It was perfect.
“Everything okay?” Anderson asked, his eyes on where Sarah had walked past him as he set our plates down on the table.
“Yeah, she was nice, actually. She apologized.”
His brows shot up. “Sarah?”
I nodded. “She wants to be friends.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, taking the seat next to me that Sarah had left empty. “Must be a full moon.”
It was like dinner and a show, being back at the pig roast. We ate as we watched Benjamin ride his little tricycle around, Yvette and Davie setting up mini obstacle courses for him along the way. He’d grown so much in just a year, it was almost unbelievable.
Julie and Zeek sat with us while they ate, catching us up on their lives and asking about ours before they disappeared to spend time alone. Julie was leaving for the University of North Carolina on Monday, and they wanted to spend as much time as they could together before she left. It looked like they were going to make it after all, or at least give it hell trying.
And even though he wasn’t my favorite person in the world, it felt a little weird not having Tucker around for the pig roast. But he had landed a job at his top choice firm in Seattle and was up to his neck in paperwork preparing for his first big case.
We were on our way down to Davie’s to start the horseshoe tournament when my phone lit up with a text from Keith.
“What’d he say?” Momma Von asked over my shoulder, peering down at the screen.
I typed out a quick reply to him before tucking the phone back in my pocket. “He just wished me luck at Nordstrom on Thursday.”
“That was nice of him,” she said, and I nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, it was. I think the anger management classes have really been helping him.”
Keith and I still had a tender relationship, but we had managed to form a sort of friendship over the last few months. For a while neither of us could even talk to let alone see the other, but eventually the fresh wounds from our divorce began to heal, and we both missed our friend. One night he texted me that he was going to anger management, and I’d offered him support through the beginning stages. I still loved him, and a part of me always would. I was glad we were able to reconcile, even if just a little.
“It was nice of him,” Anderson agreed, folding my hand in his as we walked. “But you don’t need luck. We all know Nordstrom would be insane not to pick up the line.”
“It’s just a meeting with a buyer,” I reminded both of them. “Just to talk. Nothing promised.”
Anderson and Momma Von shared a look and I just smiled. They believed in me, and after seeing the buyer’s email regarding the Revelry Line it was hard for me not to believe, too.
It’d been almost three months since the line launched, and it’d taken off like no line we’d ever had before. Though the team had worked tirelessly to help me bring as many items of the collection to life as we could, we’d sold out after only three weeks, and as fast as we could whip up additional items they’d fly right off the shelf.
I’d hoped for the line to be a success, but when a Seattle fashion blogger wrote a fanatical post about the line and wore one of my favorite dresses from it to a show in New York City, it had exploded.
And now, there was a possibility Nordstrom would pick up not only the Revelry Line, but my fall and winter lines, too.
I’d asked Adrian to pinch me when we first received the call, but he’d simply spun me around and popped open two bottles of champagne for the whole team. It was a big step for all of us, and my stomach flipped at the possibilities.
Maybe that was part of the reason I was feeling so sentimental about the pig roast this year, because I couldn’t be sure where the next year would take me. Or Anderson, for that matter. It seemed like every part of our lives was moving and shifting, the future a constantly changing puzzle we had yet to figure out. It was both exciting and terrifying, but I knew that together, we could handle anything that came our way.
We were almost to Davie’s when Rev pranced up from behind us, rubbing up against my leg before doing the same to Anderson. I chuckled, bending to rub behind his ear.
“You sure you don’t mind watching this little rascal while we’re gone?” I asked Momma Von.
“Not at all,” she assured me. “I have a feeling he’ll be romping around Alder loop most of the time, anyway.”
I nodded, thanking her again before standing and watching Rev saunter off ahead of us. When I’d moved back to Seattle, I’d decided last minute to take Rev with me. He traveled back and forth with me from the apartment to the cabin, making each one his home in different ways. I couldn’t imagine my life without the little furball now.
We’d just started to round the trees leading up to Davie’s driveway when Momma Von stopped short, a sharp gasp escaping her lips.
Anderson and I stopped, too, Anderson flying to her side. “You okay, Momma Von?”
She was as white as a sheet, eyes wide as they focused somewhere behind me. When I turned, I found an older gentleman at the end of the Alder loop, holding one singular sunflower in his slightly shaking hand.
No. Could it be?
I turned back to Momma Von, and she was trembling, too. Her hand found Anderson’s arm and she steadied herself, swallowing hard before walking past both of us and toward the man at the end of the road.
Anderson’s brows bent together as he watched her go, and I just covered my mouth with one hand, eyes watering.
“Who is that?” Anderson asked, eyes flicking from me to Momma Von and back again.
I dropped my hand, shaking my head in disbelief. “It’s Beau.”
Anderson frowned, still not understanding as he turned his attention to the end of the road. We both watched as Momma Von stopped a few feet away from him, the two of them just staring. After a moment, Beau extended his hand, the flower offered to Momma Von like it was his heart.
And it might as well have been, because she’d owned it all those years.
Momma Von choked on a gasp and bypassed the flower, stepping into the old man and wrapping her arms around his neck as he pulled her into his own. She sobbed softly on his shoulder as he ran a hand over her hair, and on the breeze that blew through the trees and up through the cabins, I heard him whisper.
“I’m here.”
Once again, and for what I was sure wouldn’t be the last time, love surprised me.
I smiled through the tears blurring my eyes, sliding my hand into Anderson’s and pulling him into Davie’s yard to leave them alone. When we reached the driveway, I stopped, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing my lips to his.
“Thank you,” I whispered, pulling back just a centimeter, our foreheads still touching.
“For what?” he asked.
“For showing me how to love again. For believing in me. For letting me in. For everything.”
Anderson slid his calloused hands to frame my face, kissing me with intent, with a thank you of his own.
It was hard to believe the paths that had led us to this very spot, to this very time, to the love we’d found when neither of us were sure it even existed. Now we were making a new path, one we walked together.
Though it was unpaved, unmarked, and a little rocky at times, I knew in my heart it was the right one to walk.