I shook my head and chuckled. “I guess not.” I reached out and took her hand. “I didn’t expect you to be there waiting for me. You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that. And you wouldn’t have asked.” She picked up the key and closed her hand around it as if imparting a spell. “You just didn’t think this through. I mean, what it would really be like to be here.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought any of it through.
“It’s settled then.”
“Wait. Jason won’t mind?”
“You saw the pictures. He’s studying coastal conservation in Costa Rica. He won’t even know. And it wouldn’t matter. Evan and I bought the car and pay the insurance.”
“And you’re sure?”
“I’m sure. I know this is small-town America but do you really want to walk everywhere?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“I might run every morning, but after that, it’s all A/C and four-wheel drive, baby.” She held up the key. “I am not as ecologically minded as my seventeen-year-old. Plus, we’re not in high school anymore!”
“Then what am I going to do with all the shoulder pads I packed?” Josie laughed and I relaxed back into the cushions. “What can I do to thank you?”
“Meet me at Perk in the morning. It’s on Main Street, and the scones are to die for.”
“Are you sure that’s all you want me to do? No portraits of you and Evan? The house? Anything?”
“Nope. That’s all. Is eight too early?”
“I’ll be there.”
Josie started to stand and I pulled her back.
“What if something’s really wrong with Shay? What if she’s sick?”
“Stop it! You’re jumping to conclusions.” She placed the key in my hand and stared with a dare in her eyes. I didn’t hand it back. “Now, drive over there and tell Miles you overheard something and want to know if Shay is okay.”
A faint light-headedness caused me to sway. I exhaled a long breath as sweat gathered at my temple and hairline. “I can’t interfere.”
But for the first time in years, I wished I could.
Chapter 11
I AWOKE WITH THE same thought that had lulled me to sleep. Shay was fine. If she wasn’t, Miles wouldn’t be getting married on Sunday and Shay wouldn’t be enrolled in a summer art class, or clomping around in dyed pumps and rolling her eyes.
A morning moon sat high in the sky to the south. I reached for my camera, always nearby, and bent my waist slightly over the railing, positioning myself to get a clear shot, one that captured the full awakening day. This was the moon I’d stared at from my bedroom window when I was a little girl, the one Celia stared at as well. It was the moon we’d walked home under as teenagers breaking curfew, and the one we’d sat out under on summer nights in Celia’s parents’ backyard as we’d all planned her wedding. This was the moon I’d stood under for my first kiss and the one that had lit the way as Beck left my apartment before dawn. And, this was the same moon that hung over San Francisco, the one Simon could see from the deck off the master bedroom. But it didn’t feel like I was standing under the same moon.
Maybe it wasn’t the moon that was different.
With the viewfinder crushed to my face, I loosened my grip, lightened my touch, and focused again on what was above and beyond me, to capture it and take it with me wherever I might go.
I had agreed to a coffee klatch and had no idea what that meant. Not anymore. For me, coffee was room service on a balcony or a quick swig from a paper cup on my way to an early-morning shoot.
I yawned. Thwarted anonymity, an unreconciled past, and reimagined friendships exhausted me. In less than a day and a half Chance had seeped back into my bones. Or it had seeped out of them.
Back in my room, I stepped out of the robe and in front of the closet, again. My habit from living alone. The first time I undressed and walked around at Simon’s, he was taken aback, then turned on. It hadn’t been an invitation; I’d just wanted to choose a dress from a few I’d hung in his closet.
I’d forgotten what it was like to see the same people every day, how someone might notice a repeating wardrobe. Rifling through my dresses I knew I wanted a new look for coffee and for the mall.
I tugged the lone yellow sundress out off a hanger and waved it like a flag.
*
I pulled open the door to Perk. People sauntered out, thanked me, and dispersed as I scooted inside. The room was paneled in rustic wood; the floor was stained concrete. Copper lanterns hung from the ceiling and burlap sacks stamped COFFEE lined the floor under shelves displaying vintage kitchenware. A row of distressed leather couches ran the length of the room. I stepped into line. The worn décor was on-trend and continued to challenge my preconceptions of home.
“Hey,” Josie said. She sidled up to me when there I was two customers away from the counter. “Sorry I’m late. I’ll grab a table—get me a soy latte?” She handed me a five, which I pushed away. “Great! Then I want a lemon blueberry scone too, since you’re paying. Get one for yourself, I don’t share.” She walked away.
I approached the hip-high counter. The barista turned around.
“Cameron?”
“Teddi?”
We laughed. “You work here?” That was a stupid question; he was behind the counter wearing a black apron with PERK UP embroidered in tan across his chest.
“I do, a few mornings a week in the summer. What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have a skim latte and my friend wants a soy latte and a lemon blueberry scone.”
“You should get your own scone,” he said. “Sharing is discouraged by the town—guests.”
He was going to say “townies.”
I watched him pull the espresso shots, steam the skim milk and then the soy, and pour them into oversized matching Perk mugs.
He set the cups and Josie’s scone on the counter in front of me. Then he held up one finger and bent his head slightly as he reached back into the glass case filled with morning sweets. On the top of his hat was an embroidered emoticon smiley face. He looked up at me and grinned, his expression almost matching his cap’s. My left leg swayed as if someone had kicked it. I’d seen that cap before. But how?
No!
Cameron had been the one on the other side of the window, the one smirking as I’d pulled my hair into a ponytail and almost curtsied.
He plated a scone and placed it in front of me.
“A pink scone? Truly?”
“Strawberry,” he said. “It matches your cheeks.”
*
“The barista’s hot,” Josie said.
I sputtered into my steaming latte and placed it on the low table in front of us. Then I smacked her knee.
“Do you know him? He lived next door to me when we were kids and now he lives with his sister in the Stillman house.”
“That’s Deanna Davis’s brother?”
“You know her?”
“She teaches at Chance Elementary. Moved here a few years ago with her daughter. Where’s she been hiding him?”
“You don’t know him?”