Fourteeners by Sarah Latchaw

Author:Sarah Latchaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omnific Publishing
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

A week after the benefit concert, Molly and I had a lunch date with a potential college intern. She and Cassady would return to Alaska in early July. Molly was strangely tight-lipped on the status of their relationship, but there was little closeness between my friend and her beau. I hoped for the best for my friend. After all, she’d uprooted her entire life to chase adventure with Cassady in Clam Gulch. But if she returned to Colorado before the year was out, I wouldn’t be shocked.

Molly checked her watch for the third time as we stood outside the Fighting Mango, a lunch spot neither of us had ever visited but was popular with the Communication Arts department at the University of Colorado. TrilbyJones had been asked to consider their PR majors for internships, but the interviewee was late.

“Five more minutes, and we go inside and try those mango cocktails.”

“We have to go back to work, Mol.’”

“We can split it.”

Just then, a harried young woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty rounded the corner, loaded with a book bag that looked heavier than my hiking gear. She swiped her blue-streaked hair into a bun but came to a dead stop when she spotted us.

“Neelie!” Tears gathered in her eyes and something inside me withered. “I love you, so much. And Oh. My. Gosh. I love your hair!” An uninvited hand touched my bobbed blue locks. “I’ve never seen someone your age pull it off!”

“That’s it. I’m going back to blonde first thing tomorrow.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Molly.

The student shook her head, as if every piece of knowledge in her world had been turned on its head. “A blue-haired Neelie Nixie. I can’t...wow. This will change everything when I read the books again.” She remembered herself and thrust out a hand. “I’m so, so sorry, I’m Ashley. I know, me and every other twenty-something. Just call me Ash, it avoids confusion. Let’s eat mangos!”

We settled into a table and perused the menu. Mango chicken, mango sandwich, mango salad...

“I sense a theme,” said Molly as she cleaned her glasses with her shirt hem.

A distinctive chuckle caught my ear and I followed it to a booth across the dining area.

There was Samuel, seated across from a man I’d never seen. He was in his mid-fifties, though his sunbaked skin belied his age. Steely locks tufted around his ears and beefy hands paged through the menu. His clothing was work-worn and stained with the same clay that was impossible to wash from the knees of my jeans after weeding my mother’s gardens. Though I couldn’t understand their words, I saw, without a doubt, the lilts and trills of the Spanish language.

Agricultural worker? A new employee with Alonso’s magazine?

Ash clutched my forearm. “Shut. Up. That’s Samuel Caulfield Cabral! I love his books, though the pirate one kinda threw me. Wow, he’s even hotter in person...” She covered her mouth. “Aaaand he’s also your husband. I’m sooo sorry, it’s just that I’m a huge Nixie fan.

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