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Honestly, the last month with Cal had been…surprising. After the confrontation on the beach on the Fourth, it was like a switch had been flipped between us. Where every glance, every touch before had been laced with simmering hatred and the desire to unsettle the other, now those glances and touches only fueled the fire between us. We could hardly keep our hands off each other, and we’d nearly been caught fucking at the office enough times that I’d had to implement a moratorium on having sex at work.
I’m not going to lie, keeping my hands to myself was a true test of my self-control. When he walked in wearing those chinos that clung perfectly to the sculpted globes of his ass, and he rolled the cuffs of his button up shirt to his elbows, exposing those forearms that, if you looked closely, bore scratches from my nails digging into his skin? I wanted to tear his clothes from his body and ride him right there.
But that was the opposite of professional, and I had an image to uphold.
Leaving my side-by-side where I’d parked it, I climbed into my little two-seater Jeep, the doors currently off and the top nowhere to be seen, hoping Amie wouldn’t think me a slob for showing up with wind-blown hair. The vehicle wasn’t practical in the winter, and I had an SUV I drove in the months we got snow, but I couldn’t resist purchasing this as a fun toy for the warmer months. To me, there was nothing better than riding around with the windows down and the music up loud. My sisters and I had done that endlessly growing up, content to cruise the backroads of the peninsula, exploring the uncharted corners of winery lands, making plans for the future. What we’d do with our own property one day, what our houses would look like, how many rooms we’d need for imaginary children.
With the doors missing and no top, that nostalgia was amplified, a joyous bubble in my chest, expanding so large I thought I could burst with the force of it.
So yeah. I didn’t give a fuck about my hair as long as I could experience a few moments of that childhood emotion again.
I’d just turned left out of my driveway onto the two-track that would take me to the highway that ran through town, but my progress was halted by a shiny silver truck approaching from the opposite direction. I steered off to the side and stopped as Cal pulled up next to me.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said with a grin. “Where are you headed?”
“Hey, handsome,” I responded. “I’m off to Granny’s. Lunch meeting.”
“Can I come?”
“Always,” I said with a smirk.
Cal laughed and said, “Not what I meant.”
“I know,” I said happily. “But if you want to, go for it. Although I’m warning you, I’m meeting with the party planner for the Labor Day party. It’s probably going to be boring as hell for you.”
“Not possible as long as you’re there,” he said.
I lost the fight against the blush rising to my cheeks, then said, “Go park in the drive. I’ll swing around and get you.”
A minute later, I was back on the two-track, this time with Cal at my side, his hand resting indecently high on my thigh, Morgan Wallen blasting from the speakers.
“I haven’t been to Granny’s in ages,” Cal said. “I can’t wait to gorge myself on one of Tanya’s buffalo burgers.”
My stomach lurched at the thought. “Gross,” I said, making a face that had him laughing. “I want a brunch burger and the biggest plate of sweet potato fries I can get my hands on.”
“For you, I’m willing to bet that’s a pretty big plate.”
I shot him a glare, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.
The Delatou roots ran deep in this town, considering the winery had been founded a scant thirteen years after the town itself, and remained the sole enterprise in the area until the mid-fifties, when my great-grandpa finally relaxed his iron fist enough to start selling some of the land that bordered the town. What had formerly been a church, five and dime store, and minuscule post office branch with a few blocks of small, craftsman-style homes quickly grew into an actual town practically overnight. By the end of the fifties, there was a diner, bar, and bank branch, as well as a small schoolhouse and double the number of homes.
The town continued to expand from there until it eventually reached the edges of the land great-grandpa had been willing to part with. Both Papou and Dad had since sold more, but on a peninsula that was only three miles across at its widest point, there was only so far the town could grow.
All that to say, in the early days of their marriage, Papou had gifted my grandma the stretch of land that now served as Main Street and a blank check, telling her to “go out and make yourself useful.”
Granny had built the restaurant from the ground up and named it after her maiden name, just to piss Papou off.
And thus, Granny Smith’s was born.
Though my family no longer owned the business—Dad had sold it in the nineties, after Granny passed, in order to focus his time and attention elsewhere—we were still considered something of VIP guests around the place.
I supposed it didn’t hurt that our family photos still lined the walls. Another long-standing Apple Blossom Bay family had purchased the restaurant from Dad and kept it exactly as is, telling us it didn’t make sense to fix something that wasn’t broken.
Although, the clientele had certainly changed over the years, as had the menu. During the day, it was great for greasy burgers and oversized plates of pasta. At night, they served appetizer platters and tap beer.
I pulled up in front and got out, Cal meeting me at the hood and grabbing my hand to pull me toward the door. The streets were teeming with people, adults and children alike, dashing around, cones melting in hands, bags full of souvenir trinkets weighing down arms. This was truly my favorite time of the year, when the town was once again full of life instead of the winter months when it seemed more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic, snow-covered wasteland than one of the hottest summer destinations in the entire country.
“So who exactly are we meeting?” Cal asked as he let go of my hand to pull the door open for me.
