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I prepared myself to flip the fuck out, but then someone passed me and then turned around.
“Are you stalking me?” she asked.
“Why are you always running?” I asked.
Of course it was Alivia. Who else could it be? The universe was determined to throw her in my path, it seemed.
“I like running,” she said with a shrug. We’d both stopped moving.
“I was just taking a walk,” I said. Why did I need to explain myself to her? I didn’t.
“The end of the path passes right by the inn. That’s why I’m here a lot,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t figure out why I was so annoyed by her presence right now, but I was. I wanted her to go away and leave me to my own thoughts.
“How has your week been?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. “You don’t have to small-talk me. You can just keep running. I know you want to.” Alivia seemed like the kind of person who jogged in place when a light turned red so they didn’t stop moving or their heart rate didn’t drop.
Yet, here she was, standing here and talking to me.
“Okay. I’ll leave you alone,” she said, turning back around.
“Wait,” I said, and she slowly pivoted. “Sorry. That was rude. I’ve just got a lot going on.” That wasn’t necessarily true, but she didn’t need to know that.
“That’s okay, I get it. You want to have your sacred time without someone annoying you,” she said. “I get it, Charli, it’s fine.”
Something about her saying my name made me break.
“I’ll talk, if you walk with me.”
She smiled slowly. “I can do that.”
Alivia fell into step beside me.
“How are things at the inn?” I asked.
“The air conditioning broke the other day, and I had to call someone to fix it, one of our chefs quit, so we had to scramble and hire someone else, and I found a used condom in one of the beds when I went to clean a room because we were short on housekeeping staff,” she said.
I gagged. “I’m sorry, that last thing is disgusting.”
“You would not believe what kinds of things I’ve found in rooms after people have left.” She shuddered.
“I’m so glad I never had a job as a housekeeper,” I said.
“It’s all part of running an inn. I do anything and everything.” I tried to make my steps longer to match hers.
“That sounds like a lot of work.”
“It is, but it’s what I do.”
“Do you love it?” I asked.
She thought about that for a moment. “Most of the time, yes. But what job do you love all the time?”
I nodded. “I know what you mean. I love my job, but there are days when I definitely want to run away and join the circus,” I said with a laugh.
“If you joined the circus, what would you do?” she asked.
