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“Occupational hazard.”
I frown, nursing my coffee. “What is it you do again? Blame the wine for my short-term memory loss.”
“Design but in the tech world. It’s complicated. I’d just have to show you,” he replies, and something sparks in my mind.
“Didn’t you say that the other day?”
He shrugs. “I probably started to explain but got derailed by party games. Doesn’t matter, it’s more of a visual thing anyway.”
“So, what do you do outside of work?” I’m genuinely interested. I know next to nothing about this man, who’s so close to Lyndsey and Grace. “Do you have a side hustle in motivational sneakers?”
He gasps, his eyes widening comically. “No, but that would be agreatname for a company if I did. Might have to start a side business just to use that name.”
“I want twenty percent. I’ll put it toward my coffee shop.”
He laughs and puts out his hand. Tentatively, I put mine in his, and we shake on something that neither of us have any intention of taking forward. His hands are rougher than I thought they’d be, like a man who knows his way around a woodshop or underneath the hood of a car. He has the hard-won callouses of someone who has had a hard life, or a hobby they adore. Either that, or those loose terms, “tech” and “design” are a tougher career than I imagined.
His hand stays in mine, far longer than a business handshake ought to. “How do you do it?” he asks, in a soft, pained voice that aches between my ribs.
“Do what—come up with funny company names?” I play it off, trying not to squirm under the intensity of his eyes.
He shakes his head, all serious. “Survive what you’ve survived.”
“Journals,” I find myself saying, though hardly anyone knows they exist. “Memories and words. It’s all I have, so I make it work.”
His brow creases, his body swiveling on the stool, turning toward me. “Journals?”
I nod and draw in a slow, measured breath, but it can’t calm the rising swell of a storm that’s about to break inside me. “That might be a story for another day.” I pretend to check my phone and down what’s left in my mug. “I’m already late for work and while I’m well aware that I’m the boss, that doesn’t mean I can’t set a half-decent example.”
I throw money down on the counter and slip off the stool, raising a frantic wave to Georgie as I make to head out. She gives me a nod to let me know she has my back, but as I move to leave, Rowan stands. I knock into him, but he’s too sturdy to send flying. In fact, it’s me who narrowly avoids losing my balance, my hand shooting out to grab the nearest thing that can steady me.
As my hand closes around his arm, feeling hard muscle, I’m anything but steady.
“Sorry, I…” He winces, like I bumped into him harder than he let on. “My grandma always taught me to act like a gentleman, standing when a lady leaves and all that jazz. She never mentioned anything about getting in a lady’s way while she’s trying to make a hasty exit. Sorry, Summer.”
I loosen my grip on his arm. “I’m not making a hasty exit. I’m late. It’s… fine.”
“No, of course.” He smiles tightly, and it’s obvious that neither of us believe a word. “But my grandma also said you should say goodbye properly, if it won’t get you a slap in the face.”
I see him coming closer, and my body is rigid with a strange blend of guilt and curiosity. He pauses and, with a shy smile, he dips his head and places a gentle kiss on my cheek, where his last one hit but the blow isn’t nearly as winding. My eyes close on impact, and my breath catches. I tell myself it’s just a friendly kiss on the cheek, no big thing, but his lips linger a second too long before he draws back.
My eyes fly open and his bashful gaze locks with mine. He’s the same color I’m fairly sure I am—beet red—like he knows he savored that casual peck a moment longer than appropriate. My fingertips want to reach up and touch the tingle where his lips were, but I curl my hands into fists instead, letting guilt sprint past the curiosity and the warmth that was beginning to spread through me, and might’ve made me smile if I’d just let it.
The familiar regret is cold, branching out from my heart and growing claws to scrape at my insides, swinging a net to catch the traitorous butterflies that won’t stop flapping about in my stomach.
“Goodbye,” I splutter, feinting around him, all but running for the door. I stumble out onto the sidewalk and march on, gulping down huge breaths that refuse to satisfy my need for air. I’m shaky, dizzy, unsteady, unstable, and the early heatwave threatens to swipe me off my feet and send me crashing to the flagstones.
But I can’t figure out the true origin of my vertigo—it’s not all cold, all guilt. There’s a giddiness beneath it, barely discernible, like an underwater lake in the ocean. And it’s still warm, untouched by the remorse… and that scares me more than a guilty conscience, though I can’t explain why.
“Just get to the gallery,” I snarl at myself, frightening that same elderly couple who passed by the window earlier. They’re browsing the display of the gift shop next door and the sight of that woman makes me think of my grandma that I miss so much. My second gutting loss in as many years, and though I know I lost her long before she passed, her death wasn’t any easier for it: it was just a crappy layer added to a whole cake of shit. But, for the first time in ages, the absence of her stings more than Ben’s. She’d have known how to deal with this, she’d have known what to say to make it better, she’d have talked me down off this ledge and urged me to pull myself together, but as my shoes pound the sidewalk, echoing just one set of footsteps, I realize just how alone I am.
“Just get to the gallery,” I repeat, over and over, pulling out my phone. My fingertips are too shaky to type in the number I need. Ms. T and Cybil are miles away, Lyndsey doesn’t need to hear about a confusing run-in with her brother, Oscar stays out of the Ben business, and Georgie is in the coffee shop with the man I want to avoid.
I guess it’s only when you take an unexpected leap that you realize how flimsy the safety net is, and I’ve just discovered that mine is riddled with holes.
And right now, I’m falling right through it.
6
