Chapter 1
ONE
“There are worse
things in life than getting laid off,” Piper Harriman said to herself. “There are better things too, like
not
getting laid off.”
She gripped the wheel and headed up I-95 out of Boston. Her all-wheel-drive car was packed with boxes and trash bags full of clothes still on the hangers. She’d left her sparse furnishings behind for the next occupant of her Allston-Brighton apartment.
So, this was it—her whole life in a hatchback. This was her takeaway from four years of college and four years as an accountant for a small tech startup. Her company had been bought out, and she was kicked to the curb with a glowing letter of recommendation. Her cashed-out 401K might get her through the next six months, if she was lucky.
Her phone rang, interrupting the current song on her “Laid Off and Driving Home to Live in My Parents’ Basement” playlist. “Hi. I’m driving. Yes, Dad, I’m using a hands-free device.” She shook her head, smiling. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in about four hours.”
Her smile turned to a curious frown. “I won’t? Oh, okay.”
It wasn’t exactly okay. She’d wanted to go home and feel the comfort of having family around. It was a small family, just her father and stepmother. Their flight to Florida had been cancelled, so they were put on an earlier flight. They’d be gone by the time she got there.
She sighed. “No, I can manage. Don’t worry. I’m sorry, what? Oh.” They’d rented the house. “So where will I stay?” Before her dad answered, she nodded. Their holiday rental next door.
The call was dropped, which was fine. It gave her time to reason out why they were renting their large coastal home instead of the small cottage next door, which they’d always called “The Lodge.” The name was a little pretentious for a small holiday rental, but it had been The Lodge for as long as she could remember, so why tamper with tradition? During high school, they’d winterized it. From then on, they’d jokingly called it “The Winter Lodge,” even though most of their rental business was during the summer season. But they’d finished the remodel in winter, so The Winter Lodge stuck.
That was also when the whole Juan Calderon thing happened. It didn’t take long for those memories to come uninvited to the front of her mind.
His father was working
on the cabin, with Juan’s help. Juan and Piper went to the same school, so she’d seen him around. But there was something about his tall, sinewy body in work boots and a tool belt that caught her attention.
One day, some friends dropped her off at home after staying late at school. Juan was getting something from the truck as she walked down the driveway.
She said, “Hi.”
“Hi.”
She pointed to the Calderon Construction sign on the side of the truck. “That’s your father?”
“Yeah.”
Piper said, “So you work for him?”
He nodded. “Except during baseball season.”
She nodded back and looked into his eyes. That was when it started. That one simple encounter changed everything. From then on, there was an unspoken awareness, a charge in the air between them.
“Juan!” his father called out from the front door of the lodge.
Juan’s eyes shone as he smiled. Looking back, she realized that the smile she returned was more of a zombified stare. Juan’s father waited in the doorway with a stern look on his face.
Piper said, “I’d better let you get back to work.”
“Yeah.” He looked away, grabbed a sheet of drywall from the bed of the pickup, and carried it into the lodge.
Piper couldn’t help but watch him. He was all strong arms and shoulders. When her eyes drifted down to the blue jeans and tool belt, something in the periphery caught her attention. Juan’s father. He’d watched her watch Juan, and he didn’t look too pleased about it. But Juan was so hot, with his nearly black hair and those deep, brooding brown eyes. How could any girl be expected not to notice?
Piper turned away as though nothing had happened, then tightened her grip on her backpack straps and went into the house.
A black sports
car passed by a little too closely and forced Piper back to the present, in high-alert mode. It proceeded to weave in and out of traffic until it was safely away—safely for her, anyway. She calmed down and put the cruise control back on.
Back to Juan Calderon. Piper rubbed her forehead. Nearly eight years ago, in the summer after high school graduation, they had sat on a secluded stretch of coastline on a warm August night with a cool ocean breeze. Before long, their two bodies were a tangle of passion and promises. Two kids in love, they were going to get married.
Until the next day, when her father said no. She was too young, and Juan was not a suitable match. He didn’t come from money, wasn’t going to college, and there was that thing her father never said because he was too politically correct to say such things out loud. Maybe it wasn’t about Juan’s ethnicity. Maybe it was because of their disparate tax brackets and social circles. Whatever it was, this marriage was not going to happen if her father had anything to say about it.
And he did. If she married Juan, her father wouldn’t pay for college. Could Juan Calderon put her through school? No? Well then, she should wait four years. Reluctantly, she agreed.
Juan didn’t take it well when she told him. It might have been easier if he’d argued or accused her of being too weak to stand up to her father—or if he’d just yelled. Something. He’d have been right, no matter what.
But instead, he said nothing. He never begged her to stay or told her that he’d miss her. He simply accepted her choice with a clenched jaw and a dark, faraway look in his eyes. Then he gave her a kiss that would ruin all kisses to come after. She should have known it then, but it wasn’t until the next morning, when she drove off to college and he hadn’t come to say goodbye, that she realized the kiss had been his farewell forever.
The phone rang.
It was her father again. They’d made it to the airport. All checked in and ready to board. Oh, by the way, did she remember Juan Calderon?
Could he even ask that without knowing the answer? Was the memory of Juan not seared into the healed-over break in her heart? If having her heart skip a beat at the mention of his name eight years later constituted remembering him, well then, yes. Yes, she did.
“Uh, yeah, why? Really? He’s rented the house? Our house? No, no, that’s... fine. Yes, really.”
Not really.
“Okay, go fight the good fight for your overhead bin. Have a good trip. Love you. Bye.”
Eight years. The mere thought of seeing him made her tachycardic—which meant nothing except that she had a good memory. She couldn’t still be “in love” because that was the stuff of pathetic romantics, which she was not. In the eight years since Juan, she’d never felt anything close to that feeling, nor would she. Those feelings were best left in the formative years, in that window of time between unbridled love and fathomable regret. She’d grown past all of that because she was grown up.
Adulthood was simply a matter of narrowing one’s expectations to achievable levels that may or may not involve love. Relationships never ended. The text messages just stopped. Then the memories were stashed like dollar-store bins in a closet. Piper’s memory bins were labeled with four Ws: Why? Why not? Whatever! And WTF was that? And they were never heard from again.
Now, Juan was going to be her neighbor. As such, there was a good chance she would see him at some point. More than once, even. Possibly daily. At such times, she would be expected
not
to look at him just like she had
not
looked at him when his father was watching. Even so, she was an adult. Naturally, it might be a little uncomfortable at first. But so were tampons, and she’d grown used to them.
Hmm. Piper shook her head and made a mental note—no more vaginal analogies.
Back to Juan. Before long, it would just be the occasional passing hello wave, and life would go on. There was no need to blow this thing out of proportion.
She pulled into the driveway.
The house hadn’t changed much, except for the pickup truck parked there. She wanted to believe it belonged to a worker preparing the house for rental. But given the way Piper’s luck had been running lately, she’d bet her severance package it was Juan’s. So, proceeding with caution, she pulled past the pickup bearing a Calderon Construction sign on the side, and she parked in the small patch of driveway by the lodge.
For a moment, she sat breathing deeply.
Okay.
She smoothed back her fiery curls, grabbed the overnight bag with her essentials, got out of her car, and walked to the lodge with a purpose—that purpose being to make it inside without seeing Juan. She just wasn’t ready. Maybe after a shower, a blow dry, a complete makeup overhaul, and a full glass of wine, she’d consider it. Until then, it was long strides, a quick grab for the key hiding over the doorframe, and then she was in. Door closed.
Phew!
As she leaned on the inside of the front door, a car door slammed outside, and an engine started up. She peeked through a crack in the blinds. She wasn’t proud of the move, but she did it. Dusk had settled in, making it hard to see Juan clearly, but it was his truck. He backed out of the driveway and was gone. Piper fired up the potbelly stove for some heat and headed out to the car, hurrying to unload it before he came back.
Saving the serious unpacking for tomorrow, she poured a glass of wine and sat down by the window to look at the view. The Winter Lodge sat beside the main house on a hill overlooking the horseshoe-shaped harbor. Most boats were in storage for the winter, leaving the snow-dusted harbor looking stark except for a few fishing boats that defied winter. The holiday lights, combined with the usual harbor lights, shone like thick shimmering ribbons of color that reached for the horizon and faded from view.
Piper shivered and moved to an overstuffed chair by the fire, where she rested her legs on an old wooden trunk. Arranging a throw blanket over her legs, she leaned back and stared at the flickering flames. This would be her home. For a while, anyway. Perhaps staying here had worked out for the best. The lodge was actually larger than her Boston apartment, with wide-plank oak floors and a cozy bedroom off to the side of the house. The kitchen was open to the living room, which was lined with tall windows covered by cream-colored linen curtains.
It was comfortable and warm, but she still felt adrift with no job and no family around—and worst of all, with no plan. She’d always set goals and worked hard because if you did that, you’d succeed. And it had worked. She’d been rolling along, working hard, getting rewarded for her efforts. Until now. Now she had nothing. No job, no family—at least not nearby—and no place to go. This was not how her life was supposed to work out.
Oh—and she’d left out
alone
. Of course, that wasn’t new, but she had all this time to reflect on it. She’d trained herself fairly well to suppress such thoughts. Anymore, they only surfaced after a date or a breakup. She would say good night and try not to sigh with relief until well out of earshot. Sometimes an evening went well enough to end with a kiss, only to have the prince turn into a frog when the touch of his lips rendered nothing—no spark, no racing pulse, no chemistry.
Her first kiss
with Juan was electric. They’d been friends at first. He appeared at her side in the lunch line one day. After that, it was daily. It just grew from there. There were no grand declarations or even discussions of what their relationship was or was going to be. They just knew.
They both had a study hall together. One day, Piper had to cram for a chemistry quiz. Juan had been watching her over a library table with a mischievous look in his eyes. She could feel his deep gaze, and she couldn’t help but smile, which only made everything worse—well, worse as it related to her chemistry quiz, but better in regard to her life. But the quiz was the next period, and she didn’t feel close to ready.
Juan leaned forward and urgently whispered, “Piper, come here. I need to show you something.” He held her gaze with those dark eyes of his. Oh, that feeling she’d get! The whole world disappeared when he looked in her eyes. No one had ever made her feel that way before or since, and with only a look.
He got up, and she followed him down the row between two tall shelves. He pointed to a book halfway down the row and just above eye level. She frowned and squinted as she read the title and tried to figure out why he’d felt the need to show her this particular book at this particular time. Whatever the title was, she would never remember, because as she lifted her chin to decipher the faded gold letters on the worn fabric volume, he put his hand on her cheek and bent down to kiss her. That kiss didn’t end until the bell rang minutes later, and she had to hurry to chemistry class to make it in time.
She thought of that kiss,
and so many others, and the way his hand brushed softly against hers as they went their separate ways to class. And she wondered. What would have happened if she’d given up college and stayed here with Juan?
At the time, she’d been too unsure of herself, so she’d trusted the adults in her life when they told her that she was too young to really be in love, let alone to get married. Whatever this was, it could wait until after college. She’d believed their insistence that she couldn’t know what love really was at eighteen. They were older and wiser. What did she know? She just thought it was love.
But now, she was older and knew it had been love.