AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re right,” Stella said with a sigh. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“With the window?”
“Yeah…” she trailed off, her eyes crossing to the other side of the pumpkin patch. “The window, that’s it.”
Lucy took in the creases in her cousin’s forehead and the downturn of her lips, where moments ago they’d pointed much higher. Seeing her cousin as anything but in control and confident was as unsettling as realizing you’d eaten all the Halloween candy the week before the holiday. “Care to tell me what’s really going on?”
She shrugged, still holding the pumpkin under her arm. The underside must have been caked with mud because Lucy noticed streaks of brown across Stella’s coat. “I’ve got a lot going on, and this is just one more thing to add to the mix.”
“Decorating the window? I mean, I could do it.” Lucy had little experience in the decorating department, but surely she could place a few autumnal props in a manner that was pleasing to the eye. Besides, until recently, she’d been an artist. So, it wasn’t like she wastotallydevoid of creativity. In fact, once upon a time, this would have been something she’d jump at the chance to do. Right now, she could barely hop.
Stella looked up from the ground, her green eyes rounded as she swallowed. “You’d do that?”
“Yeah, no problem.” What else did she have to do these days? After her shift at the salon yesterday, she went home and tried really hard not to think about what a failure she’d been these past few months. As new hobbies went, it wasn’t the best. And she wasn’t very good at it if she was honest.
“You’re a lifesaver.” Stella took a step forward, wrapping her cousin in a one-armed embrace. “This won’t do. You deserve both arms for this.” She bent, placing the pumpkin at her feet, but as she leaned forward, Lucy heard a thud.
And then a rustling in the grass.
“No!” Stella shouted as the pumpkin rolled down the hillside, bumping others in the patch on its descent like a seasonal version of Plinko. Where was Bob Barker with his ridiculously long microphone when you needed him? Maybe he could have stopped the escaping pumpkin.
Lucy took off, only now realizing what she hadn’t before—that the ground was a bit on the soggy side from last night’s rain. And the sticky mud did nothing to help her sprint down the hill. Could she have let the pumpkin go, let it roll into the woods below, and tell Mr. Emerson about the one that had gotten away? Yes. The older man would have understood. But something inside pushed her feet to keep moving, her arms to keep pumping. So, she continued like an Olympic hopeful trying to take the last spot on the track team.
Maybe she just needed a win. After months of taking one blow after another, this pumpkin may as well have been a metaphor for her life. And while she hadn’t been able to save herself from all that had befallen her lately, perhaps she could save this runaway pumpkin. And wasn’t that a sad thought? The notion that catching a pumpkin would somehow make her feel better.
The pumpkin picked up speed with nothing to stop its roll. It was good luck they’d been at the bottom of the patch. The last thing she needed was one pumpkin bumping into a dozen others and causing an avalanche of orange down the hillside. As it picked up speed as it coasted down the grassy hillside, she was just about to give up when she noticed something move out of the corner of her eye. A flash. Something so quick she knew she’d imagined it. Or else hallucinating was what accompanied symptoms like a burning throat and an inability to catch one’s breath.
“Got it!” a voice boomed through the patch. A tall figure sprinted the length of the wood line, stopping the rolling pumpkin under the foot of his black boot.
“Eric?” she whispered the question to herself, nowhere near the volume he’d need to hear her from the thirty yards that separated them. But then why did he smile like that when she’d said his name? And now he was waving.
That shouldn’t have made her insides swirlier than the caramel in her Frappuccino this morning. Besides, she’d worked with him just yesterday and had seen him around town for the past week, running into him at the library and passing by him in the town park. He’d give one of those head bobs guys did so effortlessly, a gesture that made Lucy look like she was working out a kink in her neck. One time he even tipped his baseball hat in her direction, and her knees nearly gave out.
But each time she saw him, she swore she’d say hello to the man, introduce herself. And each time she didn’t, she promised herself thenexttime she would. Next time, she’d do more than smile like someone who’d had a dental procedure and was still waiting for the Novocain to wear off—she’d yet to master the art of the half smile. But she was a cornucopia of awkwardness, as evidenced by her recent interactions with the man.
“I love a good pumpkin roll.” His lips parted after he’d said the joke, and the midday sun had nothing on the brightness of his smile. It was so genuine, so beautiful, it literally took her breath away—or the downhill sprint had. Either way, she felt the need to slump over, hands on her knees, and steady her breathing.
When she lifted her head, he stood right in front of her—all gloriously six-foot-plus of him. She’d gotten anup-close-and-personallook at the man just twenty-four hours ago. How was she just now noticing how…gorgeous he was?
He stood with his hands on his hips, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and he looked good enough to be photographed. For as long as she stared at him, Lucy could have painted him, capturing every vein that rippled across his forearms, every peak and valley of muscle across his chest hidden beneath a shirt that was working overtime to hold itself together with his every inhale.
“Are you okay?” He bit his lip as his eyes roamed all over her, examining her like she’d been injured. And she prayed he couldn’t detect her windedness from the sprint—and from seeing this gorgeous man up close. But mostly the sprint. Probably.
“How did you…” He’d been so far from her just seconds ago. And she hadn’t heard so much as a single footstep. Though, to be fair, her labored breathing may have canceled that out. And the pounding of her heart that grew increasingly louder as he stared at her, his eyes peeling back layer upon layer of her, an examination under the most sophisticated microscope. She should have felt exposed. Embarrassed. After all, she’d just sprinted down a muddy hillside after a pumpkin, of all things. She didn’t need instant replay to know what that must have looked like.
Helooked like a Marvel superhero come to life, his broad shoulders eclipsing what little sun beamed down on the pumpkin patch. That runaway pumpkin was long forgotten at this point. She tried once again to steady her breathing, to no avail. Heck, at this point, she couldn’t even remember her name. Her only thoughts were of him—her personal hero, swooping in and saving her once again.
I enjoy pumpkin rolls?
Eric stared at Lucy, her hair skewed and windblown from her running, her oversized flannel shirt crooked and hanging on her body. And dang it if she still wasn’t the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen—which was probably why he’d cracked a dad joke about the pumpkin roll.
He’d never eaten a pumpkin roll before. Didn’t even know what one was until yesterday, when he’d overheard her telling Stella how the last few times at Mountain Brew, someone in front of her in line had gotten the last one. Now, she hadn’t yelled like Ross Geller when someone ate his turkey sandwich, but she looked just as sad. And that madehimsad, though he wasn’t sure why.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she caught her breath.
Eric rubbed the back of his neck as his eyes shot to his brother, standing a few feet to his left. No way could he tell Lucy what he and Nate had really been doing in the woods. That they’d been out on one of their “roaming” adventures, seeking places to hunker down during the next full moon.
“We were just out and about, getting some fresh air,” Nate answered, filling in the beat of silence Eric was just about to fill—not fast enough if Nate’s twisted lips were any sign. His dark eyes—the only physical feature the two of them shared—bored into him, and he ran a hand over his ginger beard, something he always did when he was nervous.
