Page 4 of When We Had Forever
I return her grandmotherly smile. White-haired but spry, Darlene wears glasses as thick as old-timey Coke bottles, bakes apple pies from scratch, and develops an uncanny ability to swear like a sailor after a single drink.
Briefly, I mourn the fact that I don’t have any alcohol to offer her. At least that would lift Kate’s mood. There’s nothing quite like hearing a seventy-five-year-old woman dispatch the f-word with gusto.
“Mina, dear,” Darlene says. “It’s good to see you. And congratulations on your graduation.”
“Thanks.” My gaze wanders back to Mr. Pie Slop and his tropical eyes. He’s put his flawless teeth away and settled for watching me intently.
I watch him right back. If he’s affiliated with the shelter, I should recognize him, but we’ve definitely never met. “How much to throw a pie? And who’s your willing victim here?”
Darlene pushes her Plexiglas lenses up. “Five dollars gets you three pies. And this is Michael...erm...Drake?” She says his name like she’s not sure. Like she’s only just met him.
“Michael Drake.” I roll the name around on my tongue, then slip Darlene a five. “What do I get if I hit him?”
“Nothing. It’s just to help the animals,” Darlene says.
In the same moment, Michael says, “Pure, sadistic gratification.”
Despite the day’s balm, I shiver. His voice skims down my spine, making me think of aged bourbon and expensive leather and curling blue cigar smoke. It sounds older than the rest of him, though it’s hard to pin down his age with all that glop coating his face.
Regardless, his answer tells me he’s smart, maybe even well-read, though the second part seems optimistic, considering he’d have to sandwich any book time in between all those biceps curls.
“Michael Drake.” When I repeat his name, something flashes in his eyes. “Where’d you come from? I thought I knew everyone in this town.”
“You probably do,” he says. “I’m just visiting. For work.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Nobody comes to Seagrove to work. Only to get away from it.”
He chuckles. “Fair enough. I’m here on a corporate retreat. Most of my company’s down from Seattle for the weekend. Maybe you’ve heard of us. Forsythe & Winter?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kate pores over the pies. “Some fancy architecture firm or something, right? Here, Mina. This one looks the messiest.”
I accept her offering, which indeed looks capable of inflicting maximum splatter. Whipped cream slops over the pan, leaving sticky white gobs on my red shirt. “If you’re just visiting, what’re you doing in the pie-throwing booth?”
Michael shrugs. A few dollops slide from his shoulders onto the grass. “One of my coworkers was supposed to come, but he got sick and sent me instead. He’s from here originally, actually. Ben Gallagher.”
My mind races down the hallways of memory in pursuit of that name. Ben Gallagher, yes. Except I always knew him as Benny. He was two years ahead of me in school, at least until his sophomore year, when his parents got divorced and his mom moved them to Seattle.
I haven’t seen Benny in years and had no idea he’d ended up working for a high-end architecture firm. Idoknow his dad still lives here in Seagrove and happens to be Darlene’s nephew.
“Huh,” I say, as connecting threads stitch together in my mind. “Small world.”
“Not really.” Michael’s attention remains on me. “It was Ben’s idea to do the retreat here. He talks about this place all the time. Still swears he’s going to move back someday.”
I ponder that. I can’t imagine escaping this Podunk town and then returningwillingly, but to each their own, I guess. “Well, Benny must’ve made you a pretty amazing offer to convince you to have pies thrown at you all day.”
“Nah. He asked, and it sounded like fun. So here I am.”
“You thought getting doused in whipped cream sounded like fun?”
“Does it not?”
Predictably, Kate grimaces and smooths her perfectly ironed sundress. Meanwhile, I fight a smile. Getting coated in pie doesn’t seem likefun, exactly, but it does seem like the kind of thing someone who’s already living life out loud—instead of just planning to start next month—would do.
I don’t want to give this stranger too much unearned credit, though, so I aim my pie while lobbing another question. “So you’re...what, some kind of architecture nerd?” At the very least, I want to see if poking fun will make him stop staring.
It doesn’t. He grins. “Yeah, I probably qualify as ‘some kind of nerd.’ But you don’t get to say that like you aren’t one, too. Takes one to know one, writer girl.”
His comment lands just as I throw, and my pie goes splattering off into the grass. “Wait. How’d you know I was a writer?”
