Page 90 of Sweet Caroline
Sadie pauses as she moves past me to whisper, “I told him he can have two max, but watch out because he sneaks ’em when you’re not paying attention.”
I laugh softly. “Okay, noted.”
Sadie heads off and Grandpa settles in his usual spot at the kitchen table, pulling out his crossword puzzle. I fill a glass with water from the fridge and savor the way the cool sensation trickles down my throat.
“You’ll be going to Halloween Fest, is that right?” Grandpa asks, eyeing the bag from the tailor in the doorway.
“That’s the plan, yeah. Do you think you’ll go this year?”
“Ah,” he answers, his head tilting. “Tough going with the walker on uneven terrain, especially in the dark. Think I’ll leave the Halloween hijinks to the younger crowd.”
“That makes sense.” I nod, albeit a bit sadly. “Tell you what,then. I’ll bring back a pumpkin for you and Sadie to carve. Sound good?”
“Perfect.” He smiles before dropping his gaze back to his puzzle. “That new boyfriend of yours going with you?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Grandpa. You know that.” The oven timer beeps, and I use the cookies as a convenient excuse to avoid more scrutiny about Miles. Slipping on an oven mitt, I try to suppress a grin as I add, “But, yeah, he’s coming with me.”
“Well, you’re certainly spending a lot of time with him lately. When do I get to meet this lucky fellow, anyway?”
“Soon, I’m sure.” I open the oven, letting out a waft of caramelized heat. I pull out the tray of golden brown chocolate chip cookies, setting them gingerly on the stovetop. “He was actually here last night, but you were already in bed.” When Grandpa’s bushy white eyebrows lift, I rush to add, “He dropped me off after we went out.”
That’s not all he did.
I will myself not to think about everything else that happened between us before he left. The flashbacks today have been intense enough to stop me in my tracks.
“Tell me what kind of girl you wanna be tonight, Caroline.”
I busy myself with a flipper, hoping I can blame the oven’s heat if my cheeks are bright pink. One by one, I gently lift the cookies from the pan and shift them onto a wire cooling rack.
“Well, I’m sorry to have missed him,” Grandpa says.
I’ve missed him, too, as ridiculous as that is. It had felt so lonely crawling between my fresh sheets after he left last night.
Trying to shake off the memory, I slide two cookies onto a plate for each of us and settle in beside Grandpa at the table. “Here, eat your cookie quota.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“Careful,” I warn. “They’re hot.”
“Ah, you know that expressionstrike when the iron’s hot?”
“Yeah…” I narrow my eyes, not sure what he’s getting at.
“Sometimes you need toeatwhen thecookie’shot.”
I laugh. “But won’t you get burned?”
“My dear,” he says, leaning toward me as he lifts the edge of his cookie from his plate, “that’s how you know you’re alive.”
I tilt my head in acknowledgment. But, as I bite carefully into my own nearly molten cookie, huffing air through my teeth to cool it down, I ponder his words.
Something tells me he isn’t just talking about the cookies.
18
MILES
Sonora Farm is where I formed one of my earliest memories: my mom lifting me up to sit on a pumpkin bigger than I was. The place is nearly unrecognizable now—nothing like the quaint local pumpkin patch I remember going to as a kid. Over the years, it’s ballooned into something more like a fairground. Attendants wave glowing orange batons to direct traffic in and out of a field that’s been converted into a parking lot. The ground is a mix of mud and hay, and it takes me a good five minutes to trudge through the mess to get from my truck to the festival itself. I’m glad my costume involved work boots.
