Learning to Fall (15 page)

“I don’t know. I think everyone needs a little romance.” His fingers toyed with mine. “Especially the ones who don’t think they do.” Interlocking our palms, he brought our hands up and kissed the back of mine, his grey stare unwavering over the grooved bumps of his knuckles.

Oh no
, was the first thought that came to my mind, followed immediately by,
I really want to kiss him.
I didn’t, of course. That would have been more forward than I was capable of. Not to mention a sure way to completely obliterate the self-restraint I was still stubbornly clinging to. But I
did
- accidentally on purpose - nudge his thigh with my hip when we turned the corner and cut across the street.

Seeing a long, twisting line of people queued up in front of a brightly lit ice cream shop with large glass windows and a side terrace strung with old fashioned bulb lights, I stopped short and looked questioningly at Daniel, but before I could ask him what was going on he grinned and pulled me after him as he headed straight for the back of the line, his strides so long I had to jog to keep up.

“What is this?” I asked as we squeezed between an elderly couple holding hands and a frazzled looking mother with three children who motioned for us to go ahead of her. The hum of voices and sixties music filled the air. Everywhere I looked people were smiling and laughing as they waited in line for ice cream or enjoyed the ice cream they’d already purchased. If the brisk evening breeze blowing in off the ocean bothered anyone, it didn’t show.

“It’s the last day of the season for ice cream,” Daniel explained as he wrapped an arm firmly around my waist and tucked me in against his side. We shuffled forward two steps. “The Cone closes tonight at nine thirty and won’t reopen again until next May.”

“The Cone?”

Daniel pointed to a hand painted sign hanging above the ice cream shop. In whimsical letters it read:

Camden Cone

Camden, ME

Est. 1909

“This is why you wanted to come into town?” Still a bit confused, I twisted underneath his arm and looked behind us. Since we’d joined the line it had nearly doubled in size and now stretched all the way around the corner. People of all ages, from the very old to the very young, were waiting in the dark in fifty degree weather to get ice cream.

And I was completely mystified.

“Yes,” Daniel said. Seeing my expression, he chuckled and gently turned me back around. “It’s a Camden tradition. Since you’re a resident now, I didn’t want you to miss out.”

“Oh. That’s…that’s very thoughtful of you, Daniel.” Oddly touched, I smiled tentatively at him. Had he somehow been able to sense my silent yearning to belong? To be a part of a whole? To feel welcomed in a place I desperately wanted to make my home?

Before moving to Maine, I’d read a statistic that said seventy percent of people ended up settling down in the town they’d been born in, returning to old ties and friends they’d forged in middle and high school. For me, that had never been an option.

In middle school I’d been too busy with ballet and piano and extra credit classes to make any lasting friendships and by the time I reached high school I’d been so far out of the social loop most of my classmates thought I was a transfer. Awkward and painfully shy, I’d devoted all my energy into my studies and it wasn’t until Harvard that I made my first true best friend in Whitney. Brash and outspoken, she’d been the perfect roommate an introverted, reclusive girl could ask for.

Tightening his grip, Daniel kissed the top of my head, his breath lightly stirring my hair as he said, “What kind of ice cream are you going to get?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Standing on my tiptoes I tried to see the menu, but we were still too far back in line for me to read the ice cream flavors scrawled in different colored chalk on a board hanging beside the main window. “What do you recommend?”

“Chocolate chip cookie dough, all the way,” he said without hesitation.

“That sounds good. Maybe I’ll try that.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what I’m getting.”

I frowned. “We can both get the same thing.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “On the last ice cream day of the season you can’t get the same flavor as your date. Cone rule.”  

“Cone rule?” I said skeptically.

“Cone rule,” he confirmed. “It’s a real thing.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does. If
you
get chocolate chip cookie dough and
I
get chocolate chip cookie dough, how are we supposed to switch?”

“Switch?” I asked as we moved a few feet forward. “I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t eat bacon and you don’t know what an ice cream switch is. Oh little fox” - looking down at me with self-pity, Daniel squeezed my shoulders - “it’s a good thing you met me.”

* * * * *

As it turned out, an ice cream switch was exactly what it sounded like. After selecting our ice cream flavors - peanut butter vanilla for me, chocolate chip cookie dough for Daniel - we claimed one of the last remaining picnic tables and sat down across from one another to enjoy our final cone of the season.

When I was halfway finished, Daniel abruptly took my ice cream right out of my hand and replaced it with his.

“Switch,” he said, grey eyes glimmering with amusement beneath the soft golden glow of the hanging lights. They swung gently in the breeze, illuminating the faces of the people sitting all around us.

“I believe that’s called stealing,” I said, attempting to sound stern even as I struggled to bite back a smile.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so relaxed. In Daniel’s presence I felt as though I didn’t have a care in the world, and all of my anxieties over grading papers and getting a jump on mid-terms and being perfect were simply…stripped away. One look at his smile, one brush of his hand across mine, and I was helpless to think about anything other than him. After all my careful planning and avoidance, the one thing I’d feared would happen
had
happened…

I was falling for Daniel Logan.

And it wasn’t even a graceful fall like the ones I’d read about in books and watched in movies, but rather a spiraling plummet with no bottom in sight. One that made my heart pound and my pulse race. One that left me short of breath and filled with equal parts excitement and uncertainty. One that suddenly filled me with prickly thorns of doubt.

What was I doing here with a man I hardly knew? I should have been home. I should have been working. I should have been doing what I had come to Camden to do, not sitting at a picnic table falling in love with a charming stranger.

I cleared my throat when it began to tighten. “Daniel, I probably should-” 

“Sharing, little fox,” he interrupted. “We’re just sharing.” Angling his head, he leaned across the picnic table and caught a trickle of ice cream running down my wrist with his tongue. The sensation of hot and cold, of feeling the wet glide of Daniel’s tongue on my flesh, was stunningly erotic. In a flash of blinding heat I forgot everything I’d been about to say and my stomach muscles clenched as I gasped and jerked back.

“You…you…”

“Yes?” he asked, gaze reflecting a dark, sensual gleam.

“You’re quite forward,” I managed, ice cream temporarily forgotten.

A grin moved slowly across Daniel’s face. “You haven’t even begun to see forward.”

“Oh,” I said faintly. It was the only semi-intelligible syllable my brain could formulate.

He nodded at my hand where peanut butter ice cream was running down my fingers in thick, sticky rivulets of white. “Need some help with that?”

“No.” Quickly switching the cone to my other hand, I dabbed at the ice cream with my tongue without pausing to think about the varying sexual innuendos it might present.

“Talk about forward,” Daniel murmured, his gaze transfixed on my mouth as I licked my fingers clean.

“You really shouldn’t look at me like that.” Blushing beneath the heat of his stare, I used a napkin to finish cleaning my hand and bit into what remained of my ice cream before the problem could repeat itself. Freezing cold, the ice cream helped to bank the flames of lust that were shooting up inside of me.

“Like what?” Daniel asked with a lazy, wolfish smile.

“Like…like
that
,” I said, gesturing at his face with a flustered sweep of my arm.

“If I had my way,” he said huskily, “I would look at you like this all day and all night.”

Which is exactly what I am afraid of
, I thought silently.

Thankfully, I was saved from having to come up with a response when a woman, looking to be in her mid-forties with dark brown hair swinging loosely at her shoulders and wearing a long red jacket, stopped abruptly at our picnic table. “Daniel!” she said, squinting a bit as she tried to make out his face in the shifting shadows. “Daniel Logan, is that really you?”

For an instant, an instant so fleeting I couldn’t help but wonder if I was seeing things, Daniel’s entire body tensed. Then he relaxed, and with a broad grin and a loud laugh shot to his feet and went around the edge of the table to give the woman a hug. “Mrs. Flanders,” he said affectionately. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

The woman - Mrs. Flanders - drew back as though affronted. “I’ll have you know I haven’t missed a Camden Cone’s Closing Day in over fifteen years.”

“Of course not.” His grin widened. “What was I thinking? Mrs. Flanders, I have someone very important I would like you meet.” Before I had time to fathom who this ‘very important’ person might be, Daniel looked straight at me. “Mrs. Flanders, this is Imogen Finely. Imogen, this is Mrs. Flanders, my sixth grade history teacher.”

Setting what remained of my ice cream cone down on the table, I climbed awkwardly to my feet - picnic tables weren’t meant for graceful exists - and extended my right hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Flanders.”

Much as Gracie had done the morning we went to breakfast at Poppy’s, Mrs. Flanders took her time examining me before her mouth creased in a smile and she shook my hand with both of hers. “What a pleasure, my dear. An absolute pleasure.” Her head tilted to the side. “Are you new to Camden? I can’t say as I’ve seen you around before.”

“Imogen” - stepping up beside me, Daniel wrapped his arm firmly around my waist - “is from out of state. She moved here…”

“Three months ago,” I supplied when he looked at me questioningly.

“Three months ago. She works at Stonewall.”

“At the college? How lovely. It certainly didn’t take Daniel very long to find you, did it my dear?” She winked at me. “He always did have a way with the ladies.”

“We’re just friends.” Maybe if I said it firmly enough, I could convince myself. “In fact, we’re-”

“On our first official date,” Daniel cut in. When I sputtered with indignation and glared up at him he merely grinned and kissed my cheek. “Imogen doesn’t think she has time to be in a relationship, but I’ll wear her down eventually.”

“I never said-”

“How charming,” Mrs. Flanders interrupted with a smile. “My husband is waiting for me in the car, but before I go I wanted to make sure I expressed my condolences.” Confused, I watched as Daniel’s history teacher reached out and patted his arm. “I know it’s been over a year,” she said earnestly, “but I just wanted to say how sorry I am. How is your mother doing?”

Tension rippled through Daniel like a wave. His arm tightened around my waist, fingers sinking into my hipbone with enough force to make me wince. “Fine,” he said curtly. “She’s doing fine.”

Mrs. Flanders smile faded. “That’s good to hear. Well, it was nice to meet you, Imogen.”

“You too,” I said.

“Daniel.”

“Mrs. Flanders.”

Their gazes met and held before Mrs. Flanders turned and walked away. In the strained silence that followed her abrupt departure I bit the inside of my cheek, suppressing the urge to ask Daniel what his history teacher had been talking about. Or rather
who
she had been talking about. It made me realize just how little I actually knew about the man I was completely enamored with.

I knew the taste of his mouth, but I didn’t know where he lived. I knew the sound of his laugh, but I didn’t know what he did for work. I knew the feel of his touch, but I didn’t know anything about his family.

Who are you?
I wondered as I stole a glance at his rigid profile.
Who are you really, behind your easy grin and penetrating stare? Who is the real Daniel Logan? The one I’ve come to know, or the one standing beside me now, his entire body strung taut as a bow?

“Your ice cream melted,” he said suddenly, looking past me at the picnic table where my cone was little more than a puddle of milk and sugar seeping into the wood.

“I’ll clean it up. Daniel…” I hesitated. Seeing the question in my eyes, the question I wanted to know the answer to but didn’t know how to ask, Daniel let go of my waist and scrubbed both hands down the middle of his face before he cupped his neck and looked down at me with a wry expression.