“I’m sure it’s a little bit of a surprise to see me,” I said as Devin settled down onto one of the two total chairs I had in my house so far.

“Surprise?” he said, his mouth hanging open in mock shock. “Russ, I’m surprised when I find an extra dollar in my pocket. I’m surprised when a cute dog jumps on me outside, or when the Mini-Mart has one more doughnut in my favorite flavor. No. I’m not surprised to see you—I’m fucking stunned.”

I laughed. Something in my chest unclenched as he spoke—I still couldn’t help feeling comfortable around him, despite all the years apart, and despite how we had left things. Devin was just like that. He made people feel good.

Or he made me feel good, at least.

And… “stunned.” He was stunned to see me? I half-expected a punch in the face when he learned I was back in Rose Falls. Somehow I’d seemed to have escaped it, but I knew it was going to take serious work to earn back his trust.

“Maple?” I said.

“Huh?” Devin said. He looked down at the pocket on his shirt, fishing out a leaf that was poking up out of it. “Oh. Yeah. I picked a nice maple leaf earlier today. Isn’t she a beauty? I’m going to use the color palette for my next painting, I think.”

“No, no. I meant your favorite doughnut flavor. Is it still maple?”

He smiled, the small dimples appearing on his cheeks. It was beautiful, and a nice change from the haunted look he’d had on his face so far that night. “Oh,” he said, looking down at the leaf and twirling it in his fingers. “Yeah, I can still put down like, three maple doughnuts in one sitting. You remembered?”

I nodded, reaching into the fridge and pulling out two beers I’d stashed there a half hour ago. “Of course I do. You never got anything else.”

“Still don’t,” he said.

“I had a patient in the last hospital I worked at—Millie. She insisted on bringing in her own bottle of maple syrup, even when she only was going to be at the hospital for a few days. She was eighty years old, and her daughter would bring in her special syrup from Vermont in a little metal canister.”

Devin nodded. “A woman after my own heart.”

“I’m sure you would have gotten along great with Millie. I thought of you when I found out she was a maple fanatic.”

His eyes met mine. “You thought about me?”

I nodded. “Of course.” It pained me a little that Devin would be so surprised that I hadn’t forgotten him. How the fuck could I forget him?

He paused, and for a moment I thought he was about to speak. Instead, he took a long swig of beer, a strand of his dark hair falling onto his forehead.

All at once I remembered how I used to tease him about that damn hair. I’d tell him he needed a hair clip every time his unruly hair fell out of place. I even bought him a cheap one from the drugstore, pink and crusted with rhinestones. When I tried to put it in his hair he ended up poking me in the ribs with it, wrestling me to the ground in his backyard as I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

And now more than fifteen years later he was sitting at my kitchen table, just a few miles from where we’d grown up. I hadn’t known that I was moving onto the same damn street that Devin lived on.

I had Googled his name a couple months back. I’d found a big image of his face, smiling out from the Rose Falls High School faculty website. He still had the same dimples he’d always had, and the same heavy dark lashes over deep green eyes.

But his small frame had filled out a little more. There was no other word to describe it—he was beautiful, with every feature refined since I’d seen him last. I’d always been a little afraid of his good looks as a kid—I didn’t feel like I should be thinking about other guys that way. But now that I was older and wiser, his beauty was kind of blowing my fucking mind.

“So you’re back,” Devin said, throwing his hands up in the air and breaking the silence. “You get tired of the fancy physician assistant life in California?”

I took a sip of beer, leaning back against my kitchen counter. “Not the physician assistant part. I still love my job. But the California part… it ran its course.”

Devin thumbed at the label on the beer bottle, glancing up to meet my eyes. “Are you still with…” he trailed off.

“Erica?” I said. “No.”

“Erica. Right. I’m sorry—it’s just, it’s been so long, and you’re not on Facebook, I couldn’t remember….”

I shook my head. I hadn’t expected Devin to remember the name of my ex. “Don’t worry about it. Erica and I split up about a year ago. And it definitely played a role in me wanting to get the hell out of San Diego. Everything just reminded me of her, y’know?”

He nodded.

“So I searched for physician assistant positions all across the country,” I continued, “but I kept coming back to the ones here upstate. And when one came up that was actually in Rose Falls, I jumped at the opportunity.”

“You missed it here?”

“I missed it here more than I ever could have imagined, Dev. You know southern California doesn’t even really have seasons?”

He smiled. “Of course it doesn’t. That’s what I tried to tell you before you left.”

My heart skipped as he mentioned it. Before you left. He’d tried to tell me a lot of things before I left, and I hadn’t listened to any of them.

“It’s a little cooler in the winter, little warmer in the summer,” I said, trying to steer the conversation away from when I left Rose Falls. “But… certainly no building snowmen. No white Christmas. Not that many fall leaves.”

“Tragic,” Devin said, shaking his head. “How do people live like that?”

“Pretty sure they just go to the beach and sit around bonfires. Some people don’t need the whole four seasons experience.”

He shuddered. “I can’t trust a person who doesn’t love the seasons.”

I cracked a grin. “I know you can’t.”

“Are you glad to be back?” he asked.

I nodded, pulling in a breath. “I missed a lot of things about this area.”

He hummed in response. “We haven’t got much around here, but what we lack in nightlife, we make up for in charm.”

I shook my head. “I always work too much to care about any nightlife, anyway,” I said.

“You have a position here already?”

“I start on Monday. It seems like it’ll be similar to what I was doing back in San Diego. I’ll be in the hospital, mostly working with the elderly. It’s hard work, but it’s rewarding. I always tell patients there’s no reason why the best years of your life can’t be in your seventies, or eighties, or nineties.”

“Especially if when you’re eighty years old, you have a steady supply of Vermont maple syrup,” Devin said.

“Especially then.”

“Well, I sure hope I have someone like you around when I’m old and grey.”

I couldn’t begin to tell him how much I hoped for that, too.

* * *

There was a lull in the conversation as we sipped our beers. It felt weird, almost—so far our conversation had been purely surface level, the kind of small talk any neighbor would have with someone new. If he were anyone else, I would have been perfectly fine with that.

…But he wasn’t someone else. This was Devin. He probably still knew me better than anyone in the world, even though we hadn’t talked for eight years. My body still buzzed with the shock of seeing him much sooner than I’d expected, but I was already hoping he’d stay for a second beer.

His eyes met mine, and he chewed his bottom lip for a moment before speaking. “I missed you,” he said finally, looking up at me. The regret on his face was plain to see.

He sounded so earnest. It tore at me. Because obviously, it was my fault.

“I missed you all the time, Dev.”

As soon as I’d acknowledged it, it was like a dam had cracked. I couldn’t keep going on without acknowledging the massive, palpable, unsettling elephant that was in the room. I’d lived my life without honesty for long enough, and I’d vowed to put an end to that with this fresh start.

I cleared my throat. “I… I wasn’t going to bring this up tonight,” I said softly, “but I think if I don’t, I’m going to hate myself more than you probably hated me eight years ago.”

I pulled out the chair on the other side of the kitchen table, sitting across from Devin. I looked at the twisting wood grain in the table, then up to him.

“Russ, you really don’t have to—”

“Devin, I am so sorry,” I said. I reached across the table and put my hand on top of his, lying on the table. I swallowed hard. “I fucked you over when I left Rose Falls, and I was too ashamed for years to ever properly apologize. I will understand if you don’t exactly want to… rekindle our friendship, now. But I want to do anything I can to make that possible.”

He shook his head, waving his hand quickly as if swatting away a fly. “I forgave you a long time ago. Of course, we didn’t really talk much over the past eight years, but… I’m okay.”

He sure didn’t look okay.

I felt my chest tightening. He was trying to brush it off like I thought he might, but I knew it was a bigger deal than he’d acknowledge. Ever since I learned two months ago that I would be returning to Rose Falls, I’d felt the same anxiety gnawing at me every time I thought of Devin.

“I’m not okay, though,” I said. “We were supposed to live together, we had everything planned out, and I left you. It was colossally fucked up, and I was a terrible best friend.”

Devin’s eyes narrowed, and he looked to the side. I slid my hand away from his, and immediately he pulled away and started scratching at the label on his beer bottle again. “It was,” he said after a minute. “It was fucked up. And for at least a year I was angry. And no, it wasn’t fun moving back in with my parents for two years when I was twenty-two….”

“Jesus,” I whispered. “Two years?” I hadn’t known the details of what Devin had done after I’d left for California.

After we graduated from college, I’d been all set to intern at a hospital near Rose Falls. Devin and I were going to share rent on a tiny two-bedroom house, living together. We’d planned on it for years, both saying it would be better to live with a trusted friend and split the costs.

But Erica had been moving to San Diego for graduate school. I’d known I could never make long distance work with her, but staying together seemed like the right thing to do.

And running away from Rose Falls had seemed like a solution, back then.

So I applied for work in hospitals in San Diego, without telling Devin, thinking I’d never actually get a job in one of them. But I did get one. And I’d found out about it two weeks after Devin and I signed the lease on the house.

Once I was in California, I mailed him a check for my half of the lease termination fee, but it still hadn’t felt like enough.

I’d toppled all of our plans and barely said a word to him before I left.

He nodded. “You know my parents, though. It wasn’t bad living with them. A little demoralizing, but if I had to live with anyone’s parents, mine certainly aren’t the worst. And Russ—honestly, it was the final push I needed to get my art teaching certification. Otherwise, hell, I might still be working as a barista now, doing the starving artist thing.”

“Bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. “You would have landed yourself in a good place no matter what. I know you would, Devin.”

He hitched up one shoulder in a shrug, taking a long sip of beer. “It made sense that you’d choose to be with your girlfriend. Certainly made more sense than staying with me just because we had some silly plans to live together after college.”

“It wasn’t silly,” I said. “It’s… my biggest regret.”

Devin finally looked up at me, a sad, lopsided smile appearing on his face. “Roo, you did what you thought was best. Believe me, when I tell you, it’s in the past. I forgive you.”

“Nobody’s called me Roo in so long,” I said, remembering the nickname Devin used to call me.

“I’m sure my mom still has a videotape of The Adventures of Roo & Dev somewhere in the attic. We had too much fun with that old camcorder.”

I smiled. “We really did.”

Devin reached out and clasped my hand again, squeezing it tight. His thumb was still wet from the condensation on the beer bottle, but I didn’t care; I loved that he was holding me.

“I mean it,” he said. “Water under the bridge. If you’re really moving back here, I… we can be friends, Russ.”

I nodded quickly, letting out a long breath. I’d forgotten how it felt when Devin looked at me, his gaze felt like it was warming me from the inside. “Yes.”

He let go of my hand, reaching up out of his seat to give me a firm slap on the shoulder. I grinned.

“Welcome back,” he said, sitting back down. “As a friend of mine, you’ll be subject to all the associated perks and pleasures of my companionship, including painfully annoying glee every time the seasons change, endless discussion of art history, and potential drunken texts when Emmett takes me out and forgets my tolerance is ridiculously lower than his.”

“Emmett,” I said, “He’s still in town? How is he doing?”

I’d never been as close to Emmett as I had been to Devin. He was a typical older brother to Devin and being two years older as kids had seemed like a much wider gap. I’d always liked him, even though he’d been a bit of a rebel.

“Yup, Emmett lives like eight blocks down the road,” Devin said. “He hasn’t changed much, still the beloved curmudgeon you remember. I’m sure you’ll see him soon.”

He was right. I’d been so preoccupied with seeing Devin again that I had barely even thought about the rest of his family. Devin had an older brother and a younger sister. They’d almost been like my preferred family, growing up—my own parents were both doctors, always extremely busy, and more often than not I’d be at Devin’s house until dinner or sometimes through ‘til dark before going home.

Devin’s house had always been more exciting than my own, anyway. I was an only child, he was one of three. My parents were cold and distant. His were the total opposite, welcoming and present, happy hippies, who had found a home in the artsy town years ago. There had always been something going on at the Crawfords’ house.

“Has Emmett found someone yet?” I asked. “Is he still a heartbreaker?”

Devin laughed, his smile crinkling up at his eyes. He shook his head. “No. Emmett has not settled down. He has slowed down, a little, though. Had some relationships with people that lasted longer than a few months like he used to do. There was a really sweet woman he dated for two years, and then a guy he was with for maybe one year. One of these days he will find someone who fits. I hope.”

“I’m sure he will.”

I was itching to ask Devin a question that had weighed on my mind for a long time. I wanted badly to ask if he was with anyone if he had a boyfriend or even something more than a boyfriend. I’d noticed the lack of a ring on his finger right away, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

There was no way Devin could be on his own. No one as charming as him could stay single, right?

I bit my bottom lip, almost physically holding myself back from asking. I watched the taut muscles in Devin’s forearm move gently as he rolled his beer bottle in between his hands. He seemed so much stronger than he’d ever been.

How much else had changed about him since I’d seen him last? I had a sense of wanting to explore him, to learn who he had become as an adult.

Jesus. Here I was, back in Rose Falls for all of a few hours, and already I was thinking about him in ways that I shouldn’t. I was supposed to be rekindling our friendship, not leering at him without his knowledge.

For all I knew, Devin still thought I was straight. It really had been too long.

“God, I should have come to see you when I visited Greentop,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth without a filter.

“What?” Devin said. “When were you in Greentop?”

I felt my cheeks getting hot. “Oh. Uh, well, my parents got a summer home there, a few years after I moved away. I visited them once or twice a year.”

Greentop was a town only forty minutes north of Rose Falls. It would have been stupidly easy to contact Devin during my trips there, and yet I never had. It had crossed my mind every time I’d been there, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d known how it would feel to see him again, and frankly, I was terrified of those feelings.

Devin’s face fell as he processed this fact, and guilt gnawed at my chest.

“You were here once or twice a year?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“I—uh, well, not here, but… in Greentop. Yeah. Mostly short trips just to see my parents.”

Devin looked down at the table. Jesus, I’d fucked up. Colossally.

“But, I’m back now,” I said, feebly. It was lame, but I was grasping at straws—just a few moments ago, Devin had seemed more than willing to try again at a friendship with me.

He tipped back his beer, finishing it.

“Do you want another?” I said, already getting out of my chair and heading over to the fridge.

“Um…” he started, pausing a moment, “…actually, I probably should be heading home.”

“Ah,” I said, turning back to him. “Okay.” I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest.

“Maybe I’ll… see you around,” he said, standing up. He smiled politely, brushing past me to go rinse out his beer bottle in the sink.

“Yeah. I’d really like to hang out with you,” I said. “If that’s something you’d be interested in.”

He nodded. “Of course. Um… yeah. Have a good night,” he said, barely making eye contact as he headed for the front door. It shut behind him, unceremoniously, and then the house was quiet.

I was already losing him, and I’d only been back for a few hours.

That night as I slowly began to unpack the boxes with my kitchen supplies, everything felt surreal. Because I was back in Rose Falls, and everything so far seemed pretty much like it used to be, except for the one big glaring difference.

I was older, and now I knew how to acknowledge my feelings instead of repressing them so much they threatened to split me open.

The only problem with being more in touch with my feelings was that now I couldn’t deny something that I had denied for so long—that I’d practically been denying for my entire life—and it now faced me head on, clear and obvious as could be.

I still had a thing for my childhood best friend. And I’d hurt him eight years ago, probably so much that there was no way he could fully forgive me.