Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Harper

My hands shook as I assessed the situation, a sick feeling in my mouth. Her name was an echo in my head, bouncing inside my skull, damning me on repeat.

Lindsay.

I’d worked so damn hard not letting myself think it. It must have been a year, easy, since I’d last thought the name. It felt like the walls closed in tighter around me, like the floor pitched, and like I could feel her eyes on me. I gripped the edges of the sink tightly, my hands aching from the tension.

Leave it to Paisley to be the one to finally dredge it up again. To see all the walls I’d built up and politely step over all of them right to the raw, bleeding center of my heart.

The girl knew me a little too well. I was starting to think she saw through me better than Priscilla.

My reflection in the mirror looked back at me through haunted, bloodshot eyes. I was a different person all of a sudden—like I was seeing Lindsay’s face looking at me all over again.

Enough.I wasn’t sure if I’d thought it forcefully or if it had actually slipped out, if I’d started talking to myself in an empty bathroom. It didn’t matter, though. Paisley had left—I’d heard the door unlatch and creak open before swinging shut, and I’d sat with the sick, sinking feeling of loneliness so heavy, so real, it was a palpable weight in my throat.

Enough.I chanted it back to myself, whether it was real or in my head. I couldn’t spend my whole life like this. I was pulling it together. I was being an adult. She’d be disappointed if she saw where I’d ended up.

I pulled away from the mirror and stepped back out into the bungalow, and I found my feet walking me out to the rear deck, sinking into the chair at the end of the thatched roof and watching the waves. The endlessness of the ocean reminded me how small I was. It was relaxing, reassuring, to lose myself in that—to see some scale beyond me and know that all of this I was swimming in was only a drop in the ocean. And it was with my mind in a slightly better place that I managed to pull up my phone, seeing Emberlynn’s text.

checked into your little staycation spot?

I forced out a shaky breath, making myself type a reply. The act of putting words together was like a lens, refocusing my consciousness, realigning me until things made a little more sense again. pais told you?

Kay.

I laughed awkwardly. I’d honestly forgotten Paisley had even mentioned Kay. The conversation was a blur. guess everyone’s hearing about it sooner or later with her in the equation…

she’s not exactly a master spy… I’m so confused how she hid her sexuality from her parentsAnd then before I could reply, a shorter message. Are you dating Paisley?

It felt like a tight grip around my throat. Whatever Paisley and I had been over this last week, we weren’t anymore. I blew up. Drove her away. A fun date got less fun when you brought up ghosts.

Should have just let myself enjoy them as dates. Should have known circumstances would pull us apart anyway, so why would it even matter?

Not really sure how to put it into a text, I hesitated for a long time before I called Emberlynn, and the call went through with a click.

“I’m leaving,” I heard myself say.

She paused. “The—the bungalow thing? What, you only rented it for fifteen minutes?”

Had it only been fifteen minutes? I glanced at the clock on my phone before I realized, embarrassingly slowly, it was just a manner of speaking. I was turning into Pais. “Bayview.”

“Oh, what? When? Where are you going?”

She didn’t realize what I meant. I breathed in long and slow. I should have backed out—not even sure how I’d ended up here—but I found I couldn’t. “End of April. To New York. New job. New… horizons, I guess.”

“Oh…” Emberlynn’s voice trailed off into a little whisper, and we hung there in the tension of the pause for what seemed like forever. “Oh, you mean you’re leaving leaving.”

I nodded. Not that she could see it, but… I couldn’t find any words right now. The silence was words enough.

“And… Crystal Lights?”

“Closing.” I swallowed a few times to get past the dryness in my mouth. “Just… don’t tell anyone. Please. I’m working on… working on telling everyone. I’ll get to it. Maybe at the festival.”

“Damn, Harps,” she said, her voice low. “How long have you known?”

“December.” The word came out bitterly, guilt sinking deep into my bones, but Emberlynn’s reply was softer than I thought. Softer than I deserved.

“You’ve been carrying it by yourself since then, huh?”

I swallowed hard, blinking away the burning at my eyes. “Most of that time. Paisley knows. Broke into my house, got into my computer, and read my emails.”

“Oh my god. I guess that’s Paisley for you…”

“So… no,” I said, my voice dry, gravelly, as I looked down, toeing the floorboards, the water’s surface visible in the thin lines between boards. “Not dates. Paisley is just taking me around… seeing everything Bayview has to offer before I leave.”

She paused. After a long, loaded silence, she said, “She couldn’t get you to stay, huh?”

“That’s not what it’s about.” Something seared in the back of my mind, though—a hazy memory dredged up from the conversation, ten minutes ago or twelve hours ago, I couldn’t tell. Paisley wishing I weren’t leaving. Me agreeing.

“You… you know she cares about you, though.”

Emberlynn and her girlfriend were both on the same page, unsurprisingly. Both here to rub it in my face, insisting Paisley was head-over-heels for me. “I doubt that.”

She cleared her throat. “Do you, really?”

“I really, really do. If she had feelings for me, she could show them somehow other than climbing into my window to steal my food.”

“And making out with you doesn’t count?”

I fumbled the phone. “Er—what do you mean?”

“I wonder,” she said flatly.

I cleared my throat, suddenly awkward. They were best friends. I guess it wasn’t a surprise if… “What did Pais tell you, exactly?”

“Enough to know you’re being a little evasive.” Still, she said it gently, sweetly—something in her voice so soft and caring. The tone of someone who was calling me out because she wanted me to be true to myself, not because she felt entitled to the truth. Emberlynn was too good. Bayview was too good.

I looked down at the floor. “I think… maybe she does. You know—care about me, like that. But I don’t think she knows she does. Aria told me the same thing, and I think she’s right.”

She hesitated. “But you don’t…?”

I tightened my grip on the phone. “What does it matter?”

“It matters,” she said, softly, sweetly. Not correcting, but… comforting. “Even if you leave and you never see her again, it’s a disservice to yourself if you lie about it. You’d have to grieve the loss of not only a friend, but a lover. And if you never let yourself acknowledge the grief as that, then you’ll never process it.”

I slumped backwards in the chair, kicking my feet up on the ottoman, casting my gaze up to where the end of the roof cut a jagged edge against cloudy blue skies. Her words sank into me like caramel into a batter, slowly against the surface until it was enveloped and suddenly I couldn’t tell where her words ended and my feelings began.

“Dammit,” I said, quietly.

“I’m not letting you hide from your feelings. I appreciate you too much to.”

“I wish you would.”

“Well, find a magic star to wish upon, because I’m not playing.”

I laughed, a small and hollow sound, and I took a second just looking for words—looking for anything I could say—but I jumped when the door flung open behind me, and I turned with my heart in my mouth as Paisley made a beeline from the door for me, and she draped herself over the edge of the chair and, unceremoniously, she took my phone, holding it up to her ear.

“Hey,” she said, putting on a deep voice. “This is Harper’s manager. Who has the audacity to be calling her while she’s out of office?”

“Paisley,” I hissed, snatching for the phone, but I couldn’t deny the incredible weight that came off my chest just… seeing her here. Seeing her come back.

Paisley made a face at the phone. “Emberlynn? Ugh. I was expecting someone interesting.”

Emberlynn’s voice coming down the phone didn’t sound thrilled. Paisley caught my hand as I reached for the phone—the woman had reflexes on another level.

“What were you gossiping with Harps about?” she said idly. “I swear, I step out for, like, five minutes to grab cake and you steal my girl.”

My stomach dropped, my face prickling. “Oh my god, Paisley. Will you give me my phone back?”

Paisley gave a horrified look at the phone. “You’re not telling me the gossip? Me? Paisley Macleod? The divine incarnation of the very ideal of gossip itself? You… you… a curse upon your lineage!”

Paisley hung up, handing the phone back to me, pouting.

“She wouldn’t tell me the gossip,” she said.

“I… put that together.” I stood up. “And you hung up my call.”

“Mm-hm. There’s a more important girl here now.” She took my hands, tugging me back towards the bungalow. “C’mon. I got dessert. Unless you’d rather hang with Emberlynn looking all sad, I guess…”

“Is that why you went out?” I said, my face burning as I let her lead me by the hand back inside. I had no idea what I was supposed to think right now—seeing her like this, still dressed up for me, wondering if it meant anything that she’d come back. That I cared this much that she did. “To get cake?”

“Well, ostensibly. Then I got distracted for a minute. And I ended up getting pie instead. But just c’mon! It’s a French silk pie. I know you like them.”

I did. And as I joined her at the bar counter by the window, taking bites out of it while Paisley talked about nothing, I enjoyed it a little too much. Even if it left me burning, floating in limbo.

Maybe we just weren’t talking about it. Paisley said she got distracted, but I knew her. If she actually got distracted, she’d talk for half an hour about what she got distracted with. She needed a minute alone. I needed a minute alone.

And we’d both given it the space we needed to be able to pretend nothing had happened. That I hadn’t said anything I wasn’t supposed to. And it was such a relief that I wanted to cry, wanted to cling to her, except… well, that would be a bit unlike me.

After the sunlight disappeared off the ocean and the stars came out twinkling at the horizon where the waves met the sky, Paisley led me to the bedroom door, where I got a start at the sight—it was a beautiful room, soft blues and whites, and a four-poster queen bed draped with a light, lacy canopy, facing a full-wall window overlooking the water. A little too… romantic to be staying in as just friends.

Paisley, of course, didn’t hesitate, taking me by the hand and leading me towards the bed before she collapsed into it, patting on the bed to gesture me to join her. I raised my eyebrows, playing it cool.

“You’re a bit overdressed for going to bed, don’t you think?”

She grinned, and my thoughts went careening when—not a drop of hesitation, she pulled the skirt up on her dress, tugging it up her waist. The deep jade green underwear she had on was a bit too… nice to be regular underwear. “What, want me less dressed?”

“No! I mean—I was—”

She laughed, eyes sparkling, as she dropped her skirt back down. “You’re so cute when you blush. Come on, you goof,” she said, and she grabbed me between two buttons on my blouse, pulling me into bed with her. “I want to cuddle. And you’re going to oblige.”

“Oh—decided that for me, huh?”

“Like that’s new for me?”

It wasn’t like I didn’t want to, embarrassingly. And my heart was still pounding at the thought of Paisley’s… well, what she was wearing. And whether she’d stop wearing it.

I couldn’t be like this after just having been thinking about that name. But I was putting it out of my mind anyway, as far as it would go.

Paisley won the battle of wills, to no one’s great surprise. I ended up tangled up in the bed next to her, wrapped up in each other’s arms, her head on my arm and lying lightly on my collar, and I felt my heart beat slow, breathing in the faint scent of her. And…

“Are you wearing perfume?”

“I think it’s supposed to be cologne, technically, but… who cares? I like it.”

Sandalwood, maybe? Something woodsy, complex, faintly sweet. I could get used to it…

“It’s nice,” I said softly. “It suits you.”

“Mm.” She nuzzled her face against my collar. “See how easy it is to compliment me properly?”

“I love seeing how… good you feel in the clothes you’ve been wearing recently. You’re gorgeous. And there’s this… sparkle you have like you actually know that you are. It’s really breathtaking.”

She giggled lightly against me. It drove me out of my damn mind how perfect she was—small and sweet and precious, pulled tight against me, our bodies flush together. “Better,” she said. “You’re on a roll.”

“Hey—” I pulled away a little, meeting her eyes. “Did you go out dressed like that to buy a pie?”

“No, I shed all my clothes in a bush and went naked.”

“Please. You are the one person that sounds like a credible threat from.”

She laughed, but she avoided my gaze. “Yup. Bumped into Chris Danson there. And you know what that asshole did?”

“Tell me?”

“He didn’t even compliment me! Asked if I was out on a date but didn’t even tell me I looked good!”

I laughed, something in my chest that I couldn’t name, couldn’t give voice to. She was showing people. Getting more comfortable dressing like she wanted, letting people see. Maybe that was another part of the… happy legacy I could leave here. Something good I could leave in my wake.

“Well,” I said, “sounds like he’s on the list now. Enemy of the people.”

“You can say that again,” she said, and then, like it was the most natural thing in the world—and I think it probably was—she kissed me. Sank against me, her lips finding mine, and I didn’t want to fight it.

I wanted her. And I think she wanted me. Tomorrow didn’t matter. Today did. I kissed her, long and slow and sweet, and I let everything else fade away.