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“About Hailee?”
My whole body tensed up the second the name rolled off his tongue. A wave of anxiety hit me as I packed down the feelings that were trying to unleash from a simple name. Shakespeare once said, “What’s in a name?” Well, a lot of trauma and heartache, Mr. Shakespeare. That was what was in a name. Especially when that name belonged to the girl who took my heart and hammered it into a bloody pulp.
“What about her?” I shortly asked.
Dad grumbled under his breath and shook his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have left it to your mother to tell you. The woman is always forgetting something if it’s not written down on a Post-it Note.”
“What about her?” I repeated, trying to act as if my mind wasn’t spiraling already from her mere mention.
“She works here.”
“At the inn? Since when?”
“Few years now. She worked part-time while she was in school, then this summer she became the manager after the former one quit. She pretty much runs this whole place since Mr. Lee is getting older.”
Shit.
The last person I wanted to see was the woman who broke my heart and never looked back all those years ago. She was dead to me. I didn’t need for her to have a resurrection of sorts. I could’ve gone my whole life not hearing her name again, and I would’ve been just fine. Sure, I drunkenly texted her a few months back, but outside of that, I never thought of the woman.
The lies we tell ourselves daily.
“It’s bothering you,” Dad mentioned.
“It’s not,” I said through clenched teeth. How could Mom forget to tell me that? Seemed like a big fact to misplace. She was able to tell me all about the importance of organic products and about how the small-town dog Skipp just went through hip surgery, but she somehow forgot to drop the bomb that the place I was staying was the same place Hailee managed and lived?
I doubted it was due to her forgetful mind. If I knew one thing about my mother, it was her love for love. She probably had it somewhere in her mind that if Hailee and I reconnected, some old love story would resurface. A second chance romance of sorts.
Not a chance in hell. Hailee Jones and I would never be endgame. She killed all possibilities of that when she crushed my soul.
“Guys, you must come try this flavored water the inn has! Mr. Lee added pomegranates!” Mom hollered, breaking us away from the conversation of Hailee. We headed downstairs, went out to lunch, and talked about everything under the moon except for Hailee. Yet being back in town and knowing she worked at the inn was eating at my mind. Knowing that she was working at the inn unlocked an avalanche of connections we once shared. Everything around me reminded me of her. Hailee was soaked in every aspect of the small town that raised me. From the candy shop on the corner of Riley Street that we broke into freshman year to Cole’s Ice Cream Shoppe where she’d eat only the bottom of her cones.
Every single inch of Leeks reminded me of Hailee.
She was now freshly on my mind.
25
Hailee
“I toldyou I wasn’t going to that festival, Kate.” I’d been reading my newest book in my apartment for the past few hours since I’d gotten off work, and Kate was determined to pull me away from my introverted ways.
“You told me you had to work,” she replied, plopping onto my couch. “But I just saw Mr. Lee, and he told me you had the evening off, like the rest of the staff due to the festival, and that he was running the front desk.”
I groaned. “Mr. Lee talks too much.”
She reached across to me and shut my book. “Get off your bum. We’re going to the festival. It will be fun! They have all kinds of rides and stuff.”
“It’s a festival dedicated to my ex-boyfriend. Why don’t you see why that’s weird?”
“Oh, I see why it’s weird, but there’s deep-dish pizza and fried cheese. I’d go into a dungeon with all my exes for some deep-dish pizza and fried cheese.”
“I guess we all have our limits,” I joked. I went to reopen my book, and she slammed it closed.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance book, thanks to you getting me addicted. But hear me out. How about for the next few hours, you stop reading about fictional characters living life and start actually livingyourlife?”
My nose scrunched up. “Tempting, but where’s the fun in that?”
“I’m glad you asked.” She stood and walked to the backpack she brought over. She unzipped it and pulled out two matching forty-ounce black Yeti water bottles. She handed one to me.
