Margot, bless her meddling heart, was far less subtle. “You free to take calls? Georgie’s this close to collapsing.” She pinched the air in an annoyingly familiar fashion.
“He’s busy,” I muttered before he could speak. “Marigold’s.” Showing him my back, I pretended to urgently type something into my phone even though I was just having trouble swallowing the lump in my throat. I didn’t have any business unraveling around a man with a girlfriend.
After a stretch of silence, Rhett said, “She’s right. I should keep working on Marigold’s. But I wanted to… stop by. See if you need anything.”
“We’re fine,” I lied, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
The tension in the air was thick enough to withstand an explosion. Rhett shifted his weight, his hand still resting on the edge of the desk. In my periphery, his mouth twitched like he might say more, but Margot’s hawk eyes pinned him in place. I refused to lift my gaze from the carpet fibers crushed beneath my sneaker.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Alright. I’ll let you get back to it.”
When the door clicked shut, Margot swiveled toward me with the force of a hurricane.
“You’re impossible.”
I dragged my hands down my face. “What was I supposed to do? Ask him to pull up a chair?”
“That soundsexactlylike what you should’ve done.”
“He has a girlfriend,” I hissed, lowering my voice as if Ruth’s dusty filing cabinets might overhear and tell the town’s gossips. “Or a fiancée. Or whatever Claire is. I’m not —”
Margot leaned back until her chair squeaked. “Not what? Threatened? Jealous?”
I snatched a sticky note off the desk and crumpled it into a ball. “Hungry. Can we please order lunch?”
Unfortunately, lunch turned out to be two day-old muffins and the leftover croissant Rachel had snuck me earlier. Captain’s was in the midst of a particularly busy midday rush—I could hear the muffled hum of conversation through the floor—and Ruth was too preoccupied to get our order.
Margot and I ate in silence, hunched over the desk. My brain throbbed with numbers, deadlines, and the mounting dread of what the festival might look like if we didn’t pull off a miracle. Sleep was beginning to escape me every night, as I frequently found myself woken up by dreams of a flooded Main Street and a crowd of excited visitors with nowhere to go.
Around two o’clock, my phone buzzed with a text from Rhett.
Rhett Briggs:How’s it going up there? Need me to come back?
I stared at it until the glow made my eyes hurt, thumb hovering a millimeter from the screen. My chest warmed with that giddy fuzziness, the way it had before. Margot leaned over my shoulder without an ounce of shame.
“Answer him.”
“I’m not going to.”
“You just typed half a sentence.”
I set it face down, cheeks burning. When had I done that?
“Accident,” I mumbled pathetically.
She gave me a look that said sheknew. Of course she knew. But this time, she let it drop.
???
The beach lay quiet, gulls wheeling overhead as waves rolled in with a lazy rhythm. Easton bounded ahead, ears flopping, yanking my arm every so often whenever he found something new to sniff in the sand.
I tugged my sweater tighter. The evening breeze carried something sweet and smokey—maybe someone’s barbecue drifting from their backyard. It should’ve been peaceful. But my thoughts twisted their way back to the festival, to Marigold’s, and to a pair of dark eyes that flashed in my mind with unrelenting consistency.
My phone buzzed again—another message from Rhett.
Rhett Briggs:Can we talk later?
I stared until the words blurred. Easton barked at a seagull and flopped into the water, blissfully unaware of my spiraling.
