“Sorry.” I turned back to Charlie, who had followed me onto the porch. “I didn’t think I’d get so sentimental about coming back here.”
“Keep going,” Charlie said. “I want to hear about everything we used to do here.”
His gem-like blue eyes seemed genuinely interested in a lengthy trip down memory lane. The early afternoon sun hung bright in the cloudless sky, highlighting the golden head of freshly cut and styled blond hair, Charlie looking like a damn model good enough for a billboard in Times Square. One of those cologne billboards, with the sexiest and moodiest and most fuckable guys you’d ever laid eyes on, magnified to planet-sized proportions.
Yeah, Charlie belonged up there, with that magnetic smile and sunshine-bright gaze.
The billboard model gave me a tour of the new cabin while I recounted stories that happened throughout, having one for pretty much every room. They didn’t all end up with us taking our clothes off, like the one time I chased Charlie around the downstairs game room with a dead cockroach on a stick, Charlie deathly afraid of even the dead kind of bugs.
Charlie and I had an abundance of memories, something I realized only now that I was going down the list. I had tried to bury this history after Charlie and I had our last fight, moving to the city and putting it all in the rearview, thinking I’d never come back to any of it.
Damn was I wrong.
“Set everything down in here, and let’s go hang out on the deck,” Charlie said as we walked into the master bedroom. It felt like a spa, with dark walls and a huge four-post bed, white linens and fluffed white pillows looking like they were plucked from the clouds. I noticed he didn’t tell me to get set up in one of the guest rooms, which I wasn’t exactly mad about.
“So?” Charlie asked as we entered the kitchen. “Do you hate it or love it?”
“I fucking love it, are you kidding me? Your parents killed it with the upgrades.” I opened up a bottle of red wine on the black-and-white granite counter. The kitchen was probably one of the rooms with the most changes, feeling way more open and airy since the last time I was here, with a direct line of sight into the living room and the stunning bay windows that looked out toward the mountain range. There were heavy copper pendulum lights and sleek copper hardware that made the navy blue cabinets pop.
I didn’t mention the story about the time we used an entire can of whip cream and a container of cherries the last time we were in here.
“Thanks for coming with,” Char said as he grabbed the glass I poured him.
For a split second, I was about to lean in and offer him a kiss as a “you’re welcome,” but I managed to stop myself and offer him a verbal “not a problem” instead. Being back in this cabin, even with all the changes, was throwing me right back to that mindset of me being a nineteen-, twenty-year-old kid, falling head over heels for someone who was building up walls against me at the exact same time.
It had been a tragic past, but maybe we could work on building a brighter future…
I followed Charlie onto the deck and took a seat on the couch next to him, looking out at the dipping and rising endless line of trees. A symphony of bird songs filled the air and added a relaxing soundtrack to this already serene moment.
“Cheers.” Charlie lifted his glass, smiling wide. “To making new memories.”
“Cheers.”
Our glasses clinked, and I drank my wine and felt the same urge as I did before. The one that shouted at me to lean in and kiss him. To just press my lips against Charlie’s. To just—
Charlie kissed me. Quick and soft and everything I wanted in that moment. He sat back on the couch, smile turning mischievous.
“Nice view, huh?” he said, looking out at the skyline.
“The best I’ve ever seen,” I said, unable to pry my eyes off him.
We drank our wine and relaxed into the moment, chatting about random bullshit and moving closer and closer on the couch. Charlie brought out his phone and started to play some music as I poured us each another glass. With every sip, my muscles became more relaxed and my thoughts more… well, horny. No way around it. This red wine was going straight to my crotch, and every time I looked to Charlie’s handsome face and big arms and tree-trunk legs, I just got even more turned on.
“Look, look,” Charlie said, sitting up and pointing. “It’s a peregrine falcon. I haven’t seen one of those out here in years.”
He stood and walked, slowly, to the edge of the deck, where he could get a better look at the hawk perched nearby. It was difficult for me to admire the hawk when all I wanted to do was drink Charlie up with my eyes. His khaki shorts fit tight around his bubble butt, and they hugged onto his thighs, showing off the tentacles of an octopus tattoo he had on his upper thigh—one of the sexiest goddamn tattoos I’d ever seen. I went with him to get it after he came back from a conservation trip working with a rare breed of octopus. It was his first tattoo, and I almost got a similar one that same day but backed out at the last second.