Chapter Five
Cole
The dulcet strains of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” filtered out into the snow-covered lot. I shut the door of Derek’s car and stood there, listening to the hum of voices and the occasional shout of laughter.
In my head, I knew each person who was in there.
I heard Mr. Reese, Brynn and Callum’s grumpy, overworked father with a nose as red and pitted as a raspberry, shouting good-natured insults to the drunken revelers.
I heard a laugh that sounded exactly like a ‘ho ho ho’ and immediately grinned to think of Jasper Beals who always grew out his white beard and wore a red jacket every Christmas just so he could freak out little kids who thought that he was Santa.
That wild cackle that sounded like a Halloween witch had to be Flora Feathergill, the owner of the antiques place that attracted all of the rich yuppies from New York.
I knew this town. I knew these people. I grew up here.
I wasn’t one of the visiting yuppies from New York, no matter what my rented car and expensive watch might say. I was a local. I belonged here as much as any of them.
A shiver of insecurity, of the kind I hadn’t experienced since middle school, rippled through me. With a start, I realized I missed everyone. But would any of them actually be happy to see me again?
Would Autumn be happy to see me again?
When she invited me, I was feeling pretty confident. But out here in the cold lot with the door shut in my face, I wasn’t feeling nearly as cocky. She was in there with the people she’d grown up with, celebrating Christmas in the place where she belonged.
Where did I belong?
I stepped forward, determined to shake these maudlin thoughts. Go inside, have a drink and shake some hands. I was here on business, not pleasure, and I could always cut my losses and leave. This night didn’t mean anything, just another day on the calendar. I spent every other night of the year getting drinks with clients, sealing deals. Why should Christmas Eve... in my hometown... with the girl who broke my heart... be any different?
Yeah. There was nothing special about this at all.
My feet and my brain were not in agreement, though, so it took a Herculean level of effort to take that next step and the next. Sometimes when I was interested in a property, I would go visit dressed as a civilian and take in the scene. Chat up the security guards and receptionists, and try to get the real story on why the owner was selling. Tonight could follow the same script. I would just open the door and peek in, enter as unobtrusively as possible. That way I could feel out the temperature of the room before making myself known.
But a sudden stiff gale that seemed to come directly from the North Pole propelled me forward the last few feet. I threw open the heavy wood door and the wind caught it and sent it slamming into the wall with a resounding thwack.
The whole bar went silent.
“Holy shit,” a drunken female voice slurred from the back. “Is that Cole Granger?”
“Hey everybody,” I called, taking off the gloves that Derek had gotten me. I’d grown up here. How had I forgotten to pack gloves for myself? “Um, Merry Christmas.”
The first person to break free of the pack was Harper McCabe. She was a few years older than me and I knew she was visiting from out of town herself since she was a big children’s book author now. As she came up to me, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone was watching, ready to take her lead.
“Cole!” she called, going in for a hug and a cheek kiss. “It’s so good to see you again! I heard you were in New York and I kept meaning to look you up...”
“I know, it’s a big city,” I finished, smoothing over her guilt. “And I hear you’re not even there too often. Congratulations on the book tour!”
“Oh you know about that?” she grinned, pride shining in her eyes. “I didn’t know you followed the children’s book scene.”
“Well, Mrs. Collis probably believes your writing is at my reading level,” I grinned. Reckless Falls’ High School’s English Department was presided over by Mrs. Molly Collis — more dragon than woman — who was famous for holding a grudge. Of course, being the idiot I was back then, I took her gruff hatred of teenaged boys on as a personal challenge and led Gil Aldridge’s cow up to the stairs to the third floor of the school. See, cows can go up stairs, but they can’t go back down again. They had to get a crane to lower the cow out a window. This only sealed my fate as an imbecile in her eyes — though I maintained it was pretty smart of me to woo a cow into a building like that — for the rest of my four-year career. Even my 4.0 GPA wasn’t enough to convince her I wasn’t illiterate.
“Oh Mrs. Collis believes I’m a literary failure as well,” Harper pointed out. “Don’t listen to her. I think she thought I was going to write the next great American novel.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Gilly’s Garden had a 150-word vocabulary. So, um... no.” She cast her eyelids down for a second. “What brings you home for the holidays? Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh please, you don’t need to do that.”
“Call it reparations for ratting you out all those years ago. I was more worried you’d fall than anything else.”
“I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have been drinking on the water tower that night.” I was trying to get over Autumn, I didn’t say. Instead, I smiled widely. “I was just a mass of poor life choices back then.”
But instead of laughing, she cocked her head to the side. “Have you changed now?”
Reflexively I licked my lips. “I like to think so.”
She smiled and nodded, and then grabbed my arm, dragging me up to the bar. “Hey guys, make room for Cole!” she called to the assembled crowd.
“Granger!” Sam Fitch was decked out in holiday-colored camo, which was something I didn’t even know existed but wasn’t surprised that he owned. He slid off his barstool and gave me a slap on the back, so big and broad that he took up my entire field of vision. “Careful New York, you’ve got mud on your shoes.”
“Eat me, Fitch,” I shot back, giving him a slap that I was proud to see made his eyes water. “Have you ever even crossed county lines?”
I grinned as the rest of the crowd laughed. Fitch looked like the hamster wheel in his brain was starting to smoke. “I went to Elmira once,” he retorted.
“Yeah?” I smiled, shrugging off my jacket. It was pleasantly over-warm in here and I’d thawed to the point where I could close my fingers around a bottle of beer. “What did you think of Elmira?”
Fitch wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Didn’t like it. I’m not a city guy. You like the city better than here, Granger?”
A week ago I would not have hesitated. Of course I liked the city better, I would have said immediately. The city had culture, the city had restaurants, the city had clubs.
But now that I was back here, I couldn’t answer so quickly.
“Yeah?” I drawled out. “I don’t know. They both have their good points.”
“Yeah?” Fitch actually looked interested. He hovered close to me and seemed to expand so that I couldn’t see anyone else, a big, camo-covered universe.
I moved my hands, trying to grasp the words from out of thin air. “It’s really, um, noisy there,” I began. He was watching me so intently I felt oddly self-conscious. “And you’re never alone. Even when I’m alone in my apartment I can hear the guy who lives next door to me. He's really into salsa music. I forgot how nice it is just to have silence. Like you’re the only person in the world.
“Yeah but the chicks man, big city chicks...” Fitch looked like he was ready to swoon.
I licked my lower lip. There had been a sea of women in New York, all polished and perfect and career-driven. I’d had my fun, but the thought of actually sticking around never crossed my mind. Not like it had with Autumn. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think the girls here are pretty great too.”
“Hear hear!” Fitch roared, lifting his bottle. “Country girls!”
There was an answering ‘woo’ from the back of the bar and all at once the Christmas music stopped and the bass started thumping. A cry of delight went up from the assembled girls and all at once everyone around me started heading to the small makeshift dance floor. “Country girls!” Fitch yelled even louder and made a beeline for the dance floor. I grinned and looked around, suddenly able to see the whole place and all the assembled town without Fitch standing in my way.
And, as if on cue, I saw Autumn.
Her back was to me, but there was no way I could mistake that hair. Or the way she held her head slightly forward like she was eager not to miss anything. Or the way her hands had such long, elegant fingers that cut these swirling shapes in the air as she spoke. I used to tell her she had bird hands and she thought I was making fun of her, but I was trying to give her a compliment. Her hands soared and swooped like the gulls over the lake and before we even dated I used to try to talk with her just so I could watch her hands.
Across the table was a girl with a familiar face, but then every face in this bar was slightly, vaguely familiar. I squinted a little, trying to place her.
And that’s when she caught me. Her wide blue eyes narrowed and she bent to say something to Autumn who stiffened noticeably. “Brynn Reese!” I realized, a second too late.
Autumn’s hands fluttered back down to her sides when Brynn told her I was here. Because what else could she have said while staring me down?
I waited for a beat, but Autumn did not turn around to say hello.
I sipped my beer, smiled at Fitch spastically dancing in the middle of the floor, and then chugged half my beer in one gulp.
Autumn still didn’t turn around.
I moved a little closer.
Brynn glared at me like I was something she'd found on the bottom of her shoe, but I barely noticed because I was too busy willing Autumn to turn around. I finished my beer, called for another and downed half of that one in one gulp too.
Fuck it, why was I here? I was here because Autumn told me I should come. I thought... I didn’t know what I thought would happen, but I didn’t expect this. Shut out, frozen out, whatever the fuck she was pulling. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t hold grudges. Not against me.
She was the one who told me I should go in the first place.
Suddenly angry, I downed my second beer and ignored the flush of heat in my cheeks. I needed to talk to this girl. She was why I was here, and even though my brain was suddenly buzzing from drinking so quickly, I still figured it was better to talk to her then turn tail and go home to my brother’s freezing house. Alone in my hometown on Christmas Eve. No that wasn’t going to happen. Not to me. Not to Cole Granger.
I grabbed one more beer for courage and I moved closer to Autumn.