.
‘I know.’ I laugh. ‘I think he might’ve met his match.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This girl. The one who’s opening the brewery. She sounds just as competitive as Sawyer.’
