Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Harper

At least Dingo wouldn’t judge me. The whole world would judge me before Dingo did.

I stepped into Jeremy’s pub, suddenly surrounded by the smell of beer and fried food—the exact smell I needed to lose myself in after Paisley being so damn oblivious I wanted to cry—and I nodded to Dingo, the big guy in a leather jacket on the far end, hunched over his laptop and wearing sunglasses. Never got the guy’s deal—I don’t think I’d ever heard him say a word—but no one in Bayview doubted he was a good soul. When I’d sprained my ankle my first summer in Bayview, he’d happened by where I was sitting nursing my injury by the side of the trail, and he’d hoisted me up in one arm as easily as if I was a doll and walked stoically with me back to town.

Jeremy said he was in here all the time for his side job of writing romance novels. I’d have believed either that or that he was hacking government servers to bring down the world order, but nothing in between. Either way, he nodded back at me, pausing to take a swig of his beer and go back to writing.

“You’re looking down in the dumps,” Jeremy said, standing up from where he was cleaning out the fridge under the counter. “Weren’t you closed today, for once in your life? Something happen?”

“Truth be told, Paisley just told everyone I was closing today so that she’d get an opportunity to show me something. And with everyone thinking I was closed, I figured there was no point opening anyway, since nobody would come in…”

He laughed. “Was it worth seeing?”

God, was it ever. I wasn’t even sure what it was about her all dressed up that way that had made me weak in the knees. It was easy to say it was just a good look on her, or even just that I liked a girl with a keen sense of style, but… there was more to it than that. She looked cute in her regular stuff, too, drowning in big hoodies and big glasses and big hair. Just… something about how she’d looked today…

“It was something she very well could have shown me after my shift.”

“Shocker. Well, it’s your first day off all year, as far as I’ve heard, so… better treat yourself to something good. What can I get you?”

Screw it, I got fried chicken and beer. Some days were just fried-chicken-and-beer days. I took it to the darkest corner in the pub, hunching in the corner where the window was broken so Jeremy just kept the shutters permanently closed, and I shrank into the darkness to disappear, and of course, it was just my luck that that was when Paisley’s sister made a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the pub and made direct eye contact with me the second she stepped inside.

I broke eye contact too hard, too abruptly. Not exactly avoiding attention. Dammit. Aria never came to the pub. She must have been picking up for somebody else. Part of me, distantly, wondered if it was for Paisley and she was also sad and needed to drown her sorrows in fried chicken and beer.

She wasn’t picking up. She got fish and chips and had the nerve to sit down across from me.

“I hear you’re closing,” she said airily, “Pais makes some veiled comments about you two, and then I find you lurking alone in the darkest corner of the pub with fried chicken? Dare I ask what’s going on here?”

Dammit. The shutter was closed, so I couldn’t even escape through the window. Paisley would, though.

Aria was a tall woman with long, brown hair and that picture-perfect dash of freckles over the bridge of her nose that freckles always looked like in photos and on models—she kind of looked like a model, honestly, with her tall, lean figure and almost unnaturally good looks. Macleods were just beautiful people, I guess.

“I think the real question is what are you doing here,” I said. “I would have thought greasy pub food is beneath you.”

“I’m unspeakably offended,” she said lightly, relaxing against the table with a comfortable smile. “Nobody is above greasy pub food every now and then. I had kale salad for dinner yesterday and a spinach egg white omelet for breakfast this morning, and my body was crying out for junk come lunch. Fish and chips sounded like the best thing that could ever happen to me.”

“Well, if you share Paisley’s metabolism, you can probably knock back three of those and not even feel bloated…”

She smiled drily. “Paisley gets in a lot more exercise than I do. All that climbing trees and running around jumping headlong through windows…”

“Yeah, touché.” No wonder she’d looked so good in that tight, athletic outfit. She was probably all lean muscle. I felt my face prickle, and I looked away. Aria smiled wider.

“So… now that we’re done with you dodging my question, Harper, do you want to tell me what’s going on with you and Paisley?”

I sighed hard. “It’s really nothing.”

She pursed her lips, studying me, and it got painfully awkward before long, but she wasn’t in any rush. She took a long sip of her iced tea, going through a few bites of her food in careful contemplation, before I broke.

“What?” I blurted. She narrowed her eyes just a fraction, giving me an odd smile.

“Paisley’s really very attached to you. I don’t know what you’ve done to her, but… well, ultimately, she is my sister, and I do care about her.”

“I haven’t done anything.” She’s the one doing things to me. I blushed harder. Dammit. I hoped the low light was hiding it.

“I’m just saying, she’s been in quite a mood lately and seems to have been talking about you all the time…”

“I think she’s in a mood because things have been off between her and Emberlynn.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Her and Emberlynn? How so?”

“Did Emberlynn not tell you?” Maybe I wasn’t supposed to bring it up. Aria leaned forward, folding her arms on the table.

“She didn’t say anything… she’s also been feeling off, but I think that’s more about her newest job.”

I looked away. “I might not have been supposed to say anything. Emberlynn was just telling me earlier about how she’s had a hard time feeling back to how things were with her and Paisley ever since she moved back to Bayview full-time. I’ll tell her I’m sorry for spilling it accidentally.”

Aria chewed her lip, thinking it over. That troubled look in her eyes spoke volumes.

“What’s bothering you?” I said.

She shrugged. “Just… wondering if I’m out of touch with Emberlynn. Does it say something bad if I’m not picking up on these things? Or if she’s not telling me?”

I relaxed. It was easy to forget sometimes that Aria Macleod was human. “I don’t think so. I’m going to intentionally tattle on her now about how she was bemoaning that you’re too cool for her, too good for her, too smart and pretty for her…”

She laughed. “Please. I’ve had impostor syndrome since the day of my big buyout. You don’t need to make it worse.”

“I think she’s just intimidated by you sometimes. Maybe just make a point to check in with her if you’re worried. She probably just gets too intimidated to bring things up to you.”

She relaxed into a smile. “I think I will. Thanks, Harper. You…” Her smile flickered. “Do you think I’m doing all right?”

I raised my eyebrows. “I think you’re doing perfectly, but… why ask me?”

She gestured past me. “You’re really at the heart of everything. Everyone passes by and shares their sorrows with you. You have a good eye for what’s going on… for the heart of the town. You and Priscilla are very alike, in that way, I think. I guess I just wonder what you think.”

It was a compliment, and a good one at that, so it probably wasn’t supposed to sit in my stomach like I’d eaten something bad. I cringed without meaning to, looking away. Aria arched an eyebrow.

“That’s a reaction…”

“Sorry. It’s nothing about you. Just made me think of something else I’m trying… not to think about.”

“That’s the other thing, that you don’t really talk about what’s going on for you often, do you?”

“I’m just a more private person,” I said lightly. “Anyway… you’re doing perfectly. Emberlynn adores you. She’s serious about you, you know.”

She gave me a small smile, nervous, vulnerable. “Yeah?”

“Ma’am, she moved to New York to be with you. You think she’d do that casually?”

“I just… like I said. I get impostor syndrome.”

“I think we all do sometimes.” I leaned across the table, putting a hand on her arm. “If it makes you feel better, I think the fact that you checked in to ask how you’re doing and what you can do for Emberlynn is a sign you’re doing really well.”

She laughed. “Thank you. Now that we’re done with that elaborate dodge of why you’re in here looking sad in the corner—why are you in here looking sad in the corner? And does it or does it not have to do with Paisley?”

“Ugh…” I scratched the back of my head, focusing on my beer. “Just let a woman sit in a dark corner with fried chicken and beer.”

“Fine, let me cut to the chase.” She put a hand up. “I think she likes you.”

I choked on the beer. Not exactly the smoothest move I could have made. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m not sure what I would have done to deserve such a punishment.”

“You can be glib all you like. I hope you don’t think it’s the first time I’ve sat through someone trying to avoid answering. I come from sales, you know.”

Dammit. No wonder she’d literally cornered me and then driven so relentlessly. Come to think of it—I wonder if opening up about her genuine insecurities might have been a technique to soften me up, get me more in a reciprocal sharing mood. I’d been played like a fiddle. I set down my drink with a sigh.

“If the way she expresses her interest in me is by breaking into my house through my roof, I don’t want her to be.”

“Well, that’s the other thing,” she said, a curious look in her eyes. “I’m not sure if she knows she likes you.”

I paused. “What do you mean?”

She picked at her food. “Paisley… well. Growing up, she never got to be in touch with her feelings.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’d been labeled…” She gestured airily. “Whiny, complaining. Told to stop making a fuss over everything I wanted, everything I felt, everything I needed. It left a mark on me, but… I think, if anything, it might have left a bigger mark on Paisley. I was her only sister. She looked up to me in a lot of ways of how she was supposed to be. And not only did she grow up only ever knowing me as not supposed to have emotions, she was supposed to join in on beating them out of me. She’d have to form a completely disconnected view from her own feelings to be able to adopt a mindset like that.”

I stared down into my food, just cradling the basket while my mind wandered. It wasn’t like it sounded completely impossible, but… “I thought she threw all that kind of thinking away when she left her parents. Didn’t she used to be all… quiet and reserved?”

“She did. But that was survival mode.”

Huh. Paisley had used the same words. Come to think of it, everything Paisley had said this morning, after she’d dragged me out of bed… wanting to reinvent herself. Was she that scared of her own feelings?

“So,” Aria said, leaning back in her seat, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been… hot and cold with you. You shouldn’t hold it against her. Despite everything… she is trying her best.”

I swallowed. I’d always just dismissed those… two times as being casual flings. And same for earlier, in the camper. After the first one, I’d… dared to let myself fantasize for a while what it might have meant, what we might do. And if I was being honest, I wanted to date her, even despite everything. But then the way she would act like nothing happened, flippant and casual?

I’d gotten upset earlier because she’d kissed me and hadn’t meant anything with it when it meant so damn much to me. But if she felt the same way and just didn’t know how to recognize it? It would explain why it was always me.

I felt my face prickle, knowing I was probably getting red enough Aria could see even in this light. It couldn’t be like that—it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t right. I was leaving. And besides, I was… well. I was Harper. I couldn’t do that. Annabel had been a lapse in judgment—an attractive woman who had openly pursued me, made me feel beautiful and desirable when I’d felt it the least. And it was good that it ended. I hadn’t been the one for her. And there couldn’t be a one for me.

Aria was comfortably waiting me out. The woman really did know how to negotiate. She wielded silence like a weapon, and I buckled.

“I guess I could see that,” I mumbled finally. “Maybe. But if it’s true, then… what should I do?”

“Well… do you like her, too?”

I swallowed. It felt like nails in my throat. I wondered desperately what it would be like to say yes—to tell Holcomb to pound sand and that I’d stay in Bayview, to tell Paisley how I felt, to try it out, to see what we could be. And we could kiss like we had earlier, anytime we wanted. And it would be Harper and Paisley, and all of our friends would think of us like that, Harper and Paisley, a unit. Together. Emberlynn and Gwen would probably freak. Annabel too. Kay would love it.

But I was Harper. I couldn’t do that. It was just… wrong.

“Not like that,” I said, my mouth feeling like I’d bitten into chalk. “I guess if I’m not being so glib, I admit I like her a lot, and it’s never boring when she’s around, but… not like that.”

Aria gave me the sad smile I needed not to see right now—buying the lie completely, and I had to recognize that I wished she hadn’t. “Then I think it’s worth talking to her outright. Tell her that you like her as a friend, but that that’s all. I think she could use the wakeup call.”

“And I’m the wakeup caller?”

She laughed. “You don’t have to, of course. It’s not your responsibility. But it would probably take a load off her mind, help her work out some things…”

I swallowed. “Well… yeah, maybe.”

She moved to speak, but she glanced down at something vibrating, and she pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. “Oh, god, I’m getting an important call,” she said, standing up. “I’m so sorry—could you tell Jeremy to box my food?”

Poor woman barely got to sit down. “I’m free today. I’ll drop it at your house and everything.”

“You’re amazing,” she said, taking off for the door, answering the phone as she plugged her other ear. I sighed, slumping back in my chair, staring at the empty spot where she’d been.