I drop onto one of the benches. She sits across from me, the table a deliberate distance between us.
“This isn’t just another revenge meeting,” I whisper.
“No. It’s not.”
The air stills. The lake hums behind us. She pushes a tea across the table, her fingers brushing mine. “Eat,” she says, part order, part kindness.
And I do.
We eat mostly in silence. She tears her half of the loaf into pieces, dipping them in olive oil like she’s done it a hundred times.
“You come here a lot?” I ask.
“In high school. It was quieter. Everyone else went to Honey & Heat or the quarry. I came here when I needed my life to stop shouting at me.”
I picture her at seventeen, the girl who never missed a chance to cut me down, and wonder how that version of her would handle standing this close now.
“You didn’t bring me here for nostalgia.”
“No. I wanted to know if you’d meet me when there wasn't a strategy to hide behind.”
“Test passed?”
“We’ll see.”
We drift into small talk about how she’s just starting at a corporate law firm and the new marble sample I’d received for the shop. The conversation flows naturally and feels comfortable. I lean forward and say, “We should discuss the timing.”
Elaine just nods, like she was waiting for me to cave first. We bend over the papers I’ve crammed in my purse, spreading them across the table between us. Our hands brush when we reach for the same pen, and neither of us moves right away.
When the plan’s sketched out, we pack up slowly, like neither of us really wants it to end.
At her car, she says, “Next time, I’m not bringing food. You’ll have to figure out what to do with me instead.”
It’s a tease, a warning, and an invitation. I don’t answer, but I’m already making a list.
She leans back against her car, hands braced on the metal, eyes on the lake gone gold in the dying light. I should be looking at the water too, but instead I catch the way her hair lifts in the breeze, the half-smile she wears when she thinks no one’s watching.
“You’re staring,” she says without turning.
“Yeah, I am.”
Her quiet laugh pulls at something I thought I’d locked away. She tips her head toward me, eyes catching the last of the light, and for a heartbeat, I forget this started as revenge.
Her eyes stay on mine, waiting to see if I’ll call her bluff.
I don’t.
I make myself look away first, my eyes dragging back to the lake. The water’s gone almost black; the gold burned out of it.When I finally turn to leave, she doesn’t ask where I’m going. She just watches.
I drive home with the windows down, cool air pulling at my hair, her smile still stuck to me like lake water on skin. I check my phone at a red light.
There are two missed calls from Donovan and a message I swipe away without reading. He’s trying. I’m not interested in what he has to say.
By the time I pull into my driveway, the house feels too quiet. I head straight for the shower, washing off the scent of cedar and whatever the hell that look in her eyes was.
Three days later, Blythe and I are at Desert Drip, her hands resting on her cute baby bump. “You’ve been smiling,” she says, one hand absently smoothing her bump.
“It’s the caffeine.”
