Chapter Four
Chapter
Four
Dylan had never worked so hard in her life.
After only an hour, her lower back was killing her, she’d broken two nails, and she was pretty sure she had a blister on her left heel. And on top of all that, she’d made a complete idiot of herself in front of a cute girl.
Several times.
“Oh, god, no, don’t touch the glass part of the coffee carafe,” Ramona said, snatching Dylan’s hand away. “It’s hot.”
“Right,” Dylan said, her cheeks burning red for the zillionth time in the last thirty minutes. The awful part was, she wasn’t an idiot. Sure, she’d never worked in food service, but she did have common sense, for god’s sake, and she knew not to touch the glass part of a fucking coffee carafe. She was just nervous—more nervous than she thought she’d be, more nervous than she’d ever been on Spellbound ’s set—and her trainer’s freckles and swaying hips and overall sweetness were not helping matters.
Dylan lifted the coffeepot by the handle and then faced the dining room, which was full of patrons, a great number of them looking at her, smiling, waving even.
She smiled back but couldn’t get herself to show her teeth. She felt as though she was facing a pit of vipers. Not that the townsfolk had been anything but nice to her, but Dylan had underestimated the effect of Dylan Monroe waiting tables, and how everyone would be watching her, phones at the ready. Laurel had gone with her to the café this morning, but Dylan refused to let her manager walk her inside like a child on her first day of school. She’d wanted to be an everywoman, just plain ole Dylan showing up for a shift, but she was pretty sure pictures of plain ole Dylan were going to show up online tomorrow, frizzy haired and sweating with her apron covered in ketchup and mustard and coffee and honey and god only knew what else.
“Just walk slowly,” Ramona said beside her. “Ask before you pour. ‘Coffee?’ That’s all you have to say.”
“Right,” Dylan said, but she couldn’t seem to coax her feet to move. This was a bad idea. Killin’ Dylan was going to turn into Disaster Dylan, she just knew it.
“I’ll walk with you,” Ramona said.
Dylan shifted to look at her, eyes so dark brown, they seemed fathomless. And freckles. Ramona had so many freckles—Dylan never knew she liked freckles, but god, she did. And paired with Ramona’s long lashes and pert little mouth, Dylan was having a hard time focusing.
Ramona wasn’t her usual type, that was for sure. Jocelyn had been long and lithe, blond and elegant and cold. Before her, there was Jackson Munez—apparently Dylan also had a thing for J names—who had been named People ’s Sexiest Man Alive two years ago with his black hair, amber eyes, chiseled jaw, and impressive arm muscles she used to like to bite during sex.
God, Dylan was a cliché. A walking, talking advertisement for Hollywood dating drama. Everyone knew what to expect from Dylan Monroe, which was why she was here in this diner. To change all that. That was probably why she found Ramona so attractive in this moment—she was simply latching on to the unexpected. Not that Ramona wasn’t empirically attractive—she certainly was. It was just that Dylan had never gone for a non-Hollywood kind of girl. Unfamous. Hell, Ramona probably wasn’t even queer.
Were there queer people in New Hampshire?
Jesus, of course there were.
Dylan shook her head…god, even her thoughts were babbling right now. She had to focus. Had to pour coffee. That was it. That was her whole world right now. She could do that…couldn’t she?
“Thanks,” Dylan said to Ramona, rolling her shoulders back. “But I’ve got this. I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
Dylan nodded, then circled the counter and drifted into the dining room. Eyes followed her, but she kept her smile in place.
This was a role.
Simple as that.
Eloise.
She was Eloise and she did this every day. She woke up every single morning, poured a bowl of hearty Cheerios, pined after a girl she’d met at camp forever ago, and showed up for the people in her life.
“Coffee?” she asked a cute little old lady with bluish hair.
“Oh, yes, dear,” the lady said, pink painted nails resting on her green mug.
Pour. No spill. Success.
“Coffee?” Dylan asked a beefy man with a bright red beard.
“Yes, please!” he boomed. “I loved you in Spellbound .”
“Thank you so much,” she said, smiling as she tipped the carafe toward his mug. He wasn’t exactly the normal demographic for that show, which Dylan found sort of endearing, and—
“What was it like hanging out of that helicopter?” he asked.
Her smile dipped, as did the carafe, spilling a puddle of coffee onto the floor. It landed with a splash, sprinkling the man’s tan boots and jeans.
“Watch it, darling!” he said, scooting his chair back, the legs screeching against the wood floors.
“I’m so sorry,” Dylan said, but stood frozen, no clue what to do. “I—”
“Coffee’s on us today, Hal,” Ramona said, appearing next to Dylan with a towel and bending to mop up the spill. She looked up at Hal, eyes dark and lovely. “Thanks for being patient with Dylan. She’s training. You know how it is when you start a new job.”
Hal frowned at the coffee splatters on his jeans, but then he nodded. “Sure do. Just started a new contracting job, myself. No worries at all.”
“Thank you, Hal,” Dylan said evenly, though her heart was galloping under her sternum, hands shaking.
“It’s just coffee,” Ramona said to her, taking her elbow and leading her away. “It’s okay. It’ll wash out, and Hal usually leaves here with bacon in his beard anyway.”
Dylan managed a laugh, but her nerves were close to shot. It was just coffee, but it also felt like so much more. She couldn’t even handle a simple question about one of the most infamous moments of her life; how was she ever going to remake herself? Become Eloise Tucker?
“Table five’s order is ready,” Ramona said. “Why don’t you handle that? It’s only two plates. Easy peasy.”
Dylan smiled at Ramona. “Easy peasy?”
Ramona laughed. “Well, it is.”
She bumped Dylan’s shoulder then, lashes lowered against her freckled cheeks, like they really were in this together and Ramona wasn’t being paid to be nice to her. For a second, Dylan felt like she’d known Ramona for much longer than two humid and stressful hours in a small-town diner. It felt…
She took a deep breath.
Didn’t matter.
Ramona was being paid, just like everyone else in Dylan’s life.
“Right,” she said, to both herself and Ramona. “I got this.” She headed toward the service window and lifted the plates, fingers strong under the edges just like Ramona told her. She turned, ready to whisk them to their table like a damn professional, when she saw her.
Blair Emmanuel.
Coming into the diner with her longtime manager, Brian Laveaux, looking gorgeous and relaxed in jeans and a white sleeveless blouse and not at all like a sweaty mess covered in condiments. Her brown arms were toned and glowing, her dark curls an angelic halo around her face.
And Dylan meant to stop moving.
She fully intended to stop walking with her hands full of hot food, thought she did stop, but somehow, her feet kept going while she watched Blair smile and tell the hostess they were a party of two before she locked gazes with Dylan.
And just as expected, Blair’s smile dipped, then shifted into something like surprise, eyes drifting down Dylan’s aproned body.
“Dylan. Hello,” Blair said, but there was no warmth in her voice, just deadpan politeness.
Hi, Blair is what Dylan meant to say, what she’d opened her mouth to say, but somehow her body finally stopped moving right then, though not by her own choice. She hit something—some one —and it was like one of those slow-motion moments in a teen movie, when the already friendless kid is searching for a place to eat in the cafeteria and slips on a patch of coleslaw or a soggy hamburger bun or whatever the hell and goes down, food covering their shirt and pants, chocolate pudding in a very unfortunate spot, lettuce in their hair.
Yeah. It was exactly like that.
Because before Dylan could even register what was happening, she was on the ground, turkey and ham and blackberry jam in her lap, fries scattered all over the floor. Beth, another server, was also on the floor with what looked like Clover Moon’s honey whiskey pie smeared all over her chest.
A shocked hush fell over the dining room.
One of the plates Dylan was carrying spun in a circle next to her before stilling with a thunk .
Dylan blinked, her arms held out in shock. She saw phones aimed at her, conversation starting up, surreptitious laughter and expressions of sympathy— oh, that poor thing —even as they snapped photos.
Dylan finally looked at Beth, who seemed just as shocked as she was but shifted into action much quicker, getting to her knees and starting to pick up the Monte Cristo detritus.
“Beth, I’m so sorry,” Dylan managed to say, but then, dear god, a horrible thing started happening.
Her throat closed up, eyes swelling, cheeks aching with the effort to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill over.
No, no, no , she would not fucking cry in front of the whole town, in front of Blair , on top of everything else. She absolutely would not.
But tears rarely listened to reason, and one made a run for it down her cheek. She swiped it away fast, started picking up food and piling it onto the plates. She made quick work of it, then stood and headed for the kitchen without looking at anyone, camera clicks following her as she went.
She dumped the dishes into the bus bin, the cooking staff silent and watching her as she did so, then all but ran for the bathroom. It was a single room, gender neutral, and it was locked.
“Fuck,” she pretty much yelled as she jiggled the handle, then heard a soft oh from a few feet away, a patron holding up a phone, eyes wide, catching her meltdown second by second.
She put up a hand but felt rage boil in her chest, more expletives lifting to the surface.
“Oh, that’s really nice,” she started, dropping her hand. “Good to know even cute small towns are made up of complete ass—”
“Hey, Violet, come on,” a voice chided from behind the patron.
The person—a middle-aged white woman—winced and turned to face Ramona, who had her hands on her hips and a disapproving look on her face.
Which was sort of hot.
That is, if Dylan weren’t on the precipice of a complete meltdown turned PR disaster.
Another one.
Jesus.
She took a deep breath, scrubbed a hand down her face.
“Sorry, Ramona,” Violet said. “I guess I lost my mind a little there.” She tucked the phone into her pleated jeans. “It’s just so exciting! All this movie hubbub!” She turned toward Dylan again. “I’m a huge fan.”
Dylan opened her mouth to tell Violet exactly where she could put her fandom, but Ramona hooked her arm through Violet’s and led her quickly back toward the dining room.
“Thanks, Violet, go enjoy your pie now,” Ramona said, then gave her customer a little shove. Violet went, thank god.
Ramona stood there for a split second, making sure Violet sat down, before she turned to face Dylan.
And that was it.
That was all she could take.
Dylan burst into tears—and not attractive movie tears either. Big gulping sobs that took them both by surprise. Ramona’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t waste a lot of time staring. She simply grabbed her bag out of the break room, then walked toward Dylan and put an arm around her heaving shoulders before leading her out the back door.
They ended up in the woods.
Dylan barely noticed where they were going when they left the restaurant at first. She simply followed Ramona, not toward the main street and the sidewalks, but through what seemed to be the backyards of a residential street behind the café, until they ended up inside a fortress of trees so thick, all Dylan could see was green.
She stopped for a second, once the forest closed around them, and lifted her face to the cool canopy above her.
Breathed.
There were so many shades of green Dylan had never really noticed before—lime and chartreuse, hunter and kelly and sage, a kaleidoscope of green. And it was so quiet, nothing but a breeze through the leaves, birds chirping, squirrels chittering. Even when at a park or on a trail in LA, the city was never so far away that she couldn’t hear its hum underneath everything, like a buzzing in her blood.
But here, her blood just felt like blood. Flowing through her veins like everyone else. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so instantly at peace, so calm and relieved. She felt young again—but good young. Safe young, like that week she’d come here with Aunt Hallie all those summers ago, just a regular kid on a vacation. All the details of that week were blurry—the cabin they’d stayed in, the fireworks on the Fourth, the girl she’d met who was also visiting Clover Lake, cherry-print T-shirt and tears on her cheeks that she’d never explained were the only things Dylan really remembered—but the feeling was still there, and she’d been chasing that feeling since she arrived, the two of them playing hide-and-seek.
And it seemed like she might’ve finally found it.
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with clean forest air, then glanced at Ramona.
“Thanks,” she said. “For getting me out of there for a sec. I’m sorry that was such a shit show.”
Ramona waved a hand. “It’s fine. It was never going to be normal.”
Something in Dylan’s chest sank into her stomach, her shoulders literally drooping.
Ramona clocked the motion, her brows lifting. “You wanted it to be normal.”
It wasn’t a question.
Dylan opened her mouth. Closed it. Ramona nodded toward the trail, and they started walking, a slow amble through the woods.
“I wanted it to be not like my normal life,” Dylan finally said. “You know, people only interested in me because of what I do, or don’t do, or do in a dramatic way. Or they just want something from me.”
“Does that happen a lot?” Ramona asked, her forehead crinkling. “People wanting things from you?”
“God, yeah. Usually just pictures or videos, but I’ve had perfect strangers come up to me on the street and thrust screenplays into my arms. Like a hit-and-run.”
“Really?”
Dylan nodded. “Screenplays, demos to give to my parents, portfolios of stage design—I don’t even do theater, but people see someone like me and think we’re made of fairy dust, I guess. I don’t know.”
Ramona was quiet beside her, frowning at the ground.
“It’s not just strangers either,” Dylan said. “Every ex or friend I’ve ever had wanted something from me.”
“That must be hard,” Ramona said, eyes still on the pine needles under their feet.
“It can be.” Dylan sighed. “Today, I just wanted to be…yeah, normal, I guess. Small-town Dylan.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I wanted to do one thing right.”
Ramona kept her hands in her pockets, apron slung over her shoulder. “So what’s something you do right?”
Dylan laughed. “Lately? Not a lot. I get angry the wrong way. I break up the wrong way. I scroll through Instagram the wrong way—”
“Instagram?”
“My manager confiscates my phone on the regular. It’s a whole thing.”
Ramona nodded, didn’t ask anything else about it, and Dylan sort of loved her for it.
“Anyway,” Dylan said. “We start filming tomorrow and I can’t even carry a plate of food twenty feet, so, yeah, my confidence is a little shot. Silly, I know.”
“It’s not silly,” Ramona said, bending to inspect a patch of blue-green mushrooms that looked like tiny cups spreading over a log, then taking out her phone and snapping a picture. “It’s natural to want to feel competent at things, no matter what it is.”
She squatted now, squinting at the mushrooms and clicking another picture, this one closer up.
“What are those?” Dylan asked, squatting too. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“Elf cups,” Ramona said. “Aren’t they gorgeous? If you’ve ever been walking along in the woods and see some bark that looks stained blue, it’s probably because of these little beauties.”
Dylan looked at Ramona, whose face was full of wonder. “You like mushrooms, huh?”
Ramona laughed and stood up, Dylan following. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Explains the bag,” Dylan said, nodding toward the bag crisscrossing Ramona’s body, tiny red-and-white mushrooms dotting the dark gray canvas.
“Oh, yeah,” Ramona said, hand swiping down the material as they started walking again. “My sister gave this to me. We got really into mushrooms when she was around four. We’d spend hours in the woods behind our house, foraging and searching, then we’d come home and look up everything we found, learn about them.”
“I never really thought about it,” Dylan said.
“They’re just so amazing,” Ramona said, talking fast and then tapping her foot on the ground. “Underneath us, there’s a whole other world going on. Mushrooms talk to each other, help the trees talk to each other. They care for each other. It’s incredible.”
“What do they talk about, I wonder,” Dylan asked.
Ramona laughed. “Olive—that’s my sister—and I once wrote a really bad poem about that.”
Dylan smiled. “I’d like to read it.”
“Oh, no, you would not, trust me.”
“Come on, don’t be modest.”
Ramona just smiled and shook her head.
The trail curved and the lake came into view, sparkling and blue under the late morning sun. The main beach area was visible, a plethora of people dotting the dark sand. Dylan hoped they weren’t heading in that direction.
Because she loved this.
A simple walk.
With a simple girl who loved mushrooms.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something like this. When she and Jocelyn were together, everything was a show. They couldn’t go out for sushi without ending up on Page Six or TMZ the next day, or on some random person’s Instagram. And they never even tried to do things like this, quiet things, things where the two of them became Jo and Dylan, instead of Jocelyn Gareth and Dylan Monroe.
But right now, Dylan Monroe was fiction, a character, and Dylan…she was just Dylan.
She never wanted it to end.
“You and your sister are close?” she asked Ramona.
“Oh, yeah,” Ramona said. “Our mom left the summer I was thirteen. Olive was only a baby, so I’ve pretty much helped raise her. Then my dad got injured my freshman year of college, so I came home to help out. Been here ever since.”
Dylan slowed, tilted her head at Ramona, whose expression was pretty placid. “That sounds tough.”
Ramona shrugged. “I wouldn’t change it.”
They were silent for a bit, angling around the lake through the trees. They didn’t pass anyone, as though Ramona had made sure to take them on the less beaten path.
“What were you going to study in college?” Dylan asked.
Ramona faltered for a second, gazing out in front of her, a frown pushing her brows together.
“Design,” she said finally.
“Really? What kind?”
Ramona looked down, fingered the hem of her pink shirt. “Apparel,” she said quietly, as though she was embarrassed.
“I can see that,” Dylan said.
Ramona met her gaze. “Really?”
“You have that air about you.” Dylan waved her hand around Ramona’s form. “Effortlessly cool.”
Ramona laughed, her cheeks going a little pink. “Wow, I must really be on my game today.”
“I think you are.” Dylan grinned at her, her own face warming a bit, another phenomenon that hadn’t happened to her in years—the flush that came with flirting.
Because they were definitely flirting.
Which absolutely could not happen. Dylan and a normie—no matter how much Dylan wanted to pretend she was a normie too at this moment—would be nothing short of disaster. She flung the idea out of her head, flattened the smile that had sneaked on her face, and focused on friends.
Friends.
She didn’t have any of those. Throughout her entire life, anyone she spent time with fell into one of three categories—colleague, employee, or romantic partner. Laurel was the closest thing she had to a confidant, and Dylan paid her handsomely for it.
Friendship…Dylan wasn’t even sure what that was. She had no idea how to just be Dylan with someone without the Monroe automatically attached. Didn’t know how to parse the fact that Ramona hadn’t asked about her parents or being famous or the helicopter or if she was really going to unleash Killin’ Dylan on Jocelyn’s new girlfriend. Ramona was simply walking with Dylan in the woods like…well, like a friend.
“Hey,” Dylan said, stopping on the trail under a maple tree so green, it was nearly fluorescent.
“Everything okay?” Ramona asked, stopping too and facing her.
Dylan nodded, but her stomach roiled with nerves. She didn’t want to rush a friendship, knew enough that one couldn’t force it. But she was all fire and action, and didn’t always give herself the time she needed to process. Luckily, she had no clue what action was required here, so she just asked a question.
“Can we do this again?” she asked.
Ramona tilted her head. “Do what?”
“Just…” Dylan waved her hand around at the scenery. “Normal stuff.”
Ramona frowned. “Normal stuff.”
Dylan laughed, shook her head. “I know, it sounds ridiculous—”
“It doesn’t,” Ramona said. “I just need more information.”
Dylan nodded—self-deprecation was a favorite practice of hers, she knew, but she didn’t expect Ramona, a stranger, to recognize it so quickly.
“Right,” Dylan said. “I don’t get to do this very often. Hikes. Be in nature. Go…I don’t know. Bowling.”
“Bowling.”
“Or play Putt-Putt. I’ve never actually played Putt-Putt before.”
Ramona’s eyes widened, but sparkled with humor. “How is that even possible?”
“I know!” Dylan said, smiling. “That’s my point. I need this. I think it’s good for me to just…get in touch with me , you know? Not Dylan Monroe, but me . And other people, like you, who aren’t out for the whole Dylan Monroe experience.”
Ramona’s expression went soft. “Okay,” she said slowly.
Dylan took a deep breath. “So…I know you’re doing a lot for me at the diner already, and you have your own life, but could we…”
“Play Putt-Putt?” Ramona said, brows lifted.
Dylan released a relieved laugh. “Yes. And other stuff. Stuff without the whole town snapping photos of me when I get mad and throw my golf club.”
“Oh, god, you’re an Aries, aren’t you?”
Dylan mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”
“My best friend is obsessed with astrology. You’d probably love her.”
“Okay, well, let’s all go play Putt-Putt, then. And forage for mushrooms. And swim at a quiet spot in the lake. I bet you know all the secret places, don’t you?”
Ramona shook her head, but smiled as she gazed off toward the lake. But then her smile dipped, her eyes going distant as though she was lost in a memory.
“Ramona?” Dylan asked. “If it’s too much, I understand. I just thought maybe—”
“No, no, it’s just…” Ramona trailed off, blinking at the lake.
Dylan’s chest went tight. “It’s fine, Ramona. Really.”
Ramona looked at her, eyes searching hers for so long, Dylan was sure she was discovering every single secret, every pretense.
“No, let’s do it,” Ramona said. “I’ll be your guide to all things normal and mundane.”
“Yeah?” Dylan said. “You’re sure?”
Ramona nodded, her motions fast as she started walking. “Starting with a little stop by my best friend’s tattoo shop.”
Dylan’s smile was so big, her cheeks hurt as she rushed to keep up. “I’ve always wanted a tattoo.”