Page 8 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

I grab my bag and stand up, downing the last of my drink. “I’m going to head back over to talk to Maisie. Want to order the pizza? If you text me the details, I’ll pick it up on my way home.”

“Sounds good!” Laurel gets up, too, and starts to walk in the opposite direction. “I’ll see you later. Give my regards to Oliver!”

“Absolutely not!” I yell cheerfully as I walk away.

four

When I get back to the bookstore, I’m not surprised to see that Oliver’s still sitting in the same place in the café, pen scratching along his paper.

“Where’s the other shrub?” he asks drily when I walk by.

I glare at him. “Seriously?”

I assume this is the point where someone trying to be quippy would flash a grin, but his expression doesn’t change. “What?” he asks unflinchingly.

“I’m not sure what your problem is, exactly,” I reply, then immediately regret it. He’s being a jerk, but I don’t need to mirror his attitude back at him.

He raises an eyebrow, and I swear the corner of his mouth is twitching up. “What makes you think I have a problem?”

I can feel anger rising in my chest, but I try to quash it down. He doesn’t matter. This doesn’t matter.

I’m here to talk to Maisie and hopefully get a job for the summer. To take my mind off of what happened with Kyle. Off how I’ve been feeling at work. Off the fact that all my childhood memories, so tied up in this place by the sea, are slipping further and further into the recesses of my mind.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” I bite back, letting just a little bit of my frustration slip through. “Is Maisie back yet?”

He indicates the checkout with a slight inclination of his head. “She’s over there.” Oliver looks right at me, and I feel like his blue eyes are piercing my soul. “But don’t you think you should save that job for someone who isn’t going to leave in six weeks?”

I glare at him. “Let me guess: you grew up here, you feel like you’re stuck in this dead-end town, and you hate tourists, even though our frivolous spending in July and August provides the bulk of your livelihood all through the long, cold New England winter?”

He snorts. “Good to see you have me all figured out after two minutes of conversation.”

“It’s not my fault if you’re a walking cliché,” I say.

He takes a beat, but I see his eyes recoil with something like offense. “Oh, is that so?” he replies quietly.

“Absolutely,” I nod. “The tortured artist aesthetic? Writing in a notebook in a bookstore café, harassing tourists? Hating the world because of some deep-seated insecurity that you work out through the pretentious characters in your stories?”

Oliver just stares at me, then settles back in his chair, startling me with a sharp chuckle that feels out of place given the diatribe I just unleashed on him.

A rakish grin spreads across his face. “And I suppose you didn’t grow up with an OGT sticker on the back of your family’s car? Driving to the beach for a week or two every summer, crowding the restaurants and the roadways, dragging sand into all the little boutiques? Coming back here now in your…” he considers me carefully, “early thirties, chasing some sort of childhood nostalgia to quell the pain of living a mundane, WASP-y life somewhere 20 minutes outside of Boston?”

My mouth hangs open for a minute before I remember to close it. I hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction of realizing he’d hit the nail on the head with his assessment, but, judging by the smug look on his face, I’m guessing it’s too late.

I will myself to flash him my brightest grin. “I’m only 29.”

He bursts out laughing. “That fact notwithstanding, I rest my case.”

“Well, fortunately, it’s up to Maisie whether I get to work here this summer.” I smirk at him. “I can only imagine what your decision would be if you were in charge.”

“You seem like you have a good imagination,” he says, once again expressionless.

“Well, it was a pleasure,” I reply, annoyed all over again. What a pretentious dick.

He offers a mock salute with his pen. “Good luck.”

Giving him my bitchiest glare, I stomp off toward the checkout, where a short, gray-haired woman is jotting something down in a floral notebook. She looks up when she sees me coming.

“May I help you?” Her voice is quiet, but filled with warmth.