THIRTY-ONE DAYS OF SWEETNESS
Aidan is the proud owner of The Sugar Stop, a café in Pine Grove, and has dedicated his life to baking and selling delicious pastries.
Keith left Pine Grove directly after High School, glad to escape the small town. Now...
Aidan felt the familiar burn behind his eyes and took a shaky breath to compose himself. Keith had been wrong, Aidan had already fallen in love - silently, unintentionally and unnoticed - and for the time it had lasted it truly had been magnificent. Maybe it was only a crush but he couldn't help to understand now why people called it a 'crush' - that's simply how it felt when it wasn't returned. Yes, he had let Keith go - had let him walk away like nothing was wrong - but that didn't mean he had wanted him to.
His phone vibrated on the tub's ledge and he swiped his finger over the screen, expecting it to be April telling him about how free she felt while her head hung out of the window.
"Aidan?"
It wasn't April and it wasn't Josh.
"Yes?" He wiped at his eyes to get rid of the tears that hadn't quite fallen yet.
"Oh Aidan," his Granny sighed and he tried himself at a wobbly smile although she couldn't see him. "Are you okay?"
He swallowed and looked down at the glittering bubbles surrounding him, the sunlight making them look like diamonds. He had the choice between saying the truth and saying what society expected him to. "No."
"Would you feel better if I came over and we talk a little bit?" she asked softly and he bit his lip.
"I don't know."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?"
"Okay."
He lowered the phone back onto the ledge and dropped his hand into the water, the heat stinging for a second.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Aidan sat on the kitchen counter - shoulders hunched forward and the curve of his spine looking almost painful because of the bent position - and watched his Granny cook. It was one of the first things she had done when he had come to Pine Grove all those years ago, cooking him a warm meal which he had cautiously eaten, not yet trusting the changes that had been forced upon him. And every time he had been upset there had been a warm meal waiting for him and Granny who had listened to him without any judgement. In her world there was nothing food couldn't make better; maybe it was a fragment of her past when simply having a meal - no matter what it was - had been comforting in itself.
She flipped the pancake and set the spatula to the side, the sizzling the only sound for several long moments.
"So, Keith, huh?"
He nodded silently, still not trusting his voice. His insides felt raw, like an open cut that hadn't started healing yet.
"What's so special about him?" Granny asked curiously. "You were never so down if things didn't work out with other boys."
It seemed to be absolutely impossible to compare Keith to those 'other boys'; boys - not one of them had been really a man - he had met on campus or had shared classes with and somehow had thought they were worth his time when all he had wanted was to experience everything movies and books talked about. There had been the unwarranted fear that he could miss something and his life wouldn't be complete.
