Page 50 of A Fine Line
The bake house door opened and out came none other than Lottie Jane Meadows, the person my homesick heart longed to see the most.
“I’ll pay you back, Sonja, you know I always do.” She called over her shoulder. Her white tank top, with a smear of chocolate across the left boob, was tucked into her ripped Levi shorts and her tan legs stretched for miles falling into her red Tecovas that she practically screamed for on her nineteenth birthday.
“No, she won’t, Sonja!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and called back.
Lottie’s neck snapped my way and her thousand-watt smile stretched to ears. “Oh you’re one to talk!” She ran straight towards Crew and I, the chocolate croissant bag in her hands falling onto the dirt path in front of us.
With Lottie’s arms stretched wide, I met her half way and let our bodies collide together.
“Oh my gosh,” she squeezed me around the neck tight enough to almost cause me to gag. Lottie was always the strongest of us, her brother included. Her strength came from far more than just physicality.
“It’s so good to see your face.” She pulled back, two firm hands wrapping around my jaw. “Your freckles aren’t out.”
“Well, I haven’t been in the sun a lot.” I laughed.
“We’re changing that, instantly, okay? I’m talking bikini sunbathing by the creek all day every day. You can use my green one, it will look so good with your hair.” Her fingers trail through my auburn hair, tugging the ends playfully and I smile. Home.
Crew cleared his throat a few feet behind us. “I would join you, but you know my bikini body isn’t ready yet.”
I turned and saw him smiling back at me. “Oh, right. Lottie, this is Crew.” I widened my eyes just enough for her to make sure she knew not to embarrass me.
“Ohhh, you’re the one with the big hands!” She trailed down the path and grabbed at Crew’s wrist, pulling his hands to her face for inspection. “Hmm, I totally see what you mean, Win.”
My cheeks blushed as Crew squinted at me. “You got a thing for my hands, Winnie girl?”
“I made one comment on the size, that’s all.”
“Psh, one comment.” Lottie scoffed. “Try fifty. Actually try hour long phone calls with nothing but discussing the veins on the back of-.”
“Alright, I think that’s enough.” My eyes rolled and I yanked Crew’s wrist from my cousins inspection. “Where is everyone?”
“Okay, so Aunt Sonja is in the bake house but she’s totally cranky cause something happened with an oven or something? And then Knox and Flick are, well you know.”
I did. Because the two of them were attached at the hip since day one and despite Felicity, or as Lottie calls her- Flick, being my cousins best friend she still was Knox’s girl.
“Oh, mom and dad are at the stables wrapping up so they can go to the main house to get dinner ready, and then Odie and Lawson are both working the back fields with the new guys.”
I nodded along with a smile that was hurting my cheeks.
“Look at you,” my cousin looked at me with her nose scrunched up. “All grown up.”
“You’re only a few years older than me.”
“Ahh, but I am wise beyond my years, little Win.”
She checked the time on her phone before sliding it in her back pocket. “Come on, love birds. You can walk with me.” She took off to the ‘sister houses’ as we called them. Basically a duplex with two cottages connected together through a garage.
Lottie’s parents built it for her after her accident as a bribe to keep her on the property. If I had that house back when I was looking at moving, I would have jumped to stay too, I believed.
Crew and I followed her a few feet back, he leaned down to whisper low in my ear. “I thought you said we weren’t fake dating?”
“We’re not.” I blushed. “Lottie is just…Lottie.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Really?”
“Mhmm. Gives me an excuse to do this,” Crew wrapped his long arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze as we walked in tandem to the sister house and I smiled to myself.