"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered.
With a sigh, she picked up the note, reading it with increasing disbelief.
The aggressively cheerful handwriting was bad enough, but the content, complimenting her music, making a perfectly reasonable request about the noise, all wrapped up in so many exclamation marks and understanding phrases that it made her teeth hurt. She could practically hear the woman's sunny voice reading these words aloud. Honestly, couldn’t she just get to the damn point and say what she wanted to say?
And of course there was a smiley face at the end. Of course there was.
Raven looked at the tin of biscuits. Then back at the note. Then at the biscuits again.
She should throw them away. She should march straight over to next-door and tell this relentlessly cheerful woman to stop leaving things on her doorstep, stop being so understanding about everything, and absolutely stop acting like they were going to be friends.
Instead, she unlocked her door, carried everything inside, and opened the tin.
Fine. She was hungry. So sue her.
The biscuits were perfect-looking. Lemon, by the smell of them, with a hint of vanilla and what might have been a touch of lavender.
Raven took one. Bit into it.
"Damn it," she said aloud.
They were delicious. Perfectly balanced, not too sweet, with that satisfying crunch on the outside and a tender center that practically melted on her tongue. These weren't just good biscuits. These were the kind of biscuits that made you reconsider your entire position on whether or not you liked your neighbors.
Raven ate three more in rapid succession, standing at her kitchen counter, glaring at nothing in particular.
The guilt settled in her stomach alongside the biscuits. She'd been rude. She knew she'd been rude. The woman, Annabelle, she had a name, had apologized profusely for the shower incident, had left a kind note, had made an entirely reasonable request about the noise, and Raven's first instinct was still to push her away.
But that was the point, wasn't it? She was here to be alone. To write. To figure out who she was without the band, without Alissa, without the constant noise of fame and expectation.
She didn't need a cheerful neighbor bearing gifts and sunshine.
Even if the biscuits were exceptional.
RAVEN WAS STILL thinking about the note, and trying not to think about the note, when there was a knock at her door the next afternoon.
She'd been attempting to write, which meant she'd been staring at her guitar for an hour while mentally composing increasingly bitter lyrics about people who couldn't take a hint. She'd come up with exactly two lines, both terrible. They didn’t even rhyme. One of them had the word ‘fuckwit’ in it, which she was pretty sure had never been used in a song before.
The knock came again, more insistent this time.
Raven dragged herself to the door and opened it to find two women on her doorstep. One was perhaps in her sixties, draped in so many colorful scarves she looked like she'd gotten tangled in a fabric shop explosion. The other was younger, extremely round, wearing a postal service uniform and practically shaking with excitement.
"Hello!" the younger one chirped. "You must be Raven. I'm Daisy, I deliver the post. Well, obviously I deliver the post, I'm wearing the uniform, aren't I?" She laughed at her own observation. The older woman cleared her throat. "Oh, and this is Gloria Cunningham, she runs the Am-Dram society!"
The scarf explosion swept forward with dramatic flair. "How wonderful to meet you properly," she proclaimed, as if they'd had some prior incomplete meeting. "I saw you arrive, of course, but one mustn't intrude immediately. I know we public figures do like our privacy. Though I must say, the music we've been hearing has been absolutely divine."
Raven's grip tightened on the door. Gods. "Thanks. I'm actually quite busy right now…"
"Oh, we won't keep you long," Daisy interrupted, bouncing slightly on her toes. "We just wanted to invite you to join the Bankton Players. That's our amateur dramatics society. We do all sorts of productions. Shakespeare, pantomimes at Christmas,sometimes we get really adventurous and do musicals. Gloria wanted to do a piece of performance art but Blossom at the cafe put her foot down, she’s mostly our director, and said that Bankton wasn’t ready for painted nudity and shenanigans with spanners and pipes, so we didn’t do that one."
"I don't act," Raven said flatly.
Gloria waved a dismissive hand, her scarves fluttering. "Nonsense, darling. Everyone acts. Life itself is a performance, wouldn't you say? Besides, we don't just need actors. We need musicians, set designers, costume makers."
"I'm not a joiner," Raven tried again.
"That's what they all say," Daisy said cheerfully. "But Bankton has a way of pulling people in. Just wait, you'll see. Before you know it, you'll be at the pub quiz on Fridays and helping with the village fête and probably joining the book club."
"I won't," Raven said, more forcefully this time. "I appreciate the invitation, but I'm here to work. That's all."
