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The cinnamon rolls looked fresh out of the oven, as big as his hand and dripping with thick white icing. Better than anything that came out of a can, that was certain.
“Coming right up.” Melanie scooped a cinnamon roll out, slipping it into a takeout container and handing it to him before going to prep the coffee.
The bell above the door chimed just as Aiden went to stand at the end of the counter, and he glanced over to see Nora walking in.
In any other place, it would have seemed like too much of a coincidence that she kept popping up where he was. But in a town this small, it was just the way things were. He wasn’t going to be able to avoid her as long as she was in town, even if he wanted to, which meant he was just going to have to get used to the odd feeling in his chest whenever she showed up. She made him feel off-balance, something he couldn’t recall feeling since he was a teenager, and that unsettled him. But it was only temporary, so he could deal with it.
“Hi there.” Nora greeted him politely as she walked past, clearly seeing that he was looking at her, but once again there was no real recognition in her expression. She walked toward where Melanie was standing, and he saw her glance back at him briefly, her brow slightly furrowed as if she were trying to place him. Maybe trying to remember if she knew him from before, or not.
He could have said something, but he didn’t. It seemed worse, somehow, to remind her that they went to high school together—to point out that he remembered her when she clearly couldn’t recall him. He didn’t want to embarrass her or be embarrassed himself, so it seemed better to just let it lie.
“Can I get a French vanilla latte? And one of those cinnamon rolls looks good.” Nora pursed her lips. “I’m just going to hang out here for a little while, I think. I need to brainstorm someideas to go over with Bethany about the decorations for the festival.”
“Yeah?” Melanie sounded surprised as she scooped out another of the pastries for Nora, putting it on a plate this time. “You and Bethany are knocking around ideas for it?”
“Well…” Nora hedged a little, reaching for the plate. “I might have volunteered to help with them. I guess Sabrina Burns was in charge of it, but she seems to have a lot going on with the newspaper, so I said I’d help. They really are in need of some sprucing up, and it really shouldn’t take that much time.”
“Really.” Melanie raised an eyebrow. “You really can’tnotwork for a month, can you?” Her tone was sweetly teasing, but it was clear to Aiden that she was thoroughly surprised by Nora’s volunteering.
Truthfully, he was surprised too. Nora was always kind in high school—not snobbish or mean—and she was popular with everyone whose orbit she entered, but it had always been clear that she was chomping at the bit to get out of Evergreen Hollow. She hadn’t even made it through the summer before leaving for college—he vaguely remembered that she’d taken off on some charity trip, really just an excuse to get away.
It had meant that even though he had wanted her to like him, in the way any teenage boy does with a girl he has a crush on, he’d always really known it was hopeless. He was a small-town boy through and through, devoted to Evergreen Hollow and its residents, and if he was ever lucky enough to have a family, he’d want to raise his kids in Evergreen Hollow and give them the same kind of life he’d always had.
He’d always felt as if he was never going to measure up in Nora’s eyes. She wanted out, and he wanted to stay, and that was a gulf between them that there was no means of bridging. He’d never had the courage to go up and talk to her himself of his own volition, and she’d never noticed him. She’d always been way outof his league—with too many others competing for her attention for him to ever have a chance.
“Well, if anyone can spruce it up, you can,” Melanie said cheerily as she finished fixing Aiden’s Americano. “And you’ll have the brand-new event center to decorate too! It’s like the start to a whole new festival.”
“Don’t say that too loudly,” Nora said dryly, taking her cinnamon roll and notebook and putting them on one of the tables. “If you say the wordnewtoo loudly, someone might burst into flames.”
That’s the charm of this place,Aiden thought, but he bit his tongue.
He took his coffee and his cinnamon roll, thinking that he needed to get to work, and he would leave the ladies to their planning. He glanced once more at Nora as he gathered his things, and a flash of memory came back to him unbidden—a memory so old that he hadn’t thought of it in a long time.
There had been a spring fling-type event at the high school, one of those where the marching band had a little performance and the cheerleaders showed off the moves they’d been practicing and it was all finished up with a pep rally in the auditorium before the football game that night.
It had started to rain mid-afternoon, one of those out-of-nowhere spring storms that blew in before anyone really had a chance to notice that it was on its way. There had been a bunch of picnic tables stacked up out of the way to make room for the band and the cheerleaders, far away from the building, and somehow he and Nora had both ended up using them for shelter.
He still didn’t know what she’d been doing out there when the rain had blown in, but he’d been taking a little time away from all the noise, and when the storm had sprung up he’d figured he would just wait for it to blow over before he went inside.
She had grinned at him, he remembered, as she’d slipped under the precarious shelter. The grass had been damp, but she’d sat down next to him anyway, and even though she clearly hadn’t had any idea who he was, she’d been nice to him all the same.Not unlike now,he thought wryly, as he remembered it.
It had been their junior year, and she’d asked him if he’d had the meeting with the guidance counselor that they’d all been individually dragged to, asking about their plans. They’d been sitting there, watching the rain, and he remembered thinking that his answer probably wasn’t going to be what she wanted to hear. But he’d always been nothing if not honest.
“Probably find something I can work at around here,” he’d said. “Maybe a teacher, but I really like working with my hands better. I just know I like it here. I don’t really want to leave.”
“You could teach shop class,” Nora had joked, but her laugh had fallen a little flat when she’d seen he was serious. “Or… I don’t know. There’s not really many options here, are there?’
“I suppose not.” He could feel her agitation, shimmering off of her like heat on asphalt. Even now, she couldn’t seem to just sit still. “What about you?”
She shrugged, biting her lip. “I want to go somewhere else. A city. Maybe New York, or Boston, or Chicago, even. I want to see more than just this place. But no one else really seems to get that. You’d think my parents would be proud of me for that, but they really just seem disappointed that I don’t want to stick around and help run the inn. At least that’s what it seems like to me anyway. So who knows. Maybe I’ll just stay.”
He hadn’t known how to feel about that. He couldn’t deny that his heart gave a little leap when she mentioned staying, but the dejected tone of her voice told him that wasn’t the right feeling. Staying in Evergreen Hollow clearly wasn’t going to make Nora Stoker happy. And he felt, oddly enough, that it really mattered if she was happy.
“You only get one life,” he said, looking at her, and he remembered thinking she had the biggest, prettiest blue eyes he’d ever seen. He could have looked at them forever, sitting there listening to the patter of the raindrops on the wooden table. “You should live it on your terms.”
He’d meant it too. And it seemed like they both had. He’d learned a trade and come back with the skills to keep Evergreen Hollow exactly that—evergreen—and Nora had gone off to the big city and made an accomplished woman of herself. Now she was back here, but she certainly wasn’t going to stay around for long.
The memory flooded his chest with warmth, but it was short-lived. Nora had gone back to her chat with Melanie, clearly assuming he was just another customer. She didn’t remember him at all.
