Jesse clears his throat, but the words still come out low and rumbly. “I was just waiting to see you turn a light on. Make sure you got in safely.”
A warm sense ofsomethingfills my chest. I can’t put a name to it exactly. All I know is that I’m not ready to say good night to him. Not yet.
“What are you doing right now?” I ask.
Jesse looks surprised by the question. “Uh, I hadn’t really gottenthat far. Go home, walk my dog. Maybe watch a movie with him. He likes the classics.”
I lean closer to his window.
“Do you want to make some s’mores?”
Jesse goes still. For a moment, I’m certain he’s going to turn me down. But then he gives me a small smile.
“S’mores sound great.”
“I can’t believe how little this town has changed in the past twenty years,” I say. I rotate my marshmallow-topped stick over the firepit, taking care to make sure every side is getting evenly toasted. I haven’t spent much time in the backyard since we arrived here, but I’m immediately cloaked in a warm sense of familiarity. I lean forward in my Adirondack chair, drinking in the scene around me. There’s a low hoot of an owl in the distance and the croaking of frogs echoing over the water. The campfire crackles, flames licking the kindling.
“That’s something I’ve always liked about living here,” Jesse says. “Things stay the same.” He says the next words quieter, and I almost don’t make them out.
“For the most part.”
He leans closer to the fire, the flame illuminating his features. And what incredibly handsome features they are. Long eyelashes brush the tops of his cheeks, and a strong, square jaw is juxtaposed with the mop of boyish curls. Shelby is right: People would watch the hell out of any home-improvement show he starred in.
“I used to spend my summers here, when I was a kid,” I continue. I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Maybe it’s because he feels so strangely, inexplicably familiar. Or maybe it’s this place that makes me feel safe and uninhibited.
“We came every year to visit my grandma,” I continue. “Well, me and my parents. My brother Matt always went to sleepaway camp.I never wanted to go. I looked forward to my summers here all year. I’d spend the whole day out here on the lake, playing with other kids. At night, we’d run around playing tag while the adults sipped wine in the backyard. I got my first gig right after my twelfth birthday, and then my schedule didn’t allow for long breaks anymore.”
I pause, allowing the warm cloak of nostalgia to drape itself around me. Those summers at the lake house were everything. It’s no wonder I was so easily convinced to return. Sitting by the campfire all these years later, it feels like no time has passed at all. I’ve slid right back in, and it still fits perfectly, easy and natural as a worn pair of jeans.
A muscle in Jesse’s jaw twitches. Am I annoying him with the biography he didn’t ask for? I inwardly cringe. I share so little of my life that I’m not sure what makes me do it now, with him. I worry that it’s too much.
But then he tips his chin toward the distance. I follow his gaze across the lake, tracing the reflection of warm lights on the water.
“You see that house straight ahead?” he asks. “That’s the house I grew up in. We lived there until my sophomore year of high school.”
“The house you grew up in?” I scrunch my brow. “I knew a kid who lived in that house. We used to race kayaks together and…”
The rest of the words fall out of my brain.No way. That’s why he seemed so familiar to me. He’s…
“JJ?” I gasp in disbelief.
Jesse smiles shyly. “Guilty. Although I haven’t gone by that nickname in years.”
“You’re kidding. That kid was tiny and blond. You—but you look so different!” I search his facial features, seeking out traces of familiarity, but there’s not much to be found. The little boy I played with was softer, with a round face sprinkled in freckles. This man is all hard lines and muscle, the sun-kissed cheeks replaced by a heavy five-o’clock shadow and some very sexy eye crinkles. But nowI understand why he’s felt familiar. He’s got those same eyes, that indeterminable shade of grayish blue. I squint as I study him, like Belle trying to find her Beast within the transformed human prince.
He shrugs. “I shot up after puberty. My hair was lighter when I was a kid, got even lighter in the sun. But these days, I don’t spend as much time outdoors.”
I blink, still trying to reconcile the man in front of me with the hazy image in my memory. The collision of past and present. No wonder I felt like we’d met before. What a small world this is.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
He drags the roasted marshmallow off his stick, sliding it inside the graham cracker sandwich. “I guess I didn’t know how? You didn’t recognize me, and after a few days, it seemed too late to bring it up. Plus, I didn’t want you to think I was a stalker or something.”
“Yikes,” I say. “Areyou a stalker? I probably should have cleared that with you before I invited you into my home, which happens to sit on the edge of a lake. It would be ages before someone drained it and found my body.”
Jesse breathes out a laugh. He hands the finished s’more to me, which I accept happily.
“No, I’m not. And in a town like this, it would take about an hour for people to know you went missing.”
