Page 70 of Forbidden to Fall

James chuckled softly. “Dinner. Come on. Have a seat, and I’ll serve it up.”

James directed the beam of the flashlight toward the chair, illuminating my path.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, even as my stomach growled for the entire forest to hear.

He set the flashlight on his chair and switched it out for a lantern, then grabbed a pair of tongs and crouched over the pit. “I wanted to.”

My stomach somersaulted.

In the safety of the dark, I watched him turn over one crinkly foil packet, then another, wishing I knew what lay behind those words. I thought of all the times I’d stolen glances at him during my tween and teenage years. Countless. Apparently, not much had changed, and yet, at the same time, everything had. I wasn’t an obsessive teenager anymore, infatuated with someone who hardly noticed me.

But what was I?

He pulled the packets off the fire and set them on a small bed of rocks to the side of the pit, then opened the blackened foil with the tongs, moving with the ease of someone who’d done this many times. How many nights had he spent over fires like this one? How many dinners had he made—alone?

Or maybe he hadn’t made them alone. Maybe he had coworkers who did forestry things with him. Women coworkers, even.

I shouldn’t hate hypothetical strangers so much.

He opened a small cooler I hadn’t noticed and pulled out a soda, which he tossed to me. He transferred the foil packets to plates, set a camp fork and knife on each, then brought me mine as my mouth began to salivate.

“Careful—it’s hot. Especially the carrots.”

It wasn’t a pretty meal, but I’d never smelled anything so appetizing in my life.

I poked a piece of sausage and a potato with my fork, blew on them, then took a bite.

I was a baker, not a cook, and my tiny electric stove wasn’t equipped for complex recipes even if I had been, not to mention that I just hadn’t had time for anything but quick eats. I raided my parents’ house for leftovers sometimes. I had a standing dinner invitation from May, but I’d been trying not to blur the line between business and pleasure too much; and by the time the dinner hour arrived, I was usually ready to crash out on my bed anyway.

This meal was a royal feast compared to what I’d been eating recently.

Only with great effort did I keep from moaning. I’d eaten potatoes and sausage before; I knew their flavors. Or I thought I had.

James sat across the fire from me with a forkful of food, but he glanced up. “There’s salt and pepper if you want it.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to change a thing about the flavors in my mouth. “You get to eat this on a regular basis?”

He laughed. “This is one of my better concoctions, but yeah.”

“And here, I’ve been feeling bad for you, thinking you’d been eating charred hot dogs every night.”

“I’ve had my fair share of those.”

I pushed around my food with my fork, exploring the different components as I chewed another bite. Sausage. Potatoes. Carrots. Butter. Garlic. But the sum was so much greater than its parts. “What did you do to this?”

“It’s all in the sauce and seasonings.”

That I could believe. It was the little things that made the difference in baking—room temperature eggs, chilled dough, a sprinkle of salt.

Undoubtedly, James had learned to nail the flavors and cooking times with trial and error. He’d had years to do it.

“Did you and your dad come here a lot?” I asked.

“We tried to. We’d come for tinfoil dinners or s’mores maybe once a month.”

I hesitated before asking my next question. “Is it hard to be here?”

His gaze flicked to me. “It was. Until a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t been back since he died.” There was a pause. “I avoided it, just like I avoided home. And Autumn Ridge.”