Return to Willow Lake

“Never said it was.” Zach guided the boat inside, cutting the engine to let it nudge its way into the moorage, gently bumping against the rubber fenders.

“There,” he said, taking the champagne from her, “I’ve done my good deed for the day. Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“Too dark in here to see,” she pointed out. “Oh, right. That’s a movie reference. I forgot, you’re a walking movie encyclopedia.”

“And you’re movie illiterate.”

“No wonder we bicker all the time. We have nothing in common.”

He handed back the bottle and rummaged around the console of the cockpit. Then a match flared and he lit a couple of votive candles left over from the photo shoot. Taking the bottle again, he said, “Now here’s looking at you.”

She looked right back at him, unsettled by feelings she didn’t understand, feelings that had nothing to do with the amount of champagne she’d consumed. Like Willow Lake, and the town of Avalon itself, he was both deeply familiar and, at the moment, unaccountably strange. There had been a time, many times, when they had truly been best friends, but after high school, their lives had diverged. These days, they saw each other infrequently and when they did, their visits were rushed, or they were busy, or one of them had a train to catch, or work, or…

Not tonight, though. Tonight, neither of them had anywhere they had to be, except right here in the moment.

She fiddled with a dial on the boat’s dashboard. “Is there a radio?”

“It’s a stereo.” Leaning forward, he hit a switch. Sonnet recognized an old tune from the days of her grandparents—“What a Wonderful World.”

“What’s this?” She pointed out a small screen.

“A fish finder. Want to turn it on and see where the fishies are?”

“That’s okay. And this?” She indicated a small cube-shaped object mounted in the center.

“A GoPro. It’s a camcorder, mostly used for sports.” He turned up the music. “You didn’t dance with me at the reception,” Zach said.

“You didn’t ask me.” She feigned a wounded look.

“Dance with me now.”

“That’s not asking.”

He heaved an exaggerated sigh and offered her his hand, palm up. “Okay. Will you dance with me? Please?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” She stood up and the boat rocked a little.

“Careful there. Maybe ease up on the champagne.”

He drew her up to the dock next to him. She was a full head shorter than he was. It hadn’t always been that way. She remembered the year of his growth spurt—junior year of high school. They’d gone from seeing each other eye to eye to her getting a crick in her neck from looking up at him. He’d been skinny as a barge pole, and she’d taken to calling him Beanstalk.

He wasn’t a beanstalk anymore. As her mother had pointed out, he’d finally grown into his looks. In the candlelight, he looked magical to her, Prince Charming with a boyish smile. She kept the surprising thought to herself, knowing instinctively she didn’t want to go there.

He held her lightly at the waist and they swayed to the music, their movements simple and in sync. At the wedding reception, she had danced with a few guys but dancing had never felt like this before.

“You’ve been wanting to do this ever since our glory days in seventh grade,” he said softly.

“Oh, please. You were short and obnoxious, and I had a mouthful of metal.”

“I know. But I remember wanting to stick my tongue in there several times.”

She shoved him away. “I’m glad you never told me that. It would have meant the end of a beautiful friendship. You’re still obnoxious. And I wouldn’t have let you, anyway. I’m sure you would have been a terrible kisser.”

“You don’t know what you missed out on, metal mouth. I was good. I am good. Let’s hope you’ve honed your skills.”

“Oh, I have mad skills,” she assured him, then realized that she was flirting, and whom she was flirting with. Extricating herself from his embrace, she said, “I want to get back to the pavilion. I missed out on wedding cake.”

“You’re in luck.” He reached down into the boat’s hull and took a large domed platter from under the dash. The music changed to “Muskrat Love,” a tuneless horror from the seventies.

“Zachary Lee Alger. You didn’t.”

“Hey, it was going to go to waste. A cake from the Sky River Bakery. That would be a federal crime.” He picked up a hunk with his fingers and crammed it in his mouth. “Oh, man. I just died a little.”

He held out another piece and she couldn’t resist. The chocolate slid like silk across her tongue. She closed her eyes, savoring it along with the bits of hazelnut that had been kneaded into the buttercream icing. “Oh, my. Are you sure this is legal?”

“Would you care if it wasn’t?”

“Nope.” She helped herself to another bite. “And how cool is it that the Sky River Bakery did the cake?”

The old-fashioned family bakery had been a town institution for generations. It was also the place where Zach had worked all through high school, dragging himself to town before dawn to mix the dough and operate the proofing machines and ovens.

“You used to bring me a pastry in the morning,” she reminisced.

“I spoiled you rotten.”

She washed down a bite of cake with a slug of champagne. “It’s surprising I didn’t get as big as a house.”

“Not surprising to me. You could never sit still for more than ten seconds. Are you still that restless?”

She considered this for a moment. “I guess I was really eager to get going on something.”

“Always the overachiever. Always striving.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It is when it takes you away from what’s important.”

She frowned. “Such as…?”

“Well, let’s see. Such as this.” With a gentle tug of his hand, he pulled her against him, planting a long, hard kiss on her surprised lips. She wasn’t sure what shocked her more—the kiss itself or the fact that it was coming from Zach Alger. Equally shocking was the fact that he hadn’t been lying about his expertise. Holding her with gentle insistence, he softened the kiss and touched his tongue to a secret, sensitive place that took her breath away. It struck her that this might be the best kiss she’d had in ages. Maybe ever.

The biggest surprise of all was that she was kissing Zach Alger—the same Zach Alger whose apple she had stolen from his lunchbox in kindergarten. The one who had tormented her when she was in the fourth grade. The boy who had pushed her off the dock into Willow Lake innumerable times, with whom she’d shared homework answers and after-school snacks, repeat viewings of Toy Story and Family Guy, and on whose shoulders she’d cry each time her heart was broken—and the first one she called with good news, whenever good news came around: “I got into college. My mom’s getting married. The internship program in Germany accepted me. My birth father finally wants a relationship with me. They’re making me a director at UNESCO.…”

Their points of contact over time were innumerable. They’d shared big moments and small, joy and grief, silliness and seriousness. He was the friend who had been there through all the moments of her life, yet the present moment felt entirely different, as if she were meeting him for the first time. Now she was with him in a way that felt completely new, and the world seemed to shift on its axis.

Through the years she had known him every way it was possible to know a guy and yet…and yet… Now there was this. It was some crazy emotion more intense than she could fathom, brought on by the champagne but by something else, too—a need, a craving she had no power to resist.

She fought herself free of the intensity and pulled back, though both of her fists stayed curled into the fabric of his dress shirt. “I had no idea you had that kind of kiss in you,” she whispered in a shaky voice.