“Yet more than twice the duration of our relationship,” I mumbled.
“Give him a chance to prove himself.” His gaze moved back over my shoulder and snagged. “Whoa. Looks like a morning rush.”
I spun to see a line already formed up front, large for the small town. They looked at the door, little puffs of breath coming out as they chatted eagerly with one another. “Maybe because we were closed yesterday? Aw, everybody missed the cats.”
Deckard laughed at that for some reason. Deckard moved to his usual table to do his job as I started helping the stream of nonstop customers.
The first order was with the town’s biggest gossip and local hairdresser, Tess. She gasped when she saw my hair. “Oh my God, you look so chic.”
“I know, thanks.” I touched the tips of my hair and thought of Owen’s quiet focus as he cut my hair. How gentle and kind he’d been.
I glared at where my phone sat in my bag.
I didn’t think Tess would have been able to pick me out of a lineup yesterday. She dove into questions right away. She said that she heard from Deb at Deb’s Diner (of course) that Samuel Clemens saw me taken to the police station in handcuffs.
I glanced up to share a look with Deckard. He shook his head with a silent laugh.
“See. Not a ghost,” he mouthed. He’d been right. Slippery Slopes wasbuzzingwith Bee gossip. This was my time to shine.
“Yeah. I spent time locked up.” I sucked in my lips and looked to some distant horizon. “I can’t really talk about it.”
I didn’t need to look to know that snort was Deckard.
After that, the next few customers asked similar thinly veiled questions about why I was in jail.Wait a dang minute… People weren’t here for the cats at all and, in fact, were only here to learn some gossip about my time in jail or what was going on with Owen and me.
“You’ve really made a name for yourself, Bee Perkins,” Maybel said when she came for pastries and coffee for her B and B.
“Really buzzworthy,” I said.
She threw her head back and laughed. “Also, loving the new look.” She patted her own hair where my hair ended. “You had that long hair forever, this suits you.”
“I’m just winging it,” I said.
“Oh, because bees.” She blinked. The joke sank in, and she started laughing.
Maybel remembered my long hair. And in fact, the more people who came through, the more I understood that I wasn’t a total apparition.
Hour after hour, the customers kept coming. It seemed the whole of Slippery Slopes had not only heard about Owen and me getting stuck in the tram but that alone was not nearly shocking enough. But the mystery of why I ended up being in jail thefollowing morning really ramped up the rumor mill. Someone even asked if I had taken Owen “out.” And they didn’t mean as a date, they meant, like, murdered him. So silly.
At one point, Natalie, a pretty woman our age who worked for the mayor’s office, walked in with her shoulders set with her typical determination. I’d thought she’d come pick up her usual order for Mayor Sparks and herself, but the second she headed toward Deckard, about two feet behind his back, she stopped, went sort of pale, and left. I glanced to Deckard to see if he’d clocked her odd behavior, but he was lost to his work, as always. It was strange, but there wasn’t time to dwell because more customers kept coming.
The more I told the truth in bits and pieces (it really wasn’t their business), the more I got into this role as being the subject of the town’s attention, at least until the next gossip stormed through town.
And in this town, there was always some fresh drama.
I may have embellished some parts the more times I told the story.
“And so I said to Benny Jr., you can take me to jail, but you’ll never take my freedom!” I held my balled fists in the sky, completing my story, this time to Azi (who came with flowers to apologize and see what happened after I was taken away). Deckard met my eyes where he sat by the door, his blue and green eyes rolling hard at me. I shrugged.
“Wow. You are really something, Perkins.” He leaned in, and the smell of his cologne tickled my nose. “I was thinking, maybe sometime I could take you out?” Azi asked.
Deckard’s eyebrows shot up, matching my own.
“Aren’t you like nineteen?” I asked Azi.
“Twenty-one in April. Aries, baby.”
“Um, flattered but no?—”
