He’s the one who made the plans for our double date. We’re meeting him and Pansy at the Laughing Leaf—a vegetarian restaurant in Apple Ridge, a small town about forty minutes south of Asheville. My parents took me there for apple picking a few times when I was a kid, and also to choose a Christmas tree. At the time, it had felt steeped with magic.
According to one of Pansy’s eleventy-billion texts messages, she has other “fun” plans for the night.
(When I told Hannah, she replied,Oooh. Orgy?)
José stopped talking about Cormac after filling me in on the double date itinerary, and I was more than pleased to put a pin in the subject, but the two of us haven’t been right with each other. Usually we build off each other’s ideas like we’re a two-person improv team, each of us elevating the other’s ideas to brilliance. That’s how we came up with the plan for our slightly savory Thanksgiving special last year—sage and cranberry with a hint of pepper. But lately we haven’t been gelling at all.
Yesterday, we got into a disagreement about which of Silver Star’s beers to feature on our guest tap for fall. Pumpkin ale wasan obvious pick, but José kept making plugs for the porter, which I know even Liam, who brewed both of them, doesn’t like. It felt like he was arguing just for the sake of arguing.
I pucker my lips at the thought and turn up the volume on the radio and crank open my window, enjoying the warm breeze.
“And now, a single from our own local band, Garbage Fire,”says the radio announcer.
I smile as the song comes on—one ofseveralthat Rob wrote about Sophie. The other day I heard it on a satellite radio station. Their reach is steadily expanding.
Beneath Rob’s voice and the strum of his guitar, I catch the thrumming of Cormac’s playing, steady and sure as a heartbeat. My focus latches onto it, and suddenly the rest of the song fades into obscurity.
I have to wonder how Cormac feels about the band’s growing success. He obviously didn’t join because he loves attention, so it must be something else that does it for him.
I’m surprised by how much I’d like to ask. After all of these years, I’m interested, yet again, in figuring out what’s going on in Cormac Peebles’s overactive gray matter.
The song is still playing when my GPS alerts me that I’ve arrived. I glance out the window and take in the little white bungalow with red shutters. It’s tidy, but the tree in the front lawn is overgrown, and the paint looks like it could use refreshing. The house is surrounded by a tall, new-looking wooden fence.
I reach for the door handle, then pull my hand back and lower the visor instead so I can survey myself in the mirror.
My face is shiny, and my lipstick probably faded away two hours ago.
It shouldn’t matter. This is Cormac, for goodness’ sake. He owns at least five novelty video-game-inspired T-shirts. He’s thelast person who would care about whether someone looks stylish or put-together. But I haven’t forgotten what he said to me at the wedding.
My cousin Hazel is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. But when I offered to set him up with her, he said?—
She’s not prettier than you.
As much as I hate to admit it—and oh boy, I hate it a lot—I don’t want him to change his mind.
So yeah, I blot my forehead and swipe on some fresh lipstick.
When I open the gate,a deep-chested bark booms from within the house, muffled by the thick walls typical of all of the century-old houses in Asheville’s older neighborhoods.
It occurs to me that I never asked Cormac what kind of dog Cookie is. I assumed from the name that she was little—possibly one of those neurotic, fluffy white dogs everyone seems to own—but the sound coming out of the house suggests she’s huge.
The barking continues but grows more distant, as if Cormac has ushered her into a different room.
Sweat beads at the back of my neck as I approach the red door and knock.
It opens so abruptly, my knocking fist almost punches Cormac in the chest.
A surprised laugh rattles from my mouth, then cuts off.
Cormac looks different.
He’s wearing a white button-up shirt, rolled up at the forearms—bad for the weather, good for the eyes—linen pants, and a new pair of horn-rimmed glasses that give new meaning to thephraseslutty little glasses. His hair has been freshly trimmed too.
He looks like a sexy poet. Or an intense, unfeasibly sexy scientist in a movie with atmospheric cinematography and tons of monologues.
I feel a hot flush stealing over me.
No, not happening. Nope.
