I pout and lean back against her again.
“Think about it,” she urges. “From what you told me, anything bad from tonight was purely some miscommunication from your past.”
That’s sugarcoating it.
“As far as I can tell, he didn’t do anything wrong tonight,” she repeats.
I scramble for a retort, something he did tonight to intentionally hurt me. Even after he invited himself along, he didn’t expose me for thinking I was going out with Dev. He didn’t engage in Harvest’s flirting. But he did argue with me about our shared memories.
Wait. I look up at the ceiling, trying to remember the conversation.Harvestwas the one who called the colored pencils an accident. Sawyer only argued about being the one to take me to the nurse in first grade, which, according to Gia, was true.
In hindsight, the worst thing he didtonightwas order wine for me. Which Ididwant.
My chest feels suddenly hollow. I don’t know what to do with this information, my brain hurts just thinking about it. It’s like finding out the alphabet was in the wrong order this whole time.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say grudgingly. “Maybe nothingbad happened tonight, but it stillfeelslike a bad night. That’s what matters, right? How someone makes you feel.”
I ignore the memory of the heat of him in front of the hardware store, how my body lit up when Sawyer threaded his fingers through mine, the solid feel of his thigh pressed against mine beneath the table.
Gia’s inhalation lifts me with her, and I gently come back down as she exhales.
“Yeah,” she finally says. “How someone makes you feel is really important.”
CHAPTER 16
BRIE
I can’t stop thinkingabout my conversation with Gia.How someone makes you feel is really important.
It makes sense, like something that should be true. But I felt good about Christopher in the beginning, and look where that landed me.
“Landed me in this podunk town with a serious lack of parking,” I mutter to myself as I turn back onto Main.
At least the Christopher situation left me wiser. Does it really matter if Sawyer was decent at Angelica’s?Onenight?
No.
None of it matters, I remind myself. I’m gone at the end of the semester anyway, and all this is temporary. At least one of my applications to a school in a real city is sure to pan out, and I’ll be gone by the start of summer.
Finally, I spot a car leaving from in front of the library, and turn my blinker on.
I’m meeting Tess at Jolly Jalapeño. She was different at lunch today. Lighter and more buoyant. It made me realizeshe’d slowly been deflating since I first met her. So when she suggested we go out, I thought,Why not?
As I step onto the sidewalk the windchill cuts straight through my coat and whips my hair around wildly. It’s not dark yet, but the old fashioned street lamps are on. If I forget where I am completely, I can admit they give downtown a certain charm.
I lower my head against the wind as I pass the library, followed by a handful of colorful houses that have mostly been converted into shops. An antique store in a purple craftsman, the window basement sporting a neon sign advertising tarot reading, a green bungalow with a sign that reads COFFEE + PLANTS, and a shockingly pink two-story used as a coworking space, which is itself shocking in a town like this. I lift my head to sniff the air as I get closer to the sweet doughy smells hovering around Maddy’s Bakery, even after it’s long been closed for the day.
On the corner is the stately blue Victorian that houses Book Nook on its bottom floor, a staple of Blue Ridge owned by the Strongs. Although it was usually Sawyer’s older brother Will at the register, any chance of seeing Sawyer when I didn’t have to made my insides crawl. I never went in there if I could help it.
Now, I stop to look at the eye-catching display in the window. My gaze falls on a book with an illustrated cover similar to the ones I’ve seen Gia reading. Lavender with little gold stars in the background, an outline of a small town not unlike Blue Ridge, and two characters in the foreground with folded arms glaring at each other.
I’ve never heard of the author, Jackie Pine, but there’s a good chance Gia has based on the books I’ve seen her reading. I glance at the sign over the display:Local New Releases. She probably doesn’t have this one yet.
Mind made up, I step onto the wooden staircase, sure that whatever teenager working tonight won’t recognize me. I’m halfway up when the internal lights flick off and a shadow approaches the glass front door.
My insides turn to ice as Sawyer comes into view through the glass. I freeze, like maybe if I stand perfectly still he won’t notice I’m here. He reaches for theOpensign.
Our eyes lock.
