All the Way Home, Chapter I

Early morning is the best time for a drive through Rose Creek. People always describe sunrise as pink aurora’s fingers of rosy dawn or whatever, but whoever said that obviously never woke up early enough to see one. Or maybe who had only seen one in a city with extreme light pollution. Or before the days of light pollution at all. My light-blue Silverado with the scratched-up left taillight rumbles up the road past faded fence lines, jostling slightly when paved roads turn to dirt and then back again, towards a sunrise that isn’t pink or rosy at all. It’s orange, with bits of purple shot through, and blue-tinted cloudy white at the edges. Like a very vibrant sno-cone, orange-cherry tie-dye bleeding over a white T-shirt. I can’t help the smile that drifts over my face upon seeing the warm shades start their surprisingly quick fade to open-sky blue.

The third song on my drive-to-work playlist starts, and with a quick jolt of “she would have made such a lovely bride, what a shame she’s fucked in the head,” I check the clock on the dash: five thirty-five, which really means five-thirty-two because I never quite got out of the habit of keeping it three minutes fast. That means that I’ve got something like two minutes to get to the field behind the old Somerset farm if I want a thirty-minute workout… I tap the wheel in time to the music and push the gas harder.

Precisely two minutes and ten seconds later, my pickup clunks around the turn to the Somerset property. I drive past an empty stable with a falling-in door, a field of goats that probably isn’t supposed to be there, and a single chicken who just looks very lost. As usual, I park in the gravel lot at the top of the hill and make my way down to the field at the very bottom. I tug at the hem of my spandex shorts and the straps of my pink sports bra. The shorts are a little too big now, my gray tank top a little too small, and the early-morning air is deceptively damp and cool on my skin considering how much the mid-May heat is going to ramp up in just a few hours when the sun crests over the barns and trees. I sigh, plug in my headphones, and start to jog down the hill for a warmup.

Only to stop in my tracks, one Taylor Swift chorus later, because what the hell, there is someone else in the field. Not that it’s mineor anything, but I’ve been coming here since eighth grade and every break in college, and no one except the people who own the land and the farm animals has ever been over here this early in the morning. The Somersets are nice folks, and they’re away for the summer, so theoretically I’ve got free run of the place. But today, there’s… a guy. Wearing one of those tank tops that barely counts as a shirt because of how much skin it leaves exposed on the sides. And he’s throwing white projectiles that have to be baseballs—unless they’re wiffleballs for some reason, which would make even less sense– at haybales stacked at the edge of the field. Right where I usually start my warmup jog. I skip the song to something more fitting to my new, much less cheerful mood. Mentally recalculating my warmup path to the other side of the field, closer to the barn than to the trees, I set off again to the dulcet tones of pissed-off 00s pop-rock. Green Day hadn’t been the mood I was going for originally, but if there’s a random dude in the field, then this isn’t a Taylor Swift sunrise morning anymore, it’s a what-the-fuck-I-came-out-here-to-commune-with-nature-alone-and-there-are-baseballs-in-the-haybale existential annoyance.

My pace picks up to reflect the change in music—my normally easygoing warmup strides shift into a harder, more explosive sprint, closer to a power run for a vault than to the jog around the floor I used to do back in the gym. It doesn’t take long before my skin is slick with sweat, and even the gentle late-spring morning breeze isn’t enough to cool my face, which I’m sure is tomato-red by now. After the fifth song—about ten minutes—I let my steps rubber band snap themselves into a stop, leaving me stumbling for a few paces before I pull up short.

I glance over at the other side of the field. The guy is still over there, but now he’s watching me. Not in, like, a threatening way, just in a oh, hey look, someone else in the field kind of way. Arms crossed, in a way that… well, he’s still a good forty feet away, but I do have eyes. And even if I didn’t, those biceps would’ve been hard to miss. He lifts a hand in a wave, with a smile that might’ve been charming if I wasn’t still annoyed at his presence, revealing abs that ripple down his front like a damn anatomy textbook. I pull my gaze back up and give a short, annoyed wave back.

I’m ten reps into a set of alternating handstand walks illusions when I feel a nudge in my side and look down to see a baby goat with white and brown spots headbutting me gently in the leg. I sigh, scoop her up and let her little head settle on my shoulder where she proceeds to nibble at the end of my ponytail while I deposit her over with the rest of the herd up the hill. Goats are nothing new around Rose Creek—half of my neighbors have goats, and most of them have a habit of getting out and wandering around the town. The goats, that is, not the neighbors. These guys apparently included. Once the kid is safely ensconced back with the rest of the goats, I jog back down the hill. I glance over again—the guy is a good twenty feet or so closer now, and clearly looking at me with a smirk.

A smirk. As though goats were something to smirk at, as though my workout is something to laugh at in comparison to his…whatever he’s doing out here. I scowl and set down my phone. I hadn’t planned on any tumbling today, and the old injuries in my knee and foot twinge in anticipation as I eye a flat stretch of ground that I know from my warmup is free of divots or sticks. I ignore the reminders my body’s sending me, and I set up for a run anyway. I set my shoulders, lift one knee so that my toe taps my shin, listen for an imaginary beep, and sprint down the grass like it’s a vault runway. I launch into a modified series from an old routine—punch front, step out, two steps, roundoff, back handspring step out, back pike. I don’t quite stick the landing, but the two little hops backwards help alleviate some of the pain in my foot as I come down onto the grass. I don’t let myself think about the fact that I used to do an Arabian and a double tuck in that same pass. Better not to dwell on that. Instead, I relish the feeling of flying through the air, feet over my head, solidly gaining speed out of that first flip and powering through the momentum of the rest of the pass. It’s the closest a human can ever get to flying, I’m convinced.

I look over at the guy and give a short little nod, the kind of chin jerk that used to signal confidence in a gym, back when I was confident in a gym. I’ve been coming to this field for years though, running choreo and tumbling runs for just as long. So there. I brush the grass off of my hands and walk towards him, resisting the urge to smooth back my ponytail. And fuck, those arms are even more impressive up close—practically the size of my leg, all made of wiry, ropy muscle. I realize that I’m staring, and carefully wipe my face politely clean of anything even remotely resembling attraction. I offer a pleasant, if chilly, smile.

“Hi. Mind if I ask what you’re doing over here this morning?”

His eyebrows lift, the light streaks in his tousled dark hair catching the sun. “Just gettin’ my morning workout in, same’s you seem to be.”

Great. So he’s from around here, then. Which means I should probably know who he is, but I just can’t place his face, and he’s good-looking enough that I probably would’ve remembered it if I had met him. His accent is stronger than mine, but then, I spent every weekend from when I was five in the city for gymnastics, and then I left for school, so that makes sense. But that accent is unmistakable, at least to anyone who grew up in southeast Georgia, the part of the state that wants to be a South Carolina beach town but still has enough farmland that it can’t quite pass itself off as a vacation destination, either.

“And your morning workout involves… torturing a poor haybale?” I ask, gesturing towards the bale in question.

He laughs, and it’s a cross between a chortle and a low rumble somewhere in his chest, and I can’t help but smile a little in response.

“I’m Bryce Hanson.” He smiles, showing off cute little all-American dimples, and pauses like I’m supposed to know who he is as he sticks out a hand for me to shake.

I grip firmly and shake once before withdrawing. “Kaylee,” I reply. “and you didn’t answer the question about the haybale.”

His smile widens, and there’s that smirk again. “I’m Bryce Hanson,” he repeats.

I cross my arms and raise my eyebrows. I was a female athlete at UCLA, doing a sport that required skintight clothes and makeup. Of course I’ve met guys like this before: pretty boys with big egos who think that a set of abs and the ability to throw a ball make them God’s gift to women, or that dimples and pickup lines are the same thing as a personality. I’m not impressed.

He rolls his eyes. “I went to Rose Creek High, got the minors contract a few years back? Got a town parade and everything, it’s really…” he takes another look at me. “Huh. You really don’t have a clue who I am, do you?”

“Nope.” I give him another once-over, from his remarkably well-muscled thighs to his impressive abs and chest to that face which has gone from annoying to infuriating remarkably quickly. “Don’t think I’ve seen you around, even.”

Bryce frowns briefly, and for a second I think that maybe I’ve struck a chord, but then the smirk is back, and I realize that all I’ve done is pose a challenge. “Oh, really. Well, Miss Kaylee, if you do want to know who I am… we could always take this from out here to…”

I can’t help it, I have to laugh. “What, dinner? The sheets? Please tell me you know that no amount of pretty muscle or town parades can make up for the sheer lack of game in that line.”

He lifts an arm to scratch the back of his neck, and I’d think he’s being self-conscious if it weren’t for the fact that he’s still smirking. “So, the muscles are pretty, huh.”

“Ugh.” I roll my eyes. “I didn’t actually say that. But in any case. I assume you’re throwing baseballs at haybales because… what, you don’t have a practice mound?”

“Oh, there is one.” He shrugs. “But I like it out here. Nature ’n’ goats and all that. Plus the bullpen isn’t open this early in the morning, and I like to get an extra warmup in before practice with the team. Gives me an edge.”

I mean, fair. But the way he says it… “You’ve been coming here awhile, then?”

“Just since I started pitching for the Peaches, so… round about three years, I’d hazard? Maybe four?” He gives me another look. “I’ve never seen you around here, though.”

Three or four years. So, right after I left for school, then. “I’ve been coming out here since high school.” I plant my hands on my hips, fully aware that I’m a good foot shorter than he is and probably not terribly intimidating, but I’m not sure I care. “And you pitch for an actual honest-to-goodness professional team. Is there really nowhere else to throw things.”

He stares at me like I’ve grown a third head and it’s got purple eyeballs. “I’m sorry, are you asking me to leave? Because you think you were here first? So that you can do your little flounces and flips?”

I stand my ground. “I don’t care if you’re working out here. I can work around a workout. But you’re throwing things, and that just makes it hard to focus for fear of a full-on concussion. And those flounces and flips got me a free ride to UCLA, thank you very much, so I don’t see where you get off on being condescending about it.” Just then, my phone buzzes—my alarm telling me it’s time to go to work. I hit the screen to make it stop, then return to my generally aggravated stance. “I have to go. But if you’re here tomorrow…” I don’t bother finishing the sentence. I just turn on my heel and head up the hill, past the goats, past the chicken, past the falling-in barn and up to my truck.

“Ma-a-a-ah.” I hear a plaintive little bleat by knees as I open the driver door. I glance down and there’s that little brown-and-white kid again.

“I can’t take you with me, bud.” I tell her as I gently nudge her away from my door. “Why don’t you go back down the hill to the rest of your herd? And make sure you steer clear of flying baseballs.”

I drive to Port and Starboard, the café where I’ve been working every summer since high school, and park in my regular space, three to the right and under a huge white oak tree that sometimes drops acorns but mostly just shades my front seats nicely. I turn off my music and take a few gulps from my waterbottle before I go inside. The blue awning and door handles shaped like little ship’s wheels always make me take a deep breath and remember that I do actually like Rose Creek. Maybe I don’t want to live here forever, but… for now, it’s fine.

I head straight for the stairs at the very back of the café—it’s a little spiral staircase that leads up the apartment above the shop. I go to ring the bell, but the door swings open before I get a chance. My friend Elle sweeps me inside, and I barely get a chance to register that she’s dyed the front bits of her blonde hair a different color pink, or that she’s wearing seashells as earrings, before she’s shoving me towards the bathroom, already talking a mile a minute.

“Kaylee! Good thing you’re here, I’ve already got the shop opened up, I was going to put you on bakery and I’d be on drinks but then I remembered that we’ve got the new produce order coming in so I’ll be on baked goods and you’ll be on espresso if that’s okay with you, and by the way I set aside some muffins so those are already ready for us, but go ahead and shower you’ve got about eight minutes so you probably don’t have time to blow dry but that’s plenty of time to get the grass off and why do you smell like you picked up a goat?”

By the time Elle pauses for air, I’ve already scooched my way into her shower. I close the door firmly but respond loudly enough that she can hear me. “Because I did! There’s a new herd over by the Somerset place, and one of them kept getting in my way so I just kind of picked her up and moved her.”

“Tribe!” Elle chirps back through the closed door.

I frown, stripping and turning on the shower, nearly tripping over my own spandex shorts. “What?” I yell over the water.

“Tribe! Not herd. Well, kind of both. Collective nouns are weird.”

I poke past all of Elle’s blonde-hair specialty products and purple shampoos and color-safe conditioners until I find my own peach-and-lemon scented shampoo. I don’t even live here, but it’s become habit to just come up to Elle’s on mornings that we’re both working—it’s faster than driving all the way home and then back to town.

A few minutes later, I’m showered, and my hair is wrapped in a towel turban. I wrestle my way into the denim shorts and the black Port and Starboard tee that I brought with me. Technically speaking, there isn’t actually a uniform here, so I don’t really have to wear the shirt, but I like it—and comfortable, super soft and a little too big because I bought it when I was fourteen and thought there might be a growth spurt in there somewhere, before I even worked here. I pull the towel off of my head and run a brush through it. Deftly, I wrap the wet strands into a coil at the nape of my neck and crack the door open.

“Elle, can I borrow a scarf?”

“Like a fashion scarf, a wool scarf, or a hair scarf?” she shoots back.

“Hair, please.”

A minute later, she’s passed over a blue-gold-and-white silk scarf. I wrap it around the base of my bun and tie it in a bow, leaving the ends loose to dangle over my neck.

“You’re a lifesaver,” I tell her as I hang up the towel I used and stuff my gross workout clothes into a bag.

“I do what I have to do to make sure my underlings are presentable,” she laughs as we both head downstairs.

I can smell cinnamon, which means that Elle already got the bakery set up before I got to work this morning. I swear, she makes my early mornings look like a joke. Which is probably how she got promoted to manager and also managed to score the apartment above this place— she kept working over the school years, too, doing correspondence courses, and somehow managed to graduate before me and make this place crazy successful along the way. I don’t begrudge her the success; she’s worked her ass off for it.

“Strawberry muffins?” I ask hopefully.

“You know it,” she grins back.

The muffins are, as always, delicious. They’re really more like muffin-sized Dutch Babies than proper muffins, but the last time I mentioned it to Elle I got an earful about how the chemistry is apparently completely different and one gets made all in one bowl and the other requires folding… so muffins they are. They’re these super-soft, almost-cake like texture that Elle swears isn’t that bad for you, with little bits of freeze-dried strawberry baked into the tops in a heart pattern, and a core made of homemade strawberry jam. The candied lemon peels and powdered sugar on the tops just make them even better, and they are the best after an early-summer run. Elle and I eat as we tie our aprons around our waists and go about our typical opening routine.

The process of setting up the café is always an easy one, made more so over time. First things first, I turn on the speaker—music at Port and Starboard is always barista’s choice, so I toss on a Beatles mix. Elle and I sing along to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as I double-check the stock of milks—skim, two percent, whole, almond, oat, soy—in the low fridge and the stock of syrups on the counter, while beans for today grind. I turn on all of the machines, make sure I have the right number of espresso scoops, and set today’s drip coffee to brew. Elle’s apparently already been down here, because the lights are on, the tables are clear, and it looks like spot-sweeping’s been done too. She’s up on a stepladder redoing some of the chalk lettering on our menu—swapping out chocolate biscotti for lemon-white chocolate scones, and it looks like we have a salted-caramel stuffed cookie now.

“So, you’ll never guess what happened,” I tell her when the coffee grinder quiets down.

“What?” she asks from up on the stepladder.

“I went out past the Somerset house like I do every morning.”

“Right…”

“And there was a guy there. Bryce something?”

“Bryce Hanson?” Elle shrieks, nearly falling from the rung she’s balanced on. “The baseball player?”

I quickly move to stabilize the ladder under her. “Yes, the baseball player. And he was…”

“Hot? Stunning? In incredibly good shape?” Elle supplies.

“No…” I pause. “Okay, well, yes. But also a spectacular jerk. And not just because he was in my workout spot. He hit on me, and then called gymnastics stupid.”

“He hit on you?”

“I turned him down. Obviously.” The ladder shakes a bit as Elle reaches to neaten a particularly high-up line. “You know, this would probably be easier if we just took down the boards and put them on a table,” I point out.

“We’re both under five-foot-three, Kay. How do you propose we’d put them back up again? Besides, it’s an artistic challenge.” She says. Then she pauses, processing. “Wait a minute, why did he know you do gymnastics? Or did he just bring it up out of the blue?”

“I may have been slightly annoyed that he was chucking baseballs at random haybales and thought for a minute that chucking a few flips would intimidate him enough to get him to move,” I admit. “Needless to say, it didn’t work.”

Elle finishes the last of the chalkboard lettering and hops back down from the ladder. “Okay, so what I’m hearing is that the hottest guy to ever graduate Rose Creek High was interested in you, and you turned him down, and you were tumbling again? And you look, like, not broken? That sounds like a hell of a morning for you, Kaylee.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” Now that my friend is back on flat ground again, I stomp over to the coffee machine and make myself a latte just the way I like it—two pumps caramel, one pump hazelnut, oat milk and almond milk foamed together, and a precise dusting of cinnamon over the top. Perfect. “Elle, he called it flouncing.”

“Oof.” She shakes her head and I watch her expression shift from surprise to annoyance. “Well, there goes any chance he had.” She eyes my latte. “Make me one of those? Yours always come out better than mine.”

I do, and she sips it with an appreciative smile. She’s looking at me like she wants to say something else when a small group of men and women in suits and heels (respectively) walk through the door. I change the music coming over the speaker to a Kacey Musgraves song that fits the hot sunny day I know we’re about to have, and Elle mouths “we’ll talk about this later,” over her shoulder. I roll my eyes, take another sip of my latte, and the two of us get to work.

For more, please check out the full book HERE.