Just One Kiss novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Cook

The cook at Harbor Lodge was twenty-two and he knew it.

Everybody at the lodge called him "chef," though the menu was walleye and fries.

He wore his white jacket open at the neck.

His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, so his forearms were the first thing you saw.

I'd been watching him for a month from the bait counter, every time the lodge sent a boy to buy minnows.

He had a good smile.

I'm saying that fairly.

On Wednesday night he found me at the edge of the lodge deck, under the lanterns.

He gave me a glass of lemonade with a cherry in it.

"You're the marina girl," he said.

"I'm Lottie."

"Lottie." He said it like he was tasting it. "That's a name I'd put on a dessert."

I made myself not roll my eyes.

At the far end of the deck, Ansel sat at a two-top with a can of root beer.

He had the posture of a man guarding a bank.

He'd worn a clean shirt.

I felt that in some part of me I was not ready to examine.

"I hear you're leaving for school," the cook said.

"Three weeks."

"That's a shame. This town is dead without a girl like you."

"There are about nine thousand of us."

"None like you."

He turned a little, to put his shoulder between me and the deck rail, and I saw him do it.

It was smooth.

He had practiced.

He told me about a restaurant in Chicago where he'd worked one winter.

He told me about a knife that cost more than my mother's truck.

He touched my wrist twice, and then my elbow.

His fingers were warm and dry.

I stood there and waited for my body to have an opinion.

My body said, you're hungry.

It said, did you eat dinner?

It said nothing else at all.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm listening."

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