Chapter 26 Beth
Beth
The chef stood at the entrance of the dining tent with a pair of silver tongs in one hand, watching us file in. His nostrils flared once, then again. He looked at his sous chef. His sous chef looked at him.
We'd showered. All of us. But the peppermint had sunk into our skin, our hair, the fibers of the fresh robes we'd changed into, and no amount of soap or hot water was going to undo what I'd done to our collective scent.
I was the worst of it. Harper said she could smell me from three chairs away, and based on the chef's face when he leaned in to pour my wine, she wasn't exaggerating.
What I'd done, specifically, was pour an entire bottle of high-potency peppermint concentrate into my mud basin.
Sage had apparently given very emphatic instructions to use one drop to activate whatever thermal mineral properties the mud was supposed to have.
Me? I'd poured the way you pour olive oil over a salad.
I'd apologized to everyone. Three times to Harper and twice to Becca, who'd been in the basin next to mine and had taken the worst of the vapor cloud. Becca waved me off and said it cleared her sinuses better than any Neti Pot she'd ever used.
Everyone else was gracious about it too: laughing and toasting me like I'd done it on purpose. Talia, another one of Harper's college friends, even declared it "the best thing that's ever happened at a bachelorette."
Overall, I was feeling grateful to be surrounded by such great women. But that gratitude kept snagging on a heavy, guilty knot in my chest. Even though I’d told Harper about the scent match thing soon after I told Luna and Maren, I was still holding back the biggest secret of all: the buyout offer.
Which brings us to now. It's just past ten, and the campfire is roaring.
The firepit sits in a clearing ringed by tall pines, and the sky opens above us in a wide dark circle full of stars.
Adirondack chairs form a loose semicircle around the flames, and Maren has arranged a s'mores station on a low wooden table: graham crackers, three kinds of chocolate, vanilla bean marshmallows, and a jar of salted caramel.
I'm in a chair between Harper and Becca, a blanket over my legs, a marshmallow on a stick, and a weight behind my sternum.
"You're going to burn that," Harper says.
I look down. My marshmallow is fully on fire.
I pull it out and blow, but it's already a charred shell, cracked and oozing.
"That's what I call caramelization," I say.
"It's arson." She slides a perfect golden marshmallow off her own stick, sandwiches it between two graham crackers and a square of dark chocolate, and takes a bite.
Around the fire, conversations pile on top of each other. Becca and Talia are debating whether that smudge above the pines is the Milky Way or a UFO. Maren is explaining the precise internal temperature of a properly toasted marshmallow to another one of Harper's friends.
Luna's chair is empty.
She excused herself ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago. Her phone buzzed, and when she glanced at the screen, something behind her eyes shifted. ‘Two seconds,’ she said, already standing. ‘Derek.’”
Looking past the edge of the firelight, I can see her silhouette between two pines. She's pacing. Short, tight loops, phone pressed to her ear. Every few seconds she stops, and her free hand comes up to rub her forehead, and then the loops start again.
I look away, feeling like I'm intruding on her privacy.
"Hey," I say to Harper. "Walk with me for a second?"
She reads my face, and just sets her s'more on the armrest and stands, draping a blanket around her.
We drift away from the fire, toward a wooden bench at the edge of the clearing where the pine needles are thick and the light barely reaches. The laughter fades to a murmur.
I sit. Harper sits next to me. Waits.
"I need to tell you something," I say, "and I need you to just—let me get through it before you respond."
"Of course." Harper turns completely toward me.
"And I should've told you weeks ago, and I didn't, and the reasons I didn't are stupid, and I know that," I say, picking at a loose thread on the hem of my sweater.
"Beth." Harper reaches out from under her blanket, gently touching my knee. "Just say it."
"I got a buyout offer. For Wildflower and Vine." I force myself to meet her eyes, bracing for the impact.
Harper blinks.
"An investment group rep approached me," I say.
"They want to acquire the shop. The whole thing.
The offer covers my loan, and then some, enough to start fresh.
" I'm looking at the ground because I can't look at her.
A pinecone near my foot. A smear of dried mud I missed on my ankle.
"I haven't accepted yet. I haven't decided anything. But if I did—"
"There's a high chance you'd leave Lakeview," Harper says, her breath hitching.
Somewhere deep in the pines, an owl lets out a low hoot. The sound echoes through the dark, and for a few, long agonizing seconds, no one says anything.
"I wouldn't go far, though," I finally say, breaking the silence. "If—if I did this. It wouldn't be across the country or anything. A few hours, max. I'll still be at your wedding of course. I'll still be at everything. It's not like—"
"Beth." Her voice is quiet. "You're trying to make it okay for me before I've had a chance to feel what I feel about it."
The words land somewhere soft and unprotected. I press my lips together.
Harper looks away.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" she asks.
"I didn't want to drop a bomb like this on you before your wedding," I admit, my voice thick. "But sitting out here with you tonight, pretending everything is normal, I realized I couldn't keep lying by omission."
She exhales, long and slow.
"You deserve to make whatever choice is right for you," she says. "I will always, always want that for you. Okay? I need you to hear that."
"I hear it," I say, swallowing hard.
"Good." She pauses. "And I'm going to be sad. If you go. I'm going to be really sad about it and I—" She lets out a shaky breath and looks at me. "I think I need a bit of space tonight. Just to sit with it. Is that okay?"
My throat tightens. "Yeah. Of course that's okay."
She nods. Stands up, gathering the blanket closer around her shoulders like a cape.
"Harper?"
She turns.
"I'm really sorry I didn't tell you sooner."
She holds my gaze for a long, quiet moment. Then she steps closer, and pulls me into a tight hug, resting her chin firmly against the side of my head.
"I know," she says.