Page 7 of The Forever Formula
“Cab, please.” On a hot summer day, I might pick a white, but I was longing for the cozy feeling of a full-bodied red.
Natalie poured three way-too-big glasses and managed to balance all three in her hands. She passed them around as I settled back in the corner spot of the big sectional couch. Dottie sat in the rocker across from me.
“I forgot how lovely your view is,” I said, admiring the big picture window. The sun was just about to dip behind the distant mountain, and it cast a pinkish glow over the entire horizon.
“It never gets old. Then again, maybe it does. Mom, don’t you want to watch it with us?” Natalie turned to her mother.
“These old bones are too cold to leave the fire, sweetie,” Dottie told us. “Besides, you’re just trying to trick me out of this chair.”
“Well, it is my favorite spot,” Natalie said with a laugh.
Natalie insisted I tell her all about nursing. I’d forgotten what it was like to have someone fawn over me, like Grandpa used to do. To hear Natalie tell it, I was a superstar.
Once I’d made it halfway through the giant glass, I braved the question I’d been wanting to ask all night. “I think I passed Noah on my way into town. How has he been doing?”
There we go. That was sly, right?
Natalie exchanged a quick glance with Dottie, almost a warning look, before she answered me. “Noah is great. He’s out in the shed working right now.”
“You should go down and say hi,” Dottie said with a wink.
“Oh, he wouldn’t want to be bothered, I’m sure,” I told them.
I mean, I wanted intel, but I wasn’t sure I was ready toseehim. Wouldn’t it be weird? Maybe not. A lot of years had passed. Maybe he had forgiven me.
“Nonsense. Of course he wants to see you,” Dottie said quickly and with such enthusiasm that she sloshed a bit of wine over the rim of her glass.
Natalie took a deep breath and gave me a knowing look, in silent conversation about her mother, no doubt. “Go on down, dear. We’ll catch up more later.”
Surely, it would be rude to turn her down, I figured.
“I should say hi,” I said more to myself, and Natalie nodded.
It was dark out by then, and I walked the lighted stone stairs that led down the hill toward the shed. Although, it wasn’t so much a shed as it was a small barn. Inside was a big workbench, and outside was a gazebo with a picnic table.
I had so many memories playing in that shed, as they called it. When I was five, it was our fake storefront where we sold groceries to imaginary customers. When I was fifteen, it was where we snuck puffs of cigarettes. And at eighteen ... no, I shouldn’t think about what Noah and I had gotten up to in there when I was eighteen.
“That tastes like perfume,” I heard Austen complain as I neared the shed.
“Oh, and yours tasted so much better? Peanut butter beer. Disgusting,” Noah said, his voice a deep rumble.
A zip of electricity buzzed through me. It had been a long time since I’d heard that voice.
When I finally rounded the corner, silence fell over them. Noah’s eyes met mine instantly.
Just seeing him face-to-face, it felt like a tidal wave had crashed right into me. Every memory of our last day together flashed all at once in my mind. I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
“Finally. Where you been hiding, stranger?” Austen chastised me, standing to come over for a hug.
Being the same age as me meant that he was eighteen when I left town, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t grown considerably since I last saw him. Hell, he probably gained four more inches, and towered well over six feet. Instead of the patchy mustache I remembered, he now had a neatly trimmed beard.
His hug lifted me right off the ground. Strong men, flannel shirts, beards, and homemade beer ... what could describe Kodiak Canyon better than that?
“Look at you,” I said brightly, ruffling his hair after he set me down. Thankfully, I sounded a lot calmer than I felt.
When Austen sat down again, Noah still stared at me, blinking. He sure had changed too.
Noah still had a remarkably handsome face. Like, movie-star handsome. His sandy-blond hair was shorter than it had been when we were young, and now he had an even dusting of stubble all over his face. That was definitely new.
