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She followed them to the front door. “Do you miss Crystal Lake? Seems to me a lot of folks who leave end up back here.”
“No.” His reply was automatic, like muscle memory or something, his go-to answer whenever anyone asked him about where he came from. As soon as it was out of his mouth, he wanted to snatch it back. First off, it wasn’t true. He hadn’t realized how much he missed Michigan and Crystal Lake until these past few weeks. But more importantly, Molly wasn’t able to hide the flash of pain that shadowed her eyes, and he knew, however inadvertently, he’d just hurt her.
They said their goodbyes, climbed into her truck, and he turned to her. “Molly, what I said back there. I didn’t mean it.”
“Which part would that be, Nate?” She eased her truck onto the road that led to town. “The fact that you date a lot? Or the fact that Crystal Lake means nothing to you.”
“None of it.” How had he managed to screw things up when the day had started out so amazing? “Look, we were just talking about nothing, really.”
Molly came to a stop sign and, with no one behind them, put her truck in Park. She turned to him, a small smile on her face, but one that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Nathan, it doesn’t matter. You have a life in the big city that’s an entire world away from this little corner of the planet. And I know that. Just like I know you’re single and I’m single, and what we’re doing, what we’ve been doing these last few weeks, is like a fling or something.” Her forehead scrunched. “Is that still a word people use? Fling?”
“We’re not a fling.”
She sighed and then checked both ways before putting the truck back into gear and accelerating through the intersection.
“We may not be a fling, Nathan, but we’re nothing more than that either. It’s been nice, but it’s almost over. Let’s enjoy the time we have left, and then…”
“Then what?” Why the hell was his heart nearly beating out of his chest?
“Then you go home to the city and I go back to my life and this will be a memory, and that’s okay, because it’s a good memory.” She nodded, her eyes on the road. “A really good memory.”
Nathan had nothing to say to that because Molly was right. That was exactly what would happen, and they’d both known it going in. So why did he feel like such a shit?
And why the hell did his heart actually hurt?
Chapter Seventeen
The Malone family home was a beehive of activity when Molly pulled up in front of it, and with no room in the driveway, she parked on the road. She spied several out-of-state license plates, and then saw Aunt Sally sitting on the front porch, smoking like a fiend. She tapped her ashes onto Millie Malone’s prize hydrangea bushes, and then looked around to see if anyone saw. Which was when she spied Molly sitting in her truck on the road. Aunt Sally gave a small wave and smiled widely, her toothy grin something to behold even from Molly’s perch.
Busted.
Molly slid from her vehicle and walked up the driveway, smoothing the simple pale blue blouse she’d paired with her favorite jeans.
“Hey, Aunt Sally,” she said, looking at the ashes visible on the pale pink hydrangeas. Her mom would have a fit if she saw them. Molly reached over and gently shook the bush and then looked pointedly at her aunt. “I would maybe find an ashtray.”
Sally was her dad’s oldest sister and, at sixty-five, had nearly ten years on him. Never married, she lived in Illinois, in a small town called Streeter, where she kept four cats, three birds, at least two gerbils, and, last Molly heard, a large python. The Malone love of animals was in the genes, her dad once said, and Aunt Sally was living proof.
“Why, don’t you clean up real good,” Sally said with a wink. She got to her feet and, after one last puff, flicked her cigarette butt into the tall grasses that bordered the garden, waving her hands in the air like a crazy person.
“What are you doing?” Molly knew her aunt was eccentric, but this was kinda over the top.
“I told your mother that I quit smoking.”
Molly wrinkled her nose and would have pointed out it was useless to hide, her mother had a nose that would make and hound dog jealous, but in that moment, Millie walked out onto the porch. She was searching for something in her large bag and didn’t seen Molly at first, but then she yanked her head up and made a face.
“Sally, if you’re going to smoke, I would suggest doing it elsewhere. I’ve got windows open, and I don’t want that horrendous smell in my house.” She glanced at Molly. “Ready?”
Molly said goodbye to her aunt, and, once her mother was belted up in the truck, she headed across the bridge.
“My goodness, your feet are in rough shape. You’ll never snag a man with toes that look like that.”
“Unless you’ve got a toe fetish, pretty sure most men are willing to overlook chipped polish if it means getting lucky.”
“Toe fetish. Really,” her mother muttered. “As if anyone in Crystal Lake would be afflicted by something as ridiculous as that.”
“You’d be surprised. I heard Clive Whitlow only has sex with his wife when she’s wearing a tutu and sparkly wings.”
