Above All, page 25
“Wait until you try the first winter.” She still couldn’t take anything but a matter-of-fact approach to what he was implying. She’d been burned too many times to believe he could really be hers.
Not now, at least. Not when she’d finally let go and started living on her own.
“It can’t be worse than New York,” Ben said. “It can’t be worse than anywhere without you.”
She flung a rock so hard it plunked straight into the water. She wanted not to care anymore. She wanted to run into the lake and let the water be her tears. But somehow, she stood her ground.
It seemed like an eternity before Ben finally took a deep breath and spoke. “I know there’s nothing I can say that will undo the ways I’ve hurt you. But I want you to know, this past year for me has been terrible. I’m not asking for your sympathy—I just want you to know it’s been rough. I hated my job, which mostly consisted of trying not to chop off my fingers or sweat on the plates while being yelled at over any number of the eighteen thousand things I was supposed to be doing at once.
“I hated my apartment, which was alien and isolating and a devastating place to come home to after being shouted at all night by every other chef in the restaurant—not to mention wait staff, management, even a few customers who’d always take it upon themselves to chime in.”
He took another deep breath, and then he turned from the mountains to her. “But mostly, Casey, I hated being away from you.” He held up his hand to stop her when she opened her mouth. “I said goodbye to my friends, sold the apartment, and bought that big vacant house off Route 216. I spent all summer turning the ground floor into Sweet Amandine. Which, by the way, I do expect you to Google. So what I’m trying to say, although probably not very well, is that I’m here. For good this time. If you ever want to come by, I’ll be waiting.”
There was a long pause. “I thought you already knew and were still avoiding me, and that’s fine. But then I thought, maybe not. So I wanted to swing by and let you know. Like I said, I’m here.”
He stuffed his fists into his pockets and looked out at the view, scarlet tinged on his ears and cheeks. He had laid it all out, Casey knew, and now he was done. It was up to her to make the next move.
She looked at him and nodded. “Duly noted,” she said.
As they stood there in the afternoon light starting to fade into evening, she tried to see him as someone else might. Someone who walked by him on the street and didn’t care. How would it feel to be friends with him—to see his hair fall across his forehead and not want to reach up and brush it from his eyes? How would it feel to exist with him in this town?
Could she do it? She didn’t know.
“So, I’ll see you?” he asked hopefully.
“Sometime,” she said evasively. Deep in her heart, she knew that she wasn’t ready to give him anything more.
Ben extended his hand with mock formality reminiscent of their run-in on his apartment steps. “I look forward to your visit,” he said as they shook hands. Then he turned and walked back up the path to his SUV. Casey stayed out on the rocks until the sun went down, and she was trembling with uncertainty and cold.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day, Lee caught Casey poking around her trash.
“You coming in or checking to see whether I’m properly sorting my recycling?” Lee called from the balcony overlooking the bins behind her store.
Casey pulled out the cardboard box that had caught her attention. It was powder blue, with S. A. stamped in white on the top. “What the hell is this?” she cried, waving the box in the air.
“I know, my cholesterol. But you have to try these cakes. I brought a peach pie over to Barb the other day, it tasted like heaven. You’ve been over there, right?”
“No, Lee, and I can’t believe you’d betray me like that.” She flung the box back into the bin and huffed up the steps.
“Betray you? What are you talking about?” Lee held the door open as Casey marched in.
“You can’t waltz over to Ben’s café, going on about ‘it tastes like heaven.’ Come on, Lee. I’m counting on you to help me drive him out of business.”
Lee’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me!” she squealed, her whole body shaking with laughter. “That wisp of a thing behind the counter is your Ben? My God, he must be a wonder with his hands, the way he rolls out those pies.” She grinned devilishly.
“Stop laughing at me,” Casey said, collapsing at Lee’s yellow kitchen table with her head in her hands. “It’s awful. What am I going to do?”
“Poor Casey.” She rubbed Casey’s shoulders as Casey hunched over, forehead pressed against the table. “I had no idea.”
“Ben? From New York? How could you not have told me?” She rolled her head to the side so her cheek was resting on the table and pouted.
She could tell how hard Lee was trying not to laugh. “Do you know how many Bens there are in the world, sweetheart? And I didn’t know where he was from. He’s kept a low profile. I can’t believe you hadn’t been over there before.”
“I still haven’t been,” Casey corrected her, rousing herself to a slouching position.
“Then what are you going on about?”
“He came to see me,” Casey clarified.
“And?”
“And said that he was in town.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, and? And said that he moved here, opened this crazy business, wants me to come visit, and isn’t going to leave.” She threw up her arms in exasperation at the smile teasing around the corners of Lee’s lips.
“That sure sounds like an awful mess. Boy you’re crazy about moves all the way from New York City just to be with you—”
“A, I am not crazy about him. B, he didn’t move just to be with me.” Casey rattled off her protests on her fingers. “C, I’m over it and he should be too.”
“Yep. Sure looks like that to me.” Lee got up to put on the kettle. Her answer to every problem was tea.
“No, he moved here because here is where he found a place cheap enough to start.”
“The whole entire world and he chooses fifteen minutes from Paper Lake? Girl, you’ve been to some fancy schools but right now your brain is one lumpy marble rattling around in that hollow skull of yours. Put the pieces together.”
“I am putting pieces together, and I’ll tell you what I see. I see a twenty-seven-year-old child eight years younger than me—”
“With a butt to make the Virgin Mary squeal,” Lee interrupted.
“Who says he’s moving to Bonnet and then doesn’t, who goes on any number of hot dates with nymphets in New York, and who, when he finally disobeys Daddy and quits his job to open up his dream restaurant, spends months being fifteen minutes away from me and never once saying hello.”
She spoke hotly, and she thought Lee was going to come back at her with some equally sharp response. But Lee rose slowly and brought down the mugs from the cabinet. She took her time bundling the loose peppermint leaves into tea sacks before dropping one in each cup. When the kettle sang, she poured the water. Finally, she carried the two steaming mugs to the table and sat down.
Lee blew gently on her tea. When she took Casey’s hand in hers, her fingers were warm from clutching the mug. Her voice was soft but sincere.
“I know we’re not all as perfect as you want us to be, Casey, but everyone is trying. This boy has been struggling to figure out what he wants, and yes, sometimes saying no to your parents, your friends, your whole world can be hard. You remember that from your twenties, no? Think of how long it took you to realize that a piece of paper calling you doctor wasn’t what you wanted. Think about how much you’re still trying to figure out what you want. I’m actually pretty impressed that someone as young as Ben can be so wise and open to following his heart. It seems to me that it didn’t take him long at all to know that he’d made a mistake in not moving to Bonnet when he said he would.”
“What, so now you like him?” Casey asked incredulously. “After being right before that he wasn’t going to stick around?”
“That was before he’d given any real indication that he was committed,” Lee said. “But he’s moved here, Casey, and he’s got a job and a life that I really believe he means to maintain. It might be a good thing he didn’t come here earlier. He might have needed that time to make a few mistakes in order to realize what he could have. The worst thing would have been for him to move here, have tensions with his parents because of it, and then, when the going gets tough—because you know it’s always going to—wonder what if he’d gone to New York instead.
“This way, you know he’s not going to wonder. You’re not going to wonder. Because you’ve been there. You’ve done that. And now you’re here. Do you get me? Now you’re both here.”
“I don’t know if he still even wants me,” Casey said weakly.
“Do you want him?” Lee asked.
Casey didn’t know how to answer.
“Twenty-seven isn’t that young,” Lee said gently. “And the best part is, you both have nowhere to grow but up.”
They lapsed into silence and then Chester leapt onto the kitchen table, already purring in anticipation. Like a magnet, Casey’s hand went to him. She stroked his face, feeling the motor running under his throat.
“Can you look something up for me?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Amandine, the name of the café. Ben told me to Google it.”
“I don’t have to look it up, I know what it is. Americans call it almondine. A misspelling, I think. It’s that garnish of toasted almonds, like on a croissant. Why?”
“No reason.”
Casey hugged her knees to her chest as she perched on the stool, blushing. Her favorite pastry. Ben had named the café after it. Ben had named his dream for her.
One hand clutched the mug of tea as the other stroked Chester’s soft fur. Lee told her to think about what she wanted. But Casey wondered how it was even possible to know.
She’d spent so long worrying about whether Ben was too young for her, whether he still had too much growing up to do. She’d missed the fact that she had growing up to do, too. To learn what she wanted. To make her own decisions. To discover what her path would be.
And then to start down it.
Summer
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was August by the time Casey finally found herself driving up to the large powder-blue house with a matching sign hanging out front.
She had told herself—and Lee, and Geller, and anyone else who asked—that she was too busy running the camp during the busy summer season to make it out to Route 216. But the truth was that she had been avoiding the visit for as long as she could stand it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Ben—far from it. It was that she wanted to not want to see him. She wanted to be over him, plain and simple. That way it wouldn’t bother her one way or another what he did. The business could flop and he could leave. Or the business could be so wildly successful that he’d want to expand...and then leave. Any number of factors might cause him to close up shop and watch this sleepy mountain town vanish in his rear-view mirror as he skidded back south.
No matter how emphatically Ben insisted he was staying, it was impossible for Casey to believe that might be true.
But knowing he was just down the road made it unbearable to stay away. She was restless at night and agitated during the day. No matter how much she swam or how hard she rowed out into the lake, she never used up all the energy burning inside her that she wanted to give over to him. She avoided climbing Mt. Bonnet and the ridge beside it because the sights reminded her of Ben. But even when she drove out to the farther peaks and took in the views, she still couldn’t shake his presence. The whole mountain range seemed to taunt her with memories of him.
Nights were even worse. She’d wake up with her hands pressed between her legs, her whole body pulsing, and know she’d been dreaming of him. Her every thought betrayed her. She had no choice. She had to go.
She parked along the side of the road. There’d been nothing to draw anyone to this intersection before and it was strange to see so many cars there now. She recognized Ben’s black SUV in the grass behind the house. The small excuse for a gravel driveway was already filled with cars, so most of the vehicles had done what Casey did and simply pulled on the shoulder. Even for late morning on a Saturday, she couldn’t believe how many people were there.
She’d driven by the old house plenty of times in the past but never thought twice about. As a renovated café, though, it was perfect. A big, squat two-story structure with a balcony all around the second floor and an expansive porch out front, it had the sprawl of a mansion laid to waste. The powder-blue paint was peeling, as was the white along the trim, but the effect was welcoming rather than rundown. It came across as old yet cozy, inviting you into its charms. To paint it would have been a mistake.
But the inside had clearly been remodeled. Ben must have bought it for a song and then used the money from his apartment sale to renovate the first floor. Walls had been knocked down to create a wide-open main room with a counter along the side that opened into a work area in the back. Diners could see the floured table for rolling out dough and the metal trays for storing and heating baked goods. The ovens were tucked around the corner, just out of view.
The wood floor had been updated and polished, but it retained the creaky give and take of the structure. Ben had kept much of the original detail in the wainscoting around the base of the walls and the crown molding that flared below the ceiling. Everything was bright and fresh with a new coat of white paint along the trim and pale-blue walls to match the outside.
The tables were round and light wood, with a row of stools in front of a narrow high counter that ran around the front. The windows were tall to let in the light. The high ceilings made the space seem even more open, while an overhead fan spun lazily above to offset the heat from the ovens. Along the wall across from the counter were T-shirts with the logo printed on the front, little coffee-table books and knick-knacks, artisanal pickles and chocolates from nearby towns—the kinds of small presents people might pick up on their way home from a family trip.
But the counter—oh, the counter. Casey walked up to an enormous spread of every kind of pastry she could imagine. There was a lemon poppy seed cake that seemed to float off its platter, and individual chocolate Bundt cakes drizzled with dark chocolate sauce. Berry pies oozed with juices, while individual galettes made tight packages for people to take home. A handwritten sign announced roasted artichoke hearts and leeks with a Kalamata olive spread, and another one stuffed with red pepper, fennel, and roasted sweet potato. It seemed impossible for anyone to choose.
He made his own bread, too. There were baguettes with thinly sliced prosciutto, arugula, and red onion, and others with green apple, creamy brie, and local honey. A chalkboard behind the counter explained that the selection rotated daily and offered fluffy fresh-herb omelets until three p.m. There was soup with fresh sweet corn, potatoes, scallions, and cream—another seasonal selection—and cookies larger than an outstretched palm, loaded with chunky pieces of chocolate, toasted walnuts, and clusters of oats. How did Ben have time for it all?
The hiss of the espresso machine played over the gentle hum of conversation from the tables. There was nothing like this for miles, Casey knew. But it wasn’t just the food that drew people in. It was everything—the building, the brightness, the warmth of the space. It was somewhere you wanted to be.
She looked around at the mix of people, from locals who’d come in for coffee to tourists stopping for breakfast or to stock up on baked goods for a weekend of camping. Couples and families and some single silhouettes, sipping lattes while absorbed in their phones or a book. It was exactly the kind of place that invited them to linger.
Casey slid into a tall seat by the window and looked out at the street, trying to collect herself. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this.
This was professional, for one thing. There was a sizeable staff, from the woman working the register to several people in the back kneading dough and preparing the desserts. There must have been a chef, too, making the pancakes, waffles, omelets, and soup. Plus, someone had to monitor the ovens. It seemed shocking that Ben had put all this together. But, she reasoned, he’d been working on it for months, and this was what he’d always wanted to do.
Still, she’d come in expecting to find a kid playing at restaurant, before he had to succumb to reality and go crawling home, back to his proper training at another, better, more established place. He’d been trained for Italian cuisine after all. Not for this.
But looking around, Casey knew this wasn’t an ordinary café. This was someone fulfilling his dream, and he’d chosen to do it steps from Paper Lake.
From her.
She looked out the window, trying to work up her resolve to go up to the register and buy something. She should at least get a cup of coffee to support the business, and do it while she didn’t see Ben around. Suddenly, though, she heard someone come up behind her.
“How about a second cup, since I’m sure you already had one this morning.”
Casey whirled around. Ben was wearing an army-green T-shirt and a navy apron covered in flour. There was flour on the shirt, too, streaked across his chest and down his sleeves. There was even some on his cheek and dusted in his brow. His hair was pulled off his face with a black bandana, accentuating his piercing brown eyes.
He was smiling broadly, so completely in his element that Casey couldn’t imagine him anywhere else.
He handed her a steaming mug of coffee, already lightened with cream. Then he slid her a plate. On it was a fat, puffy croissant golden on top and dusted with powdered sugar like a light autumn snow. It was laden with slivered almonds and smelled like butter and sweetness.
Casey took a sip of the coffee and her eyes widened over the cup.
