Jack looked dubious, and she wished she could bring back that smile.
“I’m willing to try, though,” Calisa added. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
The pause went on longer than she liked. A lot longer. At last, he said, “Well, I can teach you how to fix a porch, if you’rereally up for helping me. It’ll be easier with two people anyway. You hold the wood, and I’ll saw?”
“Deal.”
He still looked uneasy, and she was suddenly aware that they were standing side by side in the doorframe, inches from touching. If she shifted her hand a little bit, would he smile? Or would he flinch? “I’ll just…um…put my stuff in my room, change, and then…um…meet you outside?” Calisa said, hating that she stumbled over half the words.No,she told herself.Absolutely not. No rebound boys. He’s a coworker. Just a coworker.Who happened to have a nice smile, when he decided to use it and wasn’t busy looking dismayed that she was here. That was all. Last thing she needed was to invite more heartache.
“I’ll get the wood and tools.” Skirting the hole, he hopped down the steps.
She watched him for a moment as he headed around the side of the inn. She felt prickles on the back of her neck as if someone nearby was watching her. There was no one there, though. Only the statue. Raising her eyebrows at it, Calisa said, “Don’t judge me.”
The statue stood silent as rain pooled in her stone eyes and cupped hands.
Chapter Three
Calisa plucked the room key from the board and then dragged her suitcase down the hall behind the stairs. The hallway featured a faded blue carpet, a broken sconce, and a bathroom at the end. She could see the corner of a sink through the partly open door. It all smelled faintly of lavender. And dust.
Only two guest rooms budded off the first-floor hallway. She halted in front of the second door. Above the number two was an X painted in red.
She wondered what that meant. In need of cleaning? Not suitable for guests? Condemned for health reasons? Scene of a crime?
She unlocked the door and peeked inside warily.
It was adorable.
Or it had once been adorable, which was close enough.
She smiled as she walked in and dropped her luggage.Looking around, she saw a queen bed with a canopy, a window seat with a view of the mountains, and a fireplace with a stone mantel. Yes, the quilt on the bed was frayed, the paint on the window seat was peeling, and the hearth of the fireplace was stained with years of soot, but it was all quaint as hell. The wood floor was covered by a faded rug with pictures of flowers, and the curtains were slightly tattered lace. A few leather-bound books were lined up on top of the dresser in between bookends shaped like cats. Everything was a little bit old, a little worn, but it was cleaner than the common rooms, and it smelled like the sprigs of lavender that were in little vases in various places around the room: on the bedside table, on the mantel, on top of the dresser.
I can live here,she thought.If I’m allowed to.
She liked that it was nothing at all like her room at home, where the walls were covered in photos of Ethan and her friends, the bed was rumpled and half buried in not-yet-put-away laundry, and her desk was stacked with stuff from school that she planned to ignore until September. And it was nothing likehisroom either.
This would be a fine place to spend the summer, with mountain views and lots of tasks to keep her busy and distracted. Now, if she could only find a way to convince Auntie Zee to let her stay for longer than three days…I can start by fixing the porch.At least Jack was going to let her help with that, even if he did seem less than thrilled she was here.
He’d been perfectly friendly while they were talking about cheese. It was only when he’d realized she wasn’t one hundredpercent invited that he’d gotten skittish. She supposed it made sense—he wouldn’t want to piss off his boss by being overly welcoming to someone who wasn’t actually welcome.
Calisa lifted her suitcase onto the window seat and changed out of her damp T-shirt and soggy socks. After she’d draped them over the back of a chair by the fireplace to dry, she checked her phone. No signal. And no Wi-Fi to log in to.
She’d said she wanted distance from Brooklyn, with zero updates from anyone about Ethan, so this wasn’t tragic. She knew her friends would forgive her for a few weeks of silence. Before she’d left, her best friend Crystal had tried to convince her to drop off the grid entirely for the summer, and now it looked like she’d be doing that. Of course, she still had to call home, but luckily there was an old-fashioned phone by the bedside table, complete with a curly cord.
She reported in, reassuring Mom-Elise that the train was fine, the Uber was fine, and everything was fine and telling Mom-Kate that she’d met Auntie Zee, her room was very nice, and she’d packed dental floss, even though she had no intention of using it until, like, the day before her next appointment—who did?
She didnotmention that the B&B was a wreck, or that Auntie Zee had said she could stay for only three days. Why worry them? “Gotta start work,” she told them.
They dumped bits of advice on her (don’t work too hard, don’tnotwork hard, remember to eat a vegetable or two, call often, make friends, listen to Auntie Zee, don’t leave wet towels in a heap on the floor) and smothered her with love (“I loveyou to the moon, I love you to Neptune, I love you to Pluto, which is still a planet in our hearts…”) until she laughed and said goodbye.
After hanging up, Calisa hurried outside. Oddly, that call had felt more like a goodbye than getting on the subway this morning had. She was acutely aware of how far from home she was and how different this was from the summer she’d planned. Stepping out the front door, she took a deep breath. The air after the rain smelled so—
“Petrichor,” Jack said.
She exhaled. “Sorry?”
“It’s the name for the smell after rain. Petrichor. It’s caused by…eh, I don’t remember. A chemical in the soil that releases when it rains, but I always thought it was cool that it has a name.” He was carrying planks of wood on his shoulder and had a tool belt strapped around his waist. Safety goggles dangled around his neck.
She helped him set the wood down on the unbroken section of the porch. He then contemplated the hole, first from one angle and then from another. There were two planks that she’d busted through. Broken bits of wood had fallen into the hole, and the bits that remained attached to the porch looked jagged and splintery.
