Who evenusessachets anymore?
A handwritten welcome packet was on the desk. Of course, it was handwritten. In purple ink with little bees drawn in the corners.
Dear Mr. Jensen,it read,Welcome to the Honey Leaf Lodge! We hope your stay is restful, restorative, and pleasantly pine-scented. Please let us know if you need anything! We’re usually just a holler away…
I stopped reading.
I was not about to be emotionally disarmed by whimsical bee-themed stationery.
Instead, I unpacked slowly and deliberately. T-shirts. Flannel. Socks. Shoved them into drawers next to the lavender like I wasn’t being stalked by cheerful aesthetics.
The room smelled of lemon and nostalgia.
I hated it.
I loved it.
No. I hated it.
And I absolutely didnotwant to think about her again.
Her name tag said Fifi, which sounded like a nickname for a poodle, but she wore it as if it were a badge of honor, like she dared you to underestimate her. She probably had a secret handshake with every tree in town. In fact, I vaguely remember her saying, “I’m Fifi,” in that overly perky voice of hers.
Why so happy?
I pulled back the curtain and stared out the window. The lake sparkled just beyond the trees. Birds chirped. Probably rehearsed harmonies, knowing this place.
Two weeks.
I had booked this stay in a moment of desperation. Cabin fever. Too many questions. Too few answers. I needed quiet. Time. Space. Preferably, all three without some grinning hospitality sprite declaring war on my emotional walls.
I sat down on the bed.
The mattress was firm but soft. The kind of surface that implied safety.
Peace.
The opposite of how my brain felt after five minutes in Fifi’s presence.
I didn’t understand her.
People like that…sunny, relentless, humming with energy…they made me itch. It wasn’t because they were bad, but because they were unpredictable. You couldn’t brace against someone who operated entirely from the heart. There was no armor thick enough for that kind of nonsense.
And worse,worse, there’d been a moment. A flash. Right after she fumbled that line about being in my room later, whenher face flushed, and she tried to recover with something about towels, turndown, andfluffing...
My ears still felt hot.
It had been… funny.
Shehad been funny.
And warm.
And kind.
And sharp.
And my brain had short-circuited long enough to forget where I was, what I was doing, and why I was here.
