Page 44 of Your Last First Kiss

“Are you having company?” I ask, nodding toward the coffee in his hand.

“Nah. It’s going to be a long-ass day. Just prepping. I hope you’re not too soft ’cause I’m putting you to work today. I wasn’t kidding about you being here for a while. Our town is just far enough off the grid that we’re usually the last ones to get help from the state. That means all the roads leading to the highway will be unpassable in your Batmobile.”

I should be worried that being here for days didn’t even raise a flag for me. But calling me soft? That ruffles a couple feathers.

“Soft?” I scoff and arch my back a little bit. And I am certainly not flexing for the guy. “I’m not soft.”

“Nah, but shoveling snow and helping thy neighbor is a different set of muscles, city boy.”

“Screw you.”

He chuckles.

From the hallway Izzy says, “Mr. Dillon needs the soap, Dad.” She pads out into the family room wearing a one-piece fuzzy outfit with a rainbow horn sticking off the hood.

I tilt my head to the left, then the right, trying to figure out what the hell she’s wearing.

“It’s a onesie with a unicorn head,” Miller explains. “They even come in adult sizes if you want one.”

“We gots Penny one for Christmas. We’re twinsies,” Izzy screeches much too loudly for this time of day.

Picturing Penny in any costume sends my mind straight into the gutter.

“I don’t understand the agreement between Ash and your grandfather,” I say. Redirecting us back to safer territory seems like the only option.

“Izzy, sweetie. Go get dressed. We’ll drop you off with Penny and the boys before we head out to check on Chance Lake.” He doesn’t even finish speaking before she’s off and running back the way she came. “She hates being an only child.”

I’m not sure if he says it to himself or me, so I don’t comment, and after a minute, he turns to me with a giant mug of black coffee. “I don’t have cream, and I ran out of milk, but sugar’s on the counter.”

I take it gratefully.

“To answer your question,” he says. “Remy’s looking for someone to be as invested as he was. In this place. In Chance Lake. And in the kids themselves. He isn’t just looking for money. He’s searching for a successor.”

“And it’s not you?” I ask over Ashton’s words screaming in my head.

“The owner, well, let’s say he’s old school, and this isn’t a business to him. It’s a way of life.”

“I already told you, I don’t have the capital, and I can’t be self-employed. I have Izzy to think about. Health insurance alone would break me if I didn’t get it through the school. If the right opportunity came about and I could work here with benefits though? I’d be on it in a heartbeat. I grew up here. So many kids grew up in this building so their parents could work.”

He walks across the room and picks up a large photo album. “Remy has been free childcare for Chance Lake since before I was born. I bet there’s not a single person in this town who hasn’t had dinner catered by him at least once when their parents couldn’t make it home in time.”

Heat fills my chest. Remy is what Ashton’s dad was to me as a kid.

Every inch of the photo album is covered with photos. Page after page of kids’ faces with a man who has a kind smile and grumpy eyes. He gets progressively older as I flip through.

“He sounds like a hero.” I pause on a photo of a younger Miller and the man named Remy.

“To some of these kids, he is.”

“Then why wouldn’t the town approve his plans? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Miller shrugs. “Thirty years ago, it was a different town. Half the businesses now are owned by people forty and under. It’s a younger demographic. If he was physically capable of the campaigning and labor required, I have no doubt he’d get it passed today.”

“So there’s a town vote or something?”

He scrubs a hand through his hair. “Chance Lake has its own bylaws, so they essentially make up their own rules, to a certain extent. It’s governed as a ‘community of entities.’”

He holds up his hand to ward off any questions. “Don’t ask me what that means, I have no idea. The town fully embraced love and peace in the sixties. They ousted the mayor and all traditional leadership, and now it takes town meetings with a majority vote to put up holiday lights, get a park bench, or open a new business. You have to fit the ‘vibe’ to be approved. But at its core, this town is made up of a group of people who care about where they live and the people in it.”