Andwhy?
The smile Sadie gave to the woman behind the counter was tight, so unlike the one I was used to seeing. It disappeared entirely when she spotted me.
I leaned an elbow on the counter, angling my body toward her. “So, why are we acting like strangers? Is this a role playing thing?”
Rolling her eyes, she turned to watch the attendant, a middle aged woman with her blond hair pulled into a ponytail, grab a hotel pamphlet. “Apparently, Idon’tknow you,Gene.”
“I told you, only my family calls me that. I go by my middle name.”
“Your family, like yourbrotherthat you never mentioned, who ismarryingmy sister?”
“I’m sure I mentioned him.”
“You did not.”
“How are you so positive?”
“I asked—” She shut her mouth so hard her teeth clicked. “I just am.”
I ran a hand across my lips. She still wouldn’t look at me, not really. Instead, she kept me in her peripheral vision, like I was a specter and direct eye contact would invoke me. I wasn’t used to this energy from Sadie. She’d been quiet in the past couple of months when I’d text, but it wasn’t unlike us to go months without talking. I’d assumed she was just busy, but judging by everything, I should have read a lot more into the silence.
And just like every other time I didn’t know what to say, all I could think about was some random fact that might spark conversation. “Did you know, this place is supposedly haunted?”
She drew in a slow breath through her nose and breathed it out. “I did.”
There was a beat of silence before the attendant handed Sadie an envelope with her keys and described the way to her room and the amenities the resort provided. The whole time Sadie continued to pretend that I didn’t exist.
“Thank you,” she said to the clerk. She went to lift the handle of her suitcase to hand over to the bellhop who grabbed her two smaller bags, but I had already picked it up and placed it on the trolley.
“I got it,” I offered, surprised by how much heavier it was than mine.
She sighed and glared up at me for a beat, and it looked physically painful for her to swallow whatever it was she wanted to say.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong. If she’d talk to me about whatever was going on, we could probably figure out a way to make it right. Underneath my confusion, irritation was starting to bubble to the surface, along with another feeling I couldn’t quite place. But it didn’t feel good.
People disliking me didn’t generally bother me. I often rubbed people the wrong way, but Sadie hating me was like expecting a grape only to bite into an olive.
I hated olives.
“Whatever,” she said taking steps for a door to the front porch.
I followed her, quickening my pace to walk at her side. My emotions were quickly losing out to irritation.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked, my tone less easy than it had been. “Isn’t it going to be obvious that we work together?”
“No one cares about my work. It won’t come up.”
“Are you serious? My family will bring it up.”
She came to a stop at the top of the stairs. Whisps of hair brushed across her cheeks as she turned to face me. We were close enough that she had to tilt her head back, and her soft floral smell drifted on the wind. “Well, your family probably thinks it’s cool that you’re an environmental lawyer, but mine doesn’t care that I’m a business administrator.”
“When you say it like that it doesn’t cover the full scope of what you do.”
“It will not be a problem.” Adjusting the straps of her backpack, she set her weight to one leg pushing her hip out. “I just want to go to my room, and I’ll see you when I see you. It’ll be no big deal.”
I jerked my head to the large building at the end of the island lining the rocky shoreline. “We’re both in The Brontë.”
She turned on her heel almost hitting me with her overstuffed backpack, mumbling, “You have got to be shitting me.”
