The Time of Aspen Falls Read online

  “Now try not to stare,” Aspen said.

  “I never stare,” Gina assured her.

  “You always stare.”

  “I do not!”

  “You do too! And no ogling.”

  “I never ogle,” Gina argued.

  “You always ogle,” Aspen said.

  “I do not. I visually investigate.”

  Aspen giggled. She shook her head at Gina’s excuse.

  “Oh my heck!” she heard Gina exclaim in a whisper. “I think I see him!”

  Aspen felt her heart leap in her chest as she looked up to see the handsome real man stranger rounding a corner some ways away. Yes! It was him. She was amazed—amazed at how he seemed to grow more attractive every day!

  “That’s him!” Aspen whispered. She swallowed the lump in her throat and began to open the brown bag in her lap, attempting to appear as if she were actually interested in what she’d brought for lunch.

  “Have mercy!” Gina breathed.

  “Don’t stare!” Aspen whispered.

  “I’m not,” Gina assured her.

  Aspen looked up to see Gina staring, mouth agape, in the direction of the approaching man.

  “He’s getting closer! Quit staring!”

  “He’s getting more gorgeous the closer he gets…and I’m not!”

  “You are!”

  “How can I not? Just look at him!”

  Aspen couldn’t stand it. She had to look—and she did!

  As she looked up, her breath caught in her throat, and she felt certain she’d never be able to draw a regular breath again. Time seemed to slow around her; in those moments, she was certain it had. The man was jogging up the sidewalk toward them. He would reach them in a few more moments, but in that very instant, moments turned into minutes—minutes into hours.

  Tall, dark, and handsome, the real-man stranger was the epitome of attractive masculinity! Aspen studied him from head to toe, just as she did every day. His hair was short—not military short, long enough to run fingers through, yet short enough he could easily be a business man. His jaw was square, accentuated by just the right amount of five o’clock shadow. His nose was straight, and his lips—his lips weren’t pinchy thin—full, but not Hollywood fake full—just right. His shoulders were broad, the muscles in his upper arms well-defined. He wore a red Nike T-shirt, black basketball shorts, and a pretty beat-up pair of basketball shoes.

  As Aspen watched him approach, the soundtrack in her mind began to play Nora Jones’s “Come Away with Me.” She could actually hear it at that moment, echoing in her mind—soothing, alluring, romantic. In her momentary daydreams, she could almost envision herself walking next to the real-man stranger, holding his hand as he led her down an autumn leaf-littered path near the river. How could he not be wonderful? He was so handsome! Still, experience had taught Aspen a lot about men: mostly that if they looked too good to be true…

  Aspen was startled out of her reverie as Gina’s elbow met with her ribs. Simultaneously, she saw the real-man stranger smile and slow to a walk.

  “Check it out,” Gina whispered. “Another one!”

  Aspen looked in the direction Gina nodded to see another handsome man approaching. Certainly he wasn’t as handsome as Aspen’s jogger, but he was attractive enough to warrant a look.

  “What’s up, man?” the new guy greeted as he approached Aspen’s jogger.

  Aspen thought she might bolt and run as the real-man stranger stopped only a few feet away.

  “Not much,” the real-man stranger greeted as the other man took his hand. The two men bumped opposing shoulders and patted each other once on the back.

  “Did you see the game?” the new guy asked. There was a tone of mild disgust in his voice.

  The real-man stranger shook his head. “Dude…they deserved to lose. They gotta step it up if they want to have a decent season.”

  “Nice voice,” Gina whispered.

  “Shut up!” Aspen growled in a whisper—though it was true. She couldn’t believe she’d actually heard his voice—his deep, fascinating, mesmerizingly masculine voice. She actually felt goose bumps prickling her arms at its intonation.

  “When he starts past us…kick your shoe off or something. Something to get his attention,” Gina suggested, still whispering—but barely.

  “Absolutely not!” Aspen breathed.

  “What? You’re just gonna spend every lunch hour for the rest of your life waiting for this guy to jog by so you cannot let him catch you looking at him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “That’s life! Do you really think a guy like that would look twice at me?”

  Gina shrugged. “All it takes is once. One look can last forever.”

  Aspen rolled her eyes. “Yeah…if he looked at you.”

  “Oh my heck!” Gina exclaimed, drawing out each word for dramatic effect.

  “What now?” Aspen asked. She looked back to where the real-man stranger stood talking to his friend. “Oh,” she breathed as she watched the real-man stranger lift up the front of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.

  “He works out,” Gina mumbled. “Abs like that…you have to work out for those.”

  “My heck! We’re like two teenagers at a Zac Efron movie,” Aspen whispered, stifling a giggle.

  “Zac Efron’s hot,” Gina said. “And anyway…this guy…” she began, shaking her head as she studied the real-man stranger with admiration. “This guy puts any movie star to shame! Besides, what woman do you know who isn’t truly still seventeen at heart?”

  Aspen couldn’t stop a heavy sigh escaping her lungs as she studied the real-man stranger. Oh, he was handsome—too handsome to really contemplate too much. Guys like the real man stranger always dated really gorgeous blond girls—girls that had enough beauty to be their counterpart. Guys like the real-man stranger were just guys to daydream about.

  “They’re breaking it up,” Gina whispered. “Do it! Kick your shoe off. Drop your lunch or something!”

  “No!” Aspen whispered.

  “Later, man,” the real-man stranger said.

  “Later,” his friend replied.

  The real-man stranger resumed his jogging—passed Aspen for the seemingly umpteen millionth time. She watched him go, knowing full well she’d be back at the park for lunch the next day. It was like an obsession—an addiction of sorts. She couldn’t imagine a workday without sitting on the park bench, waiting for the real-man stranger to jog by.

  “Have mercy!” Gina exclaimed once he’d turned another corner and was out of sight. Gina turned to Aspen. “How long have you been watching him at lunch?”

  Aspen shrugged. “A couple of weeks.”

  “A couple of weeks? Why did you wait so long to tell me?”

  Aspen shrugged again. “I think—I think I thought I was dreaming him up.” She shook her head and pulled a bag of chips out of her lunch sack. “Besides, you know how guys are…especially eye candy like this one.”

  “You have got to meet this guy, Aspen!” Gina exclaimed.

  Aspen emphatically shook her head as she said, “No. I don’t want to ruin it.”

  “Ruin what?” Gina asked. “You don’t even know him! Nothing has happened between you.”

  “Exactly,” Aspen said. “That way the daydream will never be ruined. I can always imagine he would’ve liked me and—”

  “Oh, brother,” Gina interrupted. “You are not gonna just sit here and watch life jog by! What if he’s the one?”

  “He’s not the one,” Aspen said.

  “But what if he is?”

  “He’s not.”

  “But what if he is?”

  “He’s not! He’s too good looking.”

  Gina sighed. “You are so Elizabeth Bennet from P and P.”

  “I am not,” Aspen defended herself.

  Gina had compared her to Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine in Jane Austen’s book Pride and Prejudice, too many times to count.
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br />   “You are so!” Gina argued. “If a man’s too good-looking, you automatically think he’s a brainless jerk or something.”

  Aspen shrugged. “Has it ever been proven otherwise to me?” Aspen frowned and turned to look at her friend. “And besides, what about you? You’re always looking for some perfect guy to come walking along wearing a UPS uniform. Why are you so fixated on UPS guys in the first place?”

  Gina shook her head and said, “I’ve always loved UPS guys.”

  “Because they’re the ones who bring the presents at Christmas,” Aspen giggled.

  “Exactly! When did a UPS guy ever bring me something that wasn’t wonderful?”

  “But you never say anything to them. You just smile, take your package, and watch them drive away.” Aspen looked down the path—down the path where the real-man stranger had jogged only moments before.

  “What do you expect me say to them?” Gina asked.

  Aspen shrugged. “I don’t know. How about something like, ‘I’m entirely free to go out with you on Friday night.’”

  “Oh, of course!” Gina exclaimed with sarcasm. “That’s just it! I’ll just say that next time one dashes up to the door to deliver something.”

  “I don’t expect you to flirt with every UPS guy. Just one special one.”

  “I don’t receive enough packages to find one special one,” Gina said.

  “Maybe you need to hang out at the UPS facility downtown,” Aspen suggested.

  “Okay, this conversation has reached the ridiculous stage.” Gina giggled, but Aspen felt her shoulders round to a droop—felt tired and discouraged all of a sudden.

  “We’re a couple of cowards,” she said.

  Gina nodded. She reached into her purse and pulled out a banana. “Yep,” she began, “and the vision of us as spinsters at the age of sixty, climbing up into Old Goldie together, is getting clearer and clearer.”

  Aspen nodded and opened her potato chips. “I’ll probably take to drowning my sorrows and regrets in Doritos and be too fat to climb a tree by then.”

  Gina nodded and sighed. She peeled her banana, took a bite, and studied it while she chewed. “You know…this would taste a whole lot better with some chocolate syrup drizzled over it.”

  

  Aspen blew softly into the mug of warm cider pressed to her lips. The comforting aroma of mulling spices—of cinnamon sticks, allspice, and cloves, simmered with orange rind in apple cider—soothed her senses. Nora Jones’s voice crooned “Come Away with Me” from the iPod dock, and Aspen sighed. It had been a long day. It seemed every customer who came into the bookstore had something to complain about. Aspen shook her head, unable to believe a customer would argue and complain with seven different editions of To Kill a Mockingbird to choose from. Still, in the next moment, she raised her eyebrows and nodded. She glanced up to her own bookshelf—to the thirty-seven different copies of Jane Austen titles, the fifteen different editions of Jane Eyre, and the nearly forty printed versions of Elizabeth Gaskell’s works. Who was she to judge? Book collectors were an odd variety; she should know.

  Aspen sipped warm cider from her mug. She closed her eyes and let her head rest back against the couch. Instantly a vision of the handsome real-man stranger entered her mind. She was glad she’d shared him with Gina; it proved he was real. There had been times over the past couple of weeks that Aspen had wondered if maybe she had been drifting into some sort of weird hallucinations every day in the park. Yet Gina had seen him now—he was real.

  She wondered what it would feel like to make eye contact with him—to feel his hand in a handshake. She wondered if he had fresh breath or not-so-fresh.

  “Definitely fresh,” she said aloud to herself.

  She sighed, opened her eyes, and took another sip of cider. There was always tomorrow. Tomorrow Gina had agreed to meet her for lunch again. Times were when she and Gina had eaten lunch together every day—until Gina moved over to being the radiographer at the new urgent care. It was farther away, not so convenient. Still, they had agreed to meet in the park again. Aspen would see him again—tomorrow—while she and Gina enjoyed lunch beneath the little cottonwood in the park. Oh, she already knew he was too good to be true—probably a conceited, egotistical jerk. Still, he was gorgeous, and she liked to pretend he was a nice guy.

  Aspen released another sigh and picked up the remote. She pointed it at the iPod dock, pausing Nora Jones before clicking on the TV. She smiled as the familiar theme song to Leave It to Beaver began and Jerry Mathers’s cute little freckled face appeared on the screen.

  Her cell rang, and she smiled when she saw “Gina” flash on the screen.

  She opened her phone and greeted, “Hey, girl. What’s up?”

  “Pasta drizzled with butter for dinner on this end,” Gina’s voice answered. “And you?”

  “Leave It to Beaver is on.”

  “Oh my heck! What channel? I love Wally Cleaver!”

  Aspen giggled. “Me too!”

  “My vision of the perfect man is Wally Cleaver dressed up in a UPS uniform and jogging through the park!” Gina said.

  Aspen laughed and nodded. “Did any UPS guys come into the urgent care today?”

  “Oh my heck, yes! He was a gorgeous one too.”

  “Did you tell him you wanted to be bound tightly in his arms…showered with kisses from his delicious lips?” Aspen teased.

  “Of course not! I just grabbed him by the collar of his sexy brown shirt and planted one right on his kisser,” Gina giggled through her sarcasm.

  “Good for you! I’m glad you finally found some guts.”

  “Me? All you’d have to do is stick your foot out and trip the jogger guy, and he’d be proposing in the next second!”

  Aspen laughed and shook her head. “We so stink at love.”

  “We do!” Gina laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch. ’Kay?”

  “High noon it is,” Aspen said. “’Bye.”

  “’Bye, girl,” Gina said a moment before dead air returned.

  Aspen tossed her phone onto the cushion beside her. She sipped her cider and smiled as “the Beave” rationalized his current predicament to his mother.

  Still, even Wally Cleaver couldn’t entirely distract Aspen from her daydreams of the handsome jogger. She wondered what he was doing at that moment, what he was eating for dinner. She wondered where he lived, what his job was. For an instant, she considered tripping him up the next day. She could pretend it was an accident. She shook her head and rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. Chances were the guy already had a girlfriend. Even if he didn’t, what would he want with a plain little bookstore clerk? Some things were just better left to daydreaming.

  Aspen sipped her cider and watched the goings-on in the Cleaver household. It was a cozy night—somewhat lonesome, perhaps, but cozy all the same. And, after all, what was wrong with just plain cozy? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Chapter Two

  “I thought you forgot or something,” Aspen said as Gina plopped down beside her on the bench.

  Gina shook her head and sighed. “I had that creepy Mr. Gonzales today.”

  “Ew! The one who always flirts the whole time you’re taking his X-rays?”

  Gina nodded and wrinkled her nose. “He drives me nuts and always throws off my schedule.”

  Aspen tried to ignore the nervous disappointment rising in her own chest. What if the real-man stranger quit jogging this way? What if she never saw him again? The thought actually made her a little nauseated. She tried to remind herself that gorgeous guys were always jerks—that she was sitting there in the park purely because she appreciated Mother Nature’s handiwork.

  “Wait! Here he comes,” Gina said. She nodded to their left, and Aspen was rendered breathless for a moment when she caught sight of the handsome real-man stranger jogging toward them.

  “It’s like he stepped out of a dream, isn’t it?” Aspen asked. Her heart leapt as he neared them. She wondered how she could be so sha
llow, daydreaming about a man she’d never even met simply because his appearance attracted her. Yet sometimes she wondered if there were something else—wondered if something much deeper drew her to him. Still, she knew it was just rationalization—an excuse her mind was concocting to try and justify spending her lunch hour in the park every day.

  Aspen heard Gina gasp.

  “I know, I know. He’s way hot,” Aspen said.

  “U-um…now, Aspen…now don’t panic,” Gina stammered.

  Gina glanced up to the real-man stranger. He would be right in front of them in a matter of moments. Should she wait? Should she wait to tell her arachnophobic friend? Should she wait to tell Aspen that a huge spider had just dropped out of the tree overhead—and landed on her shoulder?

  Panic began to envelop Gina as she watched the large, black-and-yellow, bulbous-bodied spider crawl toward Aspen’s neck. Aspen was scared to death of spiders! They completely freaked her out. Yet Gina knew if she said something now, well, Aspen would no doubt commence her usual spider dance—leap up and start screaming, Get it off me! Get it off me! as she hopped around in a circle. Still, the spider was inching closer and closer to Aspen’s neck—just as the real-man stranger jogged closer and closer. Gina was certain the spider would reach Aspen’s neck before the real-man stranger did.