Though this time, she put a bra on first.
Thankfully, the kitchen was empty, though there were zucchini chocolate chip muffins on the counter. Michaela must have left them for the weekend. Izzy brought two back up to her room, along with two cups of coffee—she didn’t want to go downstairs again until she had to.
When she got back to her room, she ate one of the muffins while she drank her first cup of coffee and scrolled through her phone. Priya texted right when she reached for the second muffin. Oh thank God.
Are you still alive?
If you text blink I’ll fly out there and destroy you
Izzy laughed. She started to text back, but she was tired of texting. She’d been communicating almost solely via email and text all week.
“She’s alive!” Priya said when she answered the phone.
Just hearing Priya’s voice made her feel better.
“Yes, of course I’m alive,” she said. “I texted you yesterday.”
Priya scoffed. “I mean, barely. I need details. OTHER than about the bathtub and the pool.”
Izzy laughed. She’d sent Priya many pictures of the bathtub, it was true.
“Unfortunately, the bathtub and the pool are all I’ve got.” She sighed. “I don’t think I’ve really accomplished anything here. Beau Towers doesn’t listen to a word I say; he’s absolutely never going to turn in this memoir.”
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.
It wasn’t until she started walking down the hill that she realized she had no idea where she was going. It had felt so urgent for her to get out of the house right away that she hadn’t she googled a bookstore or coffee shop or any destination. She stopped a few houses down and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Perfect, there was a bookstore about a mile and a half away. She usually walked way more than that on just a regular day in New York. It was still overcast, but the sun would probably be out soon. And it would be good to stretch her legs and expand her view beyond what she could see from the bathtub.
Not to denigrate her bathtub, her only true friend in the house.
As Izzy set off down the hill, she realized something else: There was no sidewalk. She had to keep as close as possible to the high fences and gates and hedges of the other big houses to stay away from the cars that zipped by her going downhill. But once she put her headphones in and put on her favorite podcast, she sighed with relief. This felt normal, for the first time in days.
When she found the bookstore, she walked inside, then stopped and took a long, happy breath. God, she loved that moment when she walked inside a bookstore. Books were stacked everywhere, with friendly little signs directing you to local authors or signed copies or bestsellers.
A bookstore employee smiled at her. “Hi,” she said. “Welcome. Looking for anything specific today?”
Izzy beamed at her as she looked around. “No, nothing specific. Just…browsing. This is a great bookstore.”
Izzy wandered the aisles for over an hour. She peeked at the acknowledgments for one of Marta’s books that had just come out to see her name and browsed the shelves for other books she’d worked on or read recently and loved. It felt good to see them there. It made her feel sort of at home, like she must have something in common with the people who lived here in this strange place on the other side of the country, if they bought and read and loved the same books she did.
At one point, she saw a book she was looking for, high up on a shelf, at least a foot or so out of her reach. But right next to it was a rolling ladder, one that could slide along the whole wall. She’d always wanted to climb up on one of those. She looked to the left and then to the right.
“I won’t tell,” the woman behind her said.
Izzy grinned at her and climbed up the ladder. She grabbed her book and then turned to look down at the bookstore from above. It was fun up there. She should have done that years ago.