Great Big Beautiful Life(31)
My weight shifts forward. By the time my stomach meets his, his hands are already on my jaw, his lips impatiently coaxing mine apart.
11
One of Hayden’s hands furls around the nape of my neck, tipping my head back, and at the small sound that escapes me, his tongue sweeps over mine, a shimmer of heat going through me. My hands slide up his chest. One of his glides down to my waist, pulling me toward him, and then, when I wrap mine tight around the back of his neck, it moves to my ass, lifting me against him.
I arch up, trying to get more of him. His heat, the friction of his chest against mine, the ridge of his erection pressing into me.
I break the kiss just long enough to whisper, “Come inside.”
He pushes back from me so abruptly, I stumble before catching myself.
“Fuck,” he says to himself, running his hands up his face and over his hair, like he’s putting himself together.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, still startled and off balance.
I essentially watch the haze of lust clear from his eyes, replaced by something cold and stern. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you the wrong idea.”
I take a half step back, a reedy laugh sneaking out of me. “And what idea is that?”
“That I was interested in something like this,” he says evenly. “With you.”
Heat rushes into my face, and I can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or anger.
To make things just a little worse, he adds, “I’m not.”
“Yeah. I got that.” I turn, searching for my jacket and bag, which I dropped in the fervor. I snap them up.
“Alice,” he says, almost chiding, like I’m the one being ridiculous here.
I try to remind myself he’s got his own stuff going on, that he’s probably not trying to be an asshole, but when I look up, he’s staring at me with those steely eyes and perfectly flat mouth of his.
“It’s really not personal,” he says.
Adding with you to the end of his statement about how this wasn’t something he’s interested in seems to suggest otherwise, but what do I know?
God, I couldn’t have possibly misread the signals that badly. Could I?
“I understand,” I lie, trying my hardest to smile. “I’m sorry too.”
He studies me for a moment, brow knit, both of us clearly unsure what to say. It’s not often that I’m rendered speechless, but I can’t think of a single thing that would make this less humiliating.
“I’m not going to hook up with someone,” he says, “whose dream job I’m about to take from them.”
My laugh is full throated, loud, and even a little bit angry.
The arrogance.
“You think you already have this, don’t you?” I demand. “Like I’m so insignificant I don’t stand a chance.”
His jaw sets. “I didn’t say you were insignificant.”
The rest of the sentiment, though, he has no issue with.
“Good night, Hayden,” I snort, and turn on my heel to march through the trees into my bungalow’s backyard, praying with every step that I never see Hayden Anderson again.
* * *
? ? ?
On Monday morning, I pretend not to see Hayden at Little Croissant, picking up a green tea after—judging by the sweat dripping down him—a productive run.
On Tuesday, eager to avoid another run-in, I again get coffee from another breakfast spot in Tourist Town on my way to meet Margaret.
It’s wretched—though the doughnuts are more than decent.
When I get to Margaret’s house, Jodi is weeding the front garden beds. “Margaret’s out back in the workshop,” she tells me. “Go on back.”
“Thanks, Jodi!” I chirp. Her only reply is a grunt.
I wind around the house, past the small swimming pool, to the white-clapboard-sided clubhouse just beyond it, the glass-paned French doors thrown open and Margaret visible moving around within.
The air is stiffer and hotter back here than it is out by the open ocean, and the high, unforgiving sun sends a rivulet of sweat down my neck and between my shoulder blades as I pick my way toward the small outbuilding.
From a distance, it looks like the floor inside is painted blue, but, as I get closer, I realize my mistake. It’s not painted at all.
It’s a massive mosaic, pieced together in glimmering shades of blue, white, green, amber. A massive mural of sea glass, arranged into a spiraling pattern of paths.
“It’s a labyrinth.” I look up toward the voice, shielding my eyes against the reflecting light to find Margaret in the back of the workshop. She’s wearing a lilac boilersuit with its sleeves rolled up, and her silver hair is knotted into a pom-pom atop her head. She pulls a pair of protective goggles from her eyes up onto her forehead as I step inside.
“Like a maze?” I ask, glancing around the room. A series of long, scarred tables have been arranged around the outside edge of the workshop, their tops covered in tools and wire, glass and shells and driftwood. Over each of the windows, an elaborate wind chime hangs, slowly twirling, waiting for a true breeze to make them dance.
“Not quite,” she says. “It’s unicursal. There’s only one path in and out. It’s not quite the game of a maze. You can’t get lost. You just walk the path, and it won’t be the shortest way to get you where you’re going, but you’ll wind up in the center eventually. As you walk, you’re supposed to meditate.”