Ugh, just thinking about the pitying look Gavin would give her when she got back to the office made her cringe.
“You already accomplished something!” Priya said. “You opened the lines of communication! He actually emailed Marta! That’s far more than she had last week, and you know that. It’s not like she thought you would come back to New York waving Beau Towers’s manuscript around. Stop stressing about it! Enjoy the weather there while you can. But first, you haven’t told me a single thing about what Beau Towers is like, other than he’s very hot and he glares at you all the time. I want to know way more.”
“I did not say he was hot!” Izzy said.
“You didn’t have to,” Priya said.
Izzy would just ignore that. “Okay, here are the pros to living in Beau Towers’s house. First, it’s enormous. It’s so big that I have the entire second floor to myself. Second, his assistant is nice and at least she likes me, and she cooks fantastic food. Third, the view from my window, which I’ve sent you multiple pictures of. Fourth, and stop rolling your eyes, my bathtub: I think the two of us have bonded, I tell it about my day every night during my nightly bath, and I think it really sympathizes with me. Fifth, there’s a snack cabinet, Priya. As in, a whole cabinet, as tall as me, devoted entirely to snacks. Sixth, there are gardens, plural. I go take a turn around them every afternoon like some Regency romance heroine. And I can do that, because seventh, the weather is incredible. It’s overcast right now, but it often is in the mornings, and every afternoon is sunny and perfect.”
She took a big sip of coffee. “Also—this probably should have been one with a bullet—it’s so nice to be across the country from both Marta and my parents. That feels mean, to group my parents with Marta, and I don’t mean it that way, but it’s just so refreshing to be alone, not have someone ask me questions all the time or be in my space. That part is pretty relaxing, actually.”
“You’re sounding a little too happy,” Priya said. “You’d better not stay there.”
Izzy laughed out loud. “I haven’t gotten to the cons yet. I’d be perfectly happy to stay here if I could be here with you and not Beau Towers! This weekend I’m stuck here alone with him, and he barely speaks to me, or even looks at me.” She sighed. “I just realized that since I got here on Wednesday, I haven’t talked to anyone in person other than him and Michaela. I work and stare at the walls and occasionally walk around outside in the gardens, I talk to inanimate objects like my teacup and the candlestick because Beau Towers doesn’t talk to me, and I feel like at any moment the teacup and candlestick will start, like, singing and dancing for me.”
“You have a candlestick?” Priya asked.
“You’re missing the point!” Izzy said. “Since I’ve gotten here, I haven’t taken a step off his property. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“Are you…locked in there?” Priya asked.
Izzy laughed. “Of course not. I’m sure I can leave whenever I want, but where would I go? Michaela returned my rental car, and plus, there isn’t really any reason to leave—there’s lots of food, I did laundry so I’ve got clean clothes, and plus—”
“Isabelle,” Priya said in a stern voice. “Go for a walk. A real walk, not ‘in the gardens,’ whatever that means—go outside, into the real world. It’s what, almost noon there now? Go to a bookstore, or a coffee shop, or I don’t know, a grocery store and get some food that isn’t made in that weird enchanted house. Just go be outside in the world away from the bathtub that you talk to far too much and the candlesticks that are singing to you so I stop being afraid for your sanity.”
Huh. That hadn’t occurred to her.
“That’s a great idea,” Izzy said. Being somewhere other than this place, even for a few hours, sounded amazing.
“Of course it’s a great idea,” Priya said. “Go. Now. Take a picture of the beach or weird California people or your latte art or whatever and text me to prove you did it.”
Priya hung up. Izzy stared at her phone for a second, and then she jumped out of bed. She took a quick shower, threw on jeans and a sweater, dropped her phone and headphones and e-reader into her bag, and crept down the stairs.
She opened the front door and slid it closed behind her as quietly as she could. She didn’t know why she was sneaking out of the house. It’s not like she wasn’t allowed to leave. Maybe it was just because she didn’t want to run into Beau Towers and have another terrible interaction with him. Now that she’d decided to get out of here, even for a few hours, she just wanted to GO.