If It Makes You Happy(26)

No. He’s not appealing.

“I saw your car here and thought I’d come to apologize,” Cliff’s distant voice says from the front desk. “I know Emily left work earlier than she should have … again.” He shakes his head.

Lisa waves her hand. “Oh, she went to see Josh, didn’t she? I was a teen once.”

Cliff snorts. “So was I. And now, at thirty-three, I have a sixteen-year-old.”

There are two sides to Cliff Burke. The goofy town local with a worry-free crooked smile. And the single father—a man who carried his daughter in his arms when she got a cut on her leg. A man who’s protective of his girls. Stressed. Uncomfortable. Clenched jaw.

“Anyway,” he continues, “this is for you.”

I can’t see what he hands her, but Lisa immediately gushes, “Oh, Cliff!”

“Snickerdoodle, right?”

She tsks. “Oh gosh, yes. My favorite.”

“So, how about guests?” Sara asks in my ear. “Have you met any cool guests?”

I return to scribbling on my notepad. “No, not really. I let them do their own thing.”

“What? Why? That’s, like, the best part about that place. People travel and have amazing stories!”

“I tried talking. They’re on vacation,” I say. “I don’t want to bother them.”

From the foyer, I hear Lisa again. “Oh, delicious, as always.” Then she lowers her voice. “Might I suggest teaching Birdie’s girl how to bake? Her biscuits—”

“Atrocious,” George blurts, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he purposefully growled it louder so I’d hear.

Really?!

“Is that right?” Cliff says. I can almost picture that crooked smile.

Sara’s voice chimes in again. “Shell, you’re not bothering guests. If they wanted to vacation alone, they’d go to a motel outside of town. They like the whole experience. They want to talk to you.”

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do!” she answers with a laugh. “That’s the whole point. Dad was telling me the other day that Hot Neighbor—”

“Not his name.”

“Always brought over baked goods and talked with the guests too. Does he do that with you? Maybe that’ll help.”

I hear Cliff’s distant laughter, low and rising straight from his chest. Genuine, like everything else he does.

“No,” I admit. “I might have explicitly told him not to help actually.”

Sara gasps. “What did you say to him?”

“I said I could do this on my own. That’s all.” Saying it out loud sends guilt sliding over my skin, like I’m getting secondhand embarrassment for myself.

I lean back on my stool again and catch a glimpse of Cliff. The stool groans the further I lean. Cliff’s forearms relax on the front desk as he leans close to Lisa. I snort. I’m not surprised he’s invading someone’s personal space.

“Shelly,” Sara snaps, “listen to me.”

“What?”

“Make friends!” she pleads on almost a laughing whine. “You’re gonna be there for three more months. And you’re not even talking to guests? Aren’t you lonely?”

“You deserve to—”

I shake Allen’s words away.

I look around. The place is clean. Dishes are done, and coffee is waiting to be taken out to guests. I even made extra biscuits. Though I guess those no longer matter.

I’m doing everything right. And whatever isn’t working—the biscuits, apparently?—needs to be adjusted. It’s trial and error, like most problems.

I look over at Rocket with his nose pressed to the back window. I wonder if he’s waiting for Brittany to appear.

There’s a hiss of a whisper from the foyer.

I push the linoleum with my boot and lean back on the step stool again.

I watch Cliff. His brown hair with loose strands hanging over his ear. That smooth, curved jaw. His typical smile with the full bottom lip crooked up more on one side than the other. That same thick flannel, like he’s one second away from cutting down a whole forest or preserving it.

Lisa leans closer to Cliff to whisper.

My back molars grind. What are they saying? What other possible critique can they make about my stupid hard biscuits?

“Shelly?” Sara asks.

I give an extra little push, rising to only two stool legs. Cliff’s eyes dart over, catching mine in the process. My heart drops, and the toe of my shoe suddenly leaves the ground.

No, no, no!

I fall backward. The breath whooshes out of my lungs. I hit the kitchen floor hard. The phone clatters across the floor. Rocket scrambles up onto scraping nails, darting down the hall like some Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

There’s a stool rung broken beside me, and as I analyze the damage—my aching tailbone and racing heart, which I can feel down to my fingertips—footsteps rush into the kitchen. A hand hooks in the crook of my elbow to help me up. I stand and am suddenly eye to eye with Cliff.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.”

After his eyes dart over my clothes, down to my legs, and back up—the same dad-like look he gave Brittany when she fell, as if assessing for bruises—he finally finds my gaze once more.