“Beck?” Stella’s looking at me, face etched with worry and her palms cupped gently around her mug. There’s a pine tree hanging from her desk light, and she knocks it with her elbow when she ducks her head to get a better look at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I am. I’m fine. Evelyn in my space isn’t anything I can’t handle. If being here is going to help her figure out her next steps or whatever it is that she’s doing, then I can suck it up. It’ll probably be like last time, where we circle each other and then settle. Share a baked good and move on.
This doesn’t have to mean anything.
Layla plucks another muffin out of the tin and hands it to me.
“Here,” she says. “You look like you need it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
EVELYN
It’s so quiet on the other end of the phone, I check several times to see if Josie accidentally hung up on me. Silence is not what I expected when I delivered the news. In fact, I was bracing myself for the opposite. Extended, obnoxious laughter. A cackle or two. A screaming shriek.
“Josie?”
“You’re staying at his house?” Her voice is pitched low and for once, I can’t hear a single thing in the background. Josie is constant motion, often sounding like she’s at a train station instead of her house. Right now she sounds like she’s in a closet.
“Yeah, I’m staying at his house.” He left a key next to the coffee machine this morning. A note with surprisingly neat handwriting with the code to the garage door.
“Does he—” she breathes out a shaky exhale. “Does he only have one bed?”
“What?” I give the waitress at the cafe a small smile, nodding my thanks when she places my latte carefully on the table in front of me. She takes a step back, but keeps looking at me, an over-bright smile on her young face. I know this look. I’ve seen it a thousand times before. I give her a little wave and turn slightly in my seat, lowering my voice. “What are you talking about? No, he has at least two beds that I know of.”
Probably more. I wasn’t kidding when I said he could run a bed and breakfast on the side. The inside of his cabin is huge. Surprisingly comfortable. An entire collection of throw blankets and cozy looking pillows in his living room.
Josie continues to breathe heavily into the phone. “What does he wear to sleep in? Is it sweatpants? Are they gray?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Please just answer the question, Evie.”
“I have no idea what he wears to bed,” I answer as quietly as possible, conscious of the fact that I’m sitting smack dab in the middle of the cafe in a town that loves to gossip. I peek over my shoulder at the table behind me, two of Inglewild’s firefighters on what looks like their third plate of cinnamon rolls. “I didn’t kick in his door to look, Josie.”
“Maybe you should have,” she hisses. “Okay, but seriously though—“
I sigh in relief.
“—I need you to tell me in excruciating detail. What is Mr. Beckett looking like these days? You never did share a picture and you were annoyingly vague. Does he have scruff?”
“What has gotten into you?”
“This whole situation is bananas and I’m trying to capitalize on the benefits. Have you at least snooped through all of his belongings like a reasonable human being?”
“I have not, though I haven’t ruled it out for this evening.”
I did notice a couple things. What looked like a celestial map taped to the front of the fridge, a circle drawn in red over a cluster of little specks with a date and time scrawled above. The corner of the living room with three oversized, soft-looking cat beds, a tiny blanket on each. Five different types of ground coffee on the kitchen counter, all half-used and neatly rolled shut.
It wasn’t what I expected.
Though to be fair, I didn’t let myself expect anything out of Beckett. Besides my game of picturing him in random places, perplexed by mint green succulent vases and fruit arrangements, I hardly let myself consider him at all. Remembering is a slippery slope into wanting, and I’ve built too much for myself to get distracted by a gorgeous man with tattoos and very large hands.
I suppose that doesn’t matter much now, though. I’m one big ball of distraction.
“Have you checked your accounts yet?”
A spike of anxiety turns my palms hot. “No. How bad is it?”
I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than four hours without posting, a compulsion to always be one step ahead. Josie hums and I hear the click of a mouse as she does something on her computer. “Not bad. You are causing quite the stir though. I saw a couple blogs asking where you were. You have a whole Where in the World is Evelyn St. James thing going for you right now.”
“I’m sure Sway is pleased.”
“As much as they can be with their internet darling on lockdown.” She makes an interested sound under her breath, another couple of clicks. “I meant to tell you, I’m sorting through some of your inboxes while you’re out. It looks like Sway has been screening some messages. Do you plan on posting at all while you’re there, or is it a full blackout?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” This is supposed to be a step back from work. I’m not sure scrolling through my accounts and posting random content is going to help with the perspective I want to find. I don’t want to do anything until it feels good again.
But I have found myself itching to swipe open my camera. It’s a reflex, a habit formed over close to a decade of sharing my life with millions of strangers. I wanted to snap a picture when I opened the bedroom door this morning, all four cats sitting in a line, staring up at me with their tiny heads tilted in quiet consideration. When I stepped off the front porch, the sun a brilliant, beautiful orange in the sky, everything glowing at the edges. When I wandered down the narrow alley on my way here, floral vines criss-crossed back and forth between the buildings, a canopy of blossoming flowers and drifting petals. The scent of honeysuckle tickling my nose.
“You don’t have to do anything at all,” Josie tells me over the phone. “You’re on a break for a reason. I don’t even remember the last time you took a true vacation.”
“I know,” I smooth my thumb over the edge of the cup. “But maybe it would help if I tried just telling stories again. That’s how we started all of this, isn’t it?”
No pressure. No expectations. Just me, talking to people. Listening again.
“I don’t think it would hurt,” she offers. “But please give yourself a break. Drink a latte.” She pauses for a second. “Find out if the man owns gray sweatpants.”
A laugh bursts out of me and half of the people in the cafe turn to look. This feels normal, the attention from strangers. When I was younger, it was exciting. I remember the first time someone recognized me in public. I was at the grocery store examining oranges and a young woman with bright blue hair came up to me and asked if I was Evelyn St. James. She saw my video about the Bagby Hot Springs and took a trip with her friends. I remember being overwhelmed. Flattered. Exceedingly delighted.
Now though, the attention feels a bit like sun-warmed skin, just shy of a burn. A hot prickle of awareness and an itch that doesn’t feel right to scratch. My eyes snag on my waitress in the corner, huddled together with a table full of teenagers. Their gazes scatter as soon I make eye contact and I bite my bottom lip against a smile. I give them a little wave and they collapse into furious whispers. One brave girl with thick black glasses and her hair in braids waves back.