Free The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

months were on someone as hyper as she was. Willa was dreading this coming winter. She was afraid she was going to lose Rachel to it. And Rachel and her coffee and chocolate were the only things making life here bearable, the only things she really looked forward to now that the restoration of the Madam was almost complete and she didn’t have an excuse to drive up Jackson Hill every day to see how it was going.
    “Willa, look,” Rachel said at about four o’clock that afternoon, when they finally had a quiet moment in the store. Willa turned to see that Rachel had stopped restocking the snack case at the coffee bar, and was looking out the window. “Tall, dark, and rich is heading this way.”
    Willa looked up to see Colin Osgood walking by the store window, heading for the door.
    “Oh, crap. Tell him I’m not here,” she said, and turned to the storeroom behind the counter.
    “What is the matter with you?” Rachel called after her.
    Willa disappeared, closing the door behind her, just as she heard the store bell ring.
    What was the matter with her? That was a good question. But it was hard to explain, especially to someone like Rachel. The winters were tough on Willa, too—maybe even more so, because she knew shecouldn’t leave. That was the big difference between Willa and Rachel, between Willa and all the other transplants. Her grandmother was here. Her father’s house was here. Her history was here. Sometimes she would lean against the front counter, chin in hand, and stare at the snow, craving something else, something different from life, which made her feel that nervous pull in her stomach, like how she would feel when weeks would go by in school after she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do anything stupid again. The feeling would just get worse and worse, until she found herself hanging a rope of leotards out the dance tower window at two in the morning, just so everyone coming to school would think that a group of dancers had gotten stuck up there and had to tie their clothes together and climb out naked.
    That’s why she wanted to stay far, far away from Colin Osgood. No one, no one , had ever said that she’d inspired them before. No one had ever said they’d admired her for what she’d done. It went against everything she’d been told, everything anyone who had ever suffered through high school wanted to believe, that if you just tried hard enough, you could actually get away from who you used to be. But not for the first time, she found herself wondering: What if who she was then was her truer self?
    She heard voices out in the store. The timbre of Colin’s low voice, Rachel’s laughter.
    Then, suddenly, the knob to the storeroom was turning. Her back was to the door, so she instinctively pushed against it. But he had the advantage of morestrength and momentum, and it was a losing battle. She gave up and stepped out of the way, letting the door fling open.
    Colin reached out and caught the door before it hit the wall, then looked at her strangely. It had been a long day, and her hair felt about two feet thick, so at one point she’d taken a bandana from stock and used it to push her hair away from her face. Completing today’s lovely ensemble were jeans, platform sneakers, and a T-shirt that read: Go Au Naturel! Au Naturel Sporting Goods and Café, Walls of Water, North Carolina . It, of course, had a coffee stain on it. “Why were you leaning against the door?” he asked.
    “I told you you wouldn’t see me if I saw you first.”
    “I didn’t think that meant you would literally hide from me.”
    “Not one of my finer moments,” she admitted.
    He was wearing khakis and loafers. His aviators were tucked into the collar of his light blue T-shirt. He looked so put-together and in control of himself. This was apparently the unique power of all Osgoods—their ability to make her feel slightly out of control.
    “What do you want, Colin?”
    “I want you to come up to the Madam with