I workedmost weekends during tourist season. Sure, I had employees…treated them well, made sure they were taken care of—but when we were slammed by leaf peepers, no amount of employees was enough.
Italsomeant I encountered the same annual customers every year…and right now I was dealing with one I’d been dreading.
Kathleen Mercer had been coming to Juniper Falls every October for six years. She was from Portland—Maine, not Oregon—ran some kind of architecture firm, came up alone every fall because she said the city made her claustrophobic by September and Vermont fixed it. She was forty-one, sharp, funny, exactly my type in regard to how she liked to have fun and never asked for more than I was willing to give.
We’d slept together five of those six years. It was always clean, easy, and mutual.
And she was sitting at the bar right now and looking at me like we were about to make it six years…and I was going to have to tell her no, because I couldn’t do it.
Not when I was thinking about Maggie.
When I hadn’t stopped thinking about Maggie for weeks now.
“You seem distracted,” Kathleen was saying, swirling the ice around in her glass of whiskey.
I shrugged. “Busy Friday.”
“Mm.” She took a sip. “You’re always busy Fridays. You’re never distracted.”
I looked at her, heaving a deep breath. She looked back…not even a little offended, thank fuck. “You’re not up for it this year, are you?” she asked. “Getting too old?”
I snorted. “Fuck off.”
“I wouldn’t judge you, for what it’s worth,” she said. Then she smiled. “But no…that’s not it. You found someone, didn’t you? Someone important.”
I took a second to figure out what I wanted to say…because yes, Maggie was important, but she wasn’t mine—not even a little. And she wasn’t a good reason not to have some fun with an old friend.
Kathleen figured it out first, though.
“You found someone but she’s not interested?” she asked. “Really.”
“I’m flattered you find it that hard to believe,” I laughed. “Guess I’m not the catch I used to be.”
“You’re still a catch,” she winked. “But what’s the hold-up?”
I finally moved closer to her, ready to talk—leaned against the bar.
“You really wanna know?” I asked.
“Why not?” she shrugged one shoulder. “I’m a great sounding board.”
“Okay…” I paused, nodding. “Well. She’s about twenty years younger than me.”
Kathleen hissed out a breath. “Oof…”
“And she’s my kid’s kindergarten teacher.”
That made her laugh out loud, shaking her head. “My god.Nash?—”
“Your reaction tells me it’s as bad as I think it is.”
“Well…that depends,” she said. Paused to sip her drink. “Is the feeling mutual?”
“I thought it was.”
“Meaning…”
“We had sex one night she was feeling low,” I said. “Breakup.”
