"Pretty sure it was my fault since I practically pulled you through the door. I forget how strong I am sometimes. That doesn't count as a good deed, does it?"
"You're right. It definitely doesn't."
"You leaving?"
"Yeah, but good news: the coffee is incredible today, so enjoy," she said with a smile and a wave.
"Wait," his word was half word, half laugh. She always seemed to be leaving, only allowing him a moment of intrigue in her presence. It was perplexing to a man so accustomed to being the one extracting himself from social entanglements. "Do you have somewhere to be?"
She stopped and tilted her head. He was in regular clothes today, so off duty, but she wasn't sure if he was friend or foe. He hadn't been unkind when he came to talk to them at The Lost Souls House, and in truth it felt like he was there to give them a gentle warning to be cautious. Still, he was law enforcement and there was an unsettled feeling in this town. Something was stirring. She could smell it in the way that the air was busier, a mixture of bergamot and car exhaust, and the smell of the usually slow, natural morning was frenzied.
"I was planning on taking a short nap, then making shortbread and reading a book," she replied. "So, yes, I do have somewhere to be."
"So, not really." That dimple was pronounced and Tilly was right; the man was eye-catching.
She laughed shaking her head. "See, something I learned too late in life is that plans with myself that require little effort and reap a large reward of inner peace are, in fact, the best plans that I should rarely cancel on. Why, did you need something? Anyone else wake up hexed and you want to pick my witchy brain?"
"Are you angry with me?" The way he asked it was out of pure curiosity and concern, not a hint of defensiveness. She was having a difficult time pegging this man. He held himself easily and joked with a cockiness that didn't scream vanity but rather a bouncing sort of humor. He was serious about his job, but also careful with the weight he threw behind it.
She decided to answer him honestly as she stepped toward him. "I'm angry that there doesn't seem to be much careor concern about a young woman being targeted and bullied publically."
"No one said that, Eloise."
"You didn't say otherwise," she pointed out. "Silence is just as loud." She felt herself flushing the slightest at her rising temper. "This world has a long way to go with a few things, one of those being understanding the importance of responding to bullying."
The detective nodded silently, his face serious as he let her continue.
She had a finger raised and a hand on her jean-covered hip as the sun started beating harder against them, her skin breaking out in pinpricks of sweat. The spring air felt like it was taking on a summer heat. "'Boys will be boys' is such a pathetic excuse that perpetuates a lack of accountability and," she jabbed her finger, which he watched cautiously before his blue eyes went back to her face, "what many consider mildly unkind behavior, is often egregiously underestimated and there is an iceberg under the surface you cannot see. Until it's too late," she said. But suddenly a wave of heat so heavy washed over her. She saw the color red in her mind's eye as she felt like she had swallowed the sun.
She paused as her body screamed against it.
"Are you alright?" The detective's concern was audible.
"I," she closed her mouth and tried to breathe slowly, her eyes closed and her hands clenching.
"Eloise," he said, more concern in his voice now. Now, he was a police officer in control and he was in charge.
She was going to explode. She felt faint. That tickling sensation from sweat beading and then trickling made her insides squirm, her hands twitch. Without thought past her abruptly rising body temperature and the vision of her burning at the stake, her hands reached the hem of her cream and blue striped cashmere sweater. Without concern for anything except the sudden panic that the sun was inside of her and she wasbursting with it, she pulled the sweater up, revealing her average and winter-pale stomach to the bright air, not even the sharp kiss of it stopping her as relief was near.
"What," the detective stuttered. "You're," he paused and made a low sound, "Yep, you're stripping in public." Suddenly his large, warm hands, grasped her shoulders and gently, but quickly, moved her behind the twenty-four-year-old rhododendron that was a gleaming forty-foot wall of shiny green leaves; a bracing canvas for its large, fuschia flowers. It was the town's delight to watch it bloom each time this year, often the backdrop of spring pictures, a local commercial or the artistic hopeful's exciting social media post.
But for them, right now, it was the perfect hiding spot where he held her on the few square feet of brick with a wall at her back and the blooming flowers as their cover.
"I feel like I'm being impaled by sunlight," she got out on a gasp. It was just her and the detective in the shade of a beloved town shrub and he was politely trying not to look down. "Ohmygod does the sun have a smell?" she asked, waving a hand in front of her nose. "It's like asphalt and grass burning."
"I don't know what that means," he lamented, his hands tightening the slightest on her upper arms, his eyes desperate with a light of something else she couldn't name.
"Hot flash," she said. Her body temperature now, with one less layer and behind the protection of a town's staple monument from the sun, was cooling quickly and the sudden shock of the hot flash melted away leaving her feeling heightened but without danger, leaving behind something rather soft but loud: humor.
Her mouth was pinched tight to keep it back, but she buckled under the weight as a laugh slipped through.
Taylor froze, his eyes wide and mouth slightly open, his large hands sliding down to her elbows and holding her loosely there.
Then she saw that she was in a navy blue bra with white polka dots and jeans, holding her sweater in her right hand with a detective she had an accidental date with holding her arms in his warm hands, seemingly unable to step away from her, and the laughter being contained burst out freely.
She laughed for the young woman she no longer was. She laughed because she was trying to date and wanted it to be light and easy, because the last time she had dated someone, it had ended with a lost soul in its own way. Why had she hoped that dating this time would be light and breezy?
At this stage of her life?
