Chapter 14
Fourteen
MARIS
I’m alone with my neighbor. I’m alone with my hot neighbor. I’m alone with my hot neighbor who also happens to be the new town doctor the day after I murdered someone.
And he wants me to teach him how to make a french press.
The list of what the fuck is going on here moments could go on forever if I tried, so I don’t.
I stop. I try to be rational and take a deep breath to clear my head when Julian rises from the table and asks me to teach him how to make french press.
I have to put a hand down on the counter to steady myself.
Why do I feel so weird? It’s like my head is stuffed full of cotton.
I feel slow and unsteady, everything is fuzzy. Bile rises up from my belly.
Am I about to get sick?
Fuck. I bet I am. Oh no, not in front of Julian.
I take in a deep breath and then another before I take a peek at Julian. He’s beside me and looking me over with a concerned expression on his handsome face.
“Are you all right? Do you need to sit down?” He puts a hand to the small of my back and I jump away from him.
I can’t help it. I haven’t been touched by someone gently in so long.
Julian’s soft touch makes me think of Brian.
He’d thrown me, tried to cut me and…and, oh fuck.
My face. I turn away from Julian, acutely aware that I’ve been talking to him with a busted lip and bruised face.
I raise my hand to shield my face from him when he comes closer.
“Maris? Can I help?”
“I-I, help with w-what?” I stammer out. Fuck.
How could I be so dumb? The second that I saw him standing there in the doorway, with the sunlight just fucking framing him like an avenging angel, I lost all common sense.
It’s like my brain was sucked out and replaced with a dumber, hornier, idiot version of me that hadn’t existed since before I took up the mantle of the resident pariah and psycho.
The last time I’d wanted anyone like this had been my on-again, off-again, relationship with Billy Wright.
He was a sweet guy, looked like a runway model, a little self-centered but he was okay as far as men went.
We’d dated since junior year in high school and my friends, those girls I’d stayed close with from high school, Minnie, Alice, and Jenn, swore he was going to pop the question soon.
I guess Minnie was right. He did pop the question.
To her.
They started dating the week after I was found covered in Mike Sheep’s blood on my front porch.
I think there was something about me killing a man that dampened whatever had kept Billy coming back year after year, break up after break up.
He’d proposed to Minnie a few months ago.
They looked picture perfect standing on the wharf in front of the fishing boat Billy’s family owned with some elaborate proposal set-up featuring a stupid banner with You’re My Lobster!
in bright, shiny red letters. There were even dumb lobster shaped balloons proclaiming She Said Yes!
Billy had called me his lobster too. It was from a stupid ass sitcom or whatever, I don’t know but the gist was lobsters mate for life.
“That’s why I keep coming back, and why I will always come back, Maris.”
Fucking pretty ass liar.
I’d found out about the engagement from a social media post that popped up on my feed during a doom scroll session.
I don’t post on my socials anymore, that little pastime had lost its allure when my comments started filling with trolls calling me a killer.
I’d deleted all my posts fully and went private, intending to pick back up where I left off when things went back to normal, but that’s the thing.
In a small town like this, people are assigned roles.
I'd fallen from Town Belle to being given the role of Villain. No matter what I did to try and be me again, to be that bright and shiny girl with friends and a fucking lobster boyfriend, they never let me forget what I’d done to Mike.
I think it’s because they know, deep down, that I didn’t need to hurt him.
I’d made my choice and Vesper Point is doing its part to make sure I live with it.
Whatever the case, I’ve given up trying to win favor.
The courts declared me innocent and this is my home, my goddamn town.
If I’m going to be the wicked fucking witch, then fine.
Bring it on. I’ll take that bloody, marred, crown of thorns they want me to so desperately wear and make it my own.
I’ll wear that crown until it shines brighter than the one I wore at Homecoming.
I’ve been fine on my own. People mostly leave me alone and I wander through town like a ghost, which to them, I am.
I’m not me anymore. I’m a memory, only really alive in the newspaper office, but otherwise, a whisper of the woman I’d been before, and that’s fine.
It really fucking is because the life I lived before had been okay but it hadn’t been what I’d dreamed of.
I’d wanted to travel, to live in a new city every year and learn languages and eat food I’d never seen before.
I wanted to wake up not knowing the time zone I was in.
I wanted to be all things and nothing at the same time.
Free to roam, free to grow. I hadn’t left, though.
Not when granny had taken ill. Not when I was the only one she trusted with the newspaper or this house.
Her will had sealed the deal on my life here.
When granny had died, I had thought that was the time to leave, to start fresh and be the woman I’d hoped to be but… life isn’t fair.
I know that.
My future had been stolen away long before Mike Sheep broke into my house.
I’ll probably die here too, buried in Mariner’s Rest with my family.
Maybe I’ll find someone that can take over where I’d left off, but maybe I won’t and that will be the end of it.
Our line saved a precious few decades more.
But even if it’s just a little more time my staying buys, I’m going to pay the price willingly.
For Granny. She’d be so annoyed with how I’m acting around Julian.
I already know what she’d be screaming at me right now if she could.
“He’s an eligible bachelor with a good profession. Good looking too. Marry him and make him take the family name, girl.”
The women of this family have managed that very thing when necessity calls for it.
A daughter has never meant the end of the Martinez line, not in Vesper Point.
I’m not sure how they managed it. I’m not the kind of woman that would make a man bend like that.
I’m damaged, no way I’m going to get a man to give up his name.
I glance up at Julian and see he’s watching me closely.
He looks like he wants to come closer but he doesn’t.
“I could, well I could give you medical attention if you need it. I have some salves that will help, painkillers too.”
My cheeks burn hot. Salve and painkillers. He’s noticed the whole time, he’s just been too polite to let on about my battered face.
“I don’t think–,” I stop myself, my normal response would be to tell him to leave, that I don’t think he can do anything but I can’t do it.
Something stops me from telling him I don’t need his help.
“Do you think I might need stitches?” I ask, pointing to the cut above my eye.
I haven’t really looked at it, just barely when I got out of the shower today to quickly clean it.
I was too distracted scrubbing the blood off me last night to pay attention to anything else. .
Julian hums and steps close to me. “May I?” he asks, motioning to my face.
My belly feels like it's filled with butterflies. Billy never made me feel like this, not in the whole time we were together. That’s why, like an idiot, I nod and take a small step towards Julian.
“Please.”
“I’ll be gentle,” Julian says when he comes close and I think I hear a slight tease in his voice.
Is he flirting with me? The idea is silly.
He’s a doctor just helping his whacky busted neighbor out, but still the thought that he might be flirting whispers to me.
I stay still and let Julian examine me without reading more into it.
I hold my breath while I remind myself this isn’t a fucking romance novel.
He’s not the city doctor who comes to a small town to make the town grump realize the power of Christmas or some shit like that.
I’m a fucking murderer.
My stomach turns sour. I got hurt while killing a man, not some quirky hallmark shit like a Christmas tree falling on my head.
I beat him to death with a candle. My hands start to shake and I clench them into fists at my side and avert my eyes from Julian’s searching gaze.
He might be all business right now but I don’t need to get confused staring deeply into the hot and sexy doctor’s soulful eyes.
“It doesn’t look too deep. It’ll heal just fine, no stitches needed,” Julian says. He turns my face, fingers light on my chin and brushes my hair back from the bruise on my cheek. “The other guy didn’t stand a chance, did he?”
My stomach stops feeling like there’s butterflies in it and drops out of my ass to the floor.
“What?” Does he know what happened to Brian?
Did he hear something? What does he mean, the other guy?
“There’s no other guy. I-I got this on my own.
Just clumsy,” I tell him quickly. I turn away from Julian before he can respond.
He’s silent while I look at the floor. “Of course,” Julian says.
“It was a poor joke. I apologize, Maris, I promise, I usually have a much better bedside manner than this.” He sounds sad so I look at him.
He’s frowning like he hates that he upsets me, hands balled at his sides and shoulders slumped.
I don’t like that I made him feel like this.
I’m always messing up. I’m always making people feel like this.
“Sorry, I’m just jumpy,” I say softly. “There was a break in here.”
He looks up and concerned blue eyes meet mine because of course Julian is concerned.
“Last night? I didn’t hear anything. Did you call the police?
” He moves like he’s going to go for the telephone that hangs on the wall.
It’s an old one with a rotary dial and everything, even a cord so long it stretches down the hall and into the dining room.
I nearly tripped on it the nights my grandmother used to gab on it to her friends while she was having dinner.
I glance towards the hallway and I can still hear her cackling and gossiping. It’s so quiet here now.
“No.” I stop him with a hand on his arm. “No, not last night. It was a while ago, two years ago. I meant that I’m jumpy, that I’ve been a little on edge since then. Sometimes, jokes don’t land right with me. It’s not your fault.”
Julian looks me over. “You’ve been on edge for two years?”
“When you say it like that it kind of sounds crazy.”
“Your nervous system can’t sustain that. No human can.”
“I’m mostly okay.”
“Your body cannot exist in fight or flight indefinitely. Have you seen someone about the trauma? It’s dangerous to your health. Your immune system has to be fried by now.” Julian sounds all doctor right now. The same way that I used to get talked to during my annual check ups.
I duck my head. “I don’t get sick.”
It’s true. I don’t. Neither did my granny.
“There’s more to immune systems than catching a cold. How’s your sleep? Is your focus at work suffering? How about your mood? Snapping at friends and family more than usual? Irritable?”
I flush when he brings up me snapping at friends and family.
There are no friends and family, not anymore.
I’m a fucking mess. I’m an insomniac and sometimes I lose what feels like an entire day.
I go through the motions and have nothing to show for it.
My focus is trash. The newspaper keeps me sane because it helps me mark time.
It’s the only thing I can focus on sometimes.
That and Vesper House. The old Victorian’s upkeep is more than enough to keep me busy, but still…
sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind in these halls.
Like I’m not the only one here.
“I’m doing okay at work,” I pause and then add, “I don’t sleep much,” I say, giving Julian a sanitized version of what my life is like. I don’t want to be a mess around him. I don’t want to be that person. Someone he feels obligated to because he feels sorry for them.
“I’m okay, really.”
“Are you on any medications?”
“No.”
I want to be Maris. That’s all I want.
Please. Why can’t I just be Maris again?
Where did she go?
“Right then.” Julian clicks his tongue and then looks out the kitchen window and towards his house. “I’m going to go get you something for sleep. We’ll work on the rest after you’ve rested some.”
“The rest?” I ask but he’s moving, halfway through the back door by the time I realize it. The back door shuts and the next thing I see is Julian crossing the lawn towards his house.
“He’s fast,” I mutter. I watch him vault over the fence between the houses.
“And strong.” That’s definitely not what I expected from a doctor but I guess he is young.
Maybe he’s outdoorsy or a fitness nut like the Iron Man competitors that come to swim in the bay to train for races.
I watch him for a second more before I go back to working on the coffee.
I think about what Julian meant when he said ‘the rest’ while I work.