Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Lacey!”
The shriek heard around the world made Lacey Finch jump just as she was lifting her water bottle to her mouth and almost half the contents spilled down her front.
Investing in that poncho was becoming less of a joke and more of a necessity.
“Indoor voices,” Lacey reminded her intermediate jazz class as they rushed through the door. There were a lot of similarities between teens and toddlers. Times like this they reminded her of the toddler class, all excitement and limbs they weren’t sure how to control, accompanied by the complete lack of volume awareness.
“Are you dating Sam Shoop?”
Lacey choked on her water, some invading her airway and some coming out her nose. It burned. She coughed, fighting for air and composure.
“What?” Lacey gasped, putting her water bottle on the floor before it killed her.
“You’re dating Sam Shoop,” Sydney repeated, less of a question and mostly a statement .
Sydney was not the ringleader of the small class of five—that was Aubrey. But her personality was larger than she was, and the other girls used her non-existent filter to their advantage. If an awkward question or outlandish request needed asking, Sydney was the one to do it.
“Where did you hear that?” Lacey’s voice went up at the end with another cough.
“My aunt saw him here this morning,” Mikayla said.
“That’s not exactly proof of relationship,” Lacey countered. “Sam was bringing me coffee because?—”
“You’re dating,” Olivia interrupted. “My grandma heard him tell Edith Nelson this morning at her knitting circle. He said he was seeing someone named Lacey. And then he came here. With coffee. For you.”
Lacey stared at the teenage girls who were staring at her, her cheeks heating up to a flame.
What the hell was his angle? Every time he saw her, Sam had a panic-stricken look on his face like he’d rather hide in a poison ivy bush than talk to her, and he’d never gotten her name correct. Every possible rhyming variation but Lacey, when he’d bothered to attempt it. It was truly amazing how far into a conversation a person could get without using a name. So why had he told anyone they were dating? Was it his idea of a sick joke?
It was on the tip of Lacey’s tongue to deny it when Aubrey said, “Mr. Appleton said it couldn’t be true. I heard him talking to Mr. McMahon in the office.”
Fucking Mitchell.
Mitch Appleton wasn’t her worst dating mistake. That award was bestowed upon Jace Kieffer, musician and professional vampire, both emotional and financial. But Mitch had managed, in one short summer, to land himself high on her list of mistakes. Not so much for what had happened while they were dating, but for what happened after she ended things.
To hear Mitch tell the story, she had pursued him (false), things had been good until they weren’t (mostly true), and then when he’d broken things off (false), Lacey had become clingier than a barnacle superglued to a mega yacht (incredibly false).
Mitch had seemed like a safe bet. A high school PE teacher, he had a college degree, a job, and health insurance. Being with him didn’t make her mind fuzzy or her blood fizz, but those reactions were overrated, right? Every time she’d had that, it had ended in disaster.
Except it turned out that without those things, she was bored. She’d broken up with him in August, explaining they weren’t compatible, and she’d patted herself on a job well done. No screaming, crying, or throwing things. Mitch had tried to talk her out of it, but she’d remained resolute. They could be civil adults in a small town where they’d inevitably run into each other.
She never should have smiled and waved at him. That had been the springboard into the pool of rumors that surrounded her. She knew it was Mitch. But no amount of denial seemed to make a difference. Lacey was an outsider. Mitch had been the quarterback of the football team back in his day. His word carried more weight than hers in Crane Cove.
“We’re not discussing my private life,” Lacey said. “And Mr. Appleton doesn’t know sh— anything.”
She did not need these girls running around town telling everyone she’d said Mitch didn’t know shit, even if it was true.
Lacey went to the sound system and turned on her warm-up playlist to drown out the chorus of pleading teenage girls begging for a scrap of information. Jenna Fox’s “What Are Boys Good For?” filled the room, and she shouted over the chaos, “Find your spots! Warm up time.”
It was one of those classes where she never fully got control. Any lapse in activity, and the girls would try and ask her about Sam.
Teenage girls should be allowed to run interrogations. The level of persistence alone made her want to agree that she was dating Sam just to get them to stop.
At the end of class, Lacey stood by the door, water bottle in one hand, the other raised to give high fives as the girls exited the studio. Gavin insisted she make herself “available” to parents after classes, even though no one ever really talked to her.
Which was why she was surprised when Aubrey’s mom, Monica, walked up to her, the other moms watching expectantly from their seats, completely within earshot.
“So, Sam Shoop, huh?”
Lacey choked on her water again. “Umm…”
“Quite the upgrade from Mitch,” Monica continued.
“I think the only way to go there was up,” Lacey responded. “But, um?—”
“How’d you meet?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Lacey said truthfully. It was a long story. A long, sexy, sweaty story that ended in blank, panicked stares years later.
“Mom!” Aubrey snapped her fingers. “Come on. I’ve got play practice.”
Monica laughed airily, giving Lacey a playful shove. “I don’t know why I signed her up for so many extracurricular activities. Just call me Mom’s Taxi Service.”
Aubrey groaned. “Oh my god. Why are you like this?”
“Teenagers. We should hang out sometime. Maybe you could introduce me to Sam.” Monica wiggled her eyebrows as Aubrey pulled her out of the building.
It was the friendliest any of the moms had been to her in months. And it was because they thought she was dating Sam, which was objectively annoying but also somehow better than them thinking she was hung up on Mitch.
Too bad it wasn’t true.
Not that she wanted to date Sam Shoop. No more musicians. But at least when people whispered behind her back it wouldn’t be about Mitch .
Still, she needed to clear things up and nip this in the bud at the source. Where would Sam Shoop hang out? Where could she confront him without feeding the rumor mill anymore?
Graham and Eloise Thatcher’s house came to mind first. But she couldn’t knock on the door of Crane Cove’s wealthiest couple and say “Hello. Remember me? I helped teach you to dance for your wedding? I’m looking for Sam. I promise I’m not a stalker.” Because anyone who said they weren’t a stalker was, unavoidably, a stalker.
Could this wait until Thursday? Sam usually made an appearance at barbeque night at Cranberry Brothers Brewing.
Lacey plopped herself down in Gavin’s incredible ergonomic desk chair that was more comfortable than her bed and pulled off her jazz shoes.
No, this couldn’t wait. If it had only taken a few hours for the story to get this far, it would be Godzilla-sized by Thursday. It could take out an entire city by tomorrow if she let it go.
Maybe he’d stop by Stardust again in the morning. That was a reasonable place to casually run into someone. Too bad she couldn’t afford to casually run into people. Her coffee this morning had been a financially irresponsible splurge, and she deserved a medal for not crying or screaming at him when it spilled.
The unexpected replacement coffee had made her feel warm and gooey on the inside, like an underbaked brownie. It was why she’d let him in instead of slamming the door in his face.
Next time she would slam the door in his face.
After she took the coffee. Because only an idiot rejected a free coffee from Stardust.
Lacey finished tying her shoes, dug her earbuds from her bag to hopefully give the impression she Didn’t Want To Be Bothered, and grabbed her coat from the hook on the wall.
Under her coat was a neon green note with “LACEY WRITE YOUR NEWSLETTER” in thick black marker.
She sighed and sank back down into Gavin’s chair. The silly little admin things were her least favorite part of teaching. But Gavin insisted. And he’d been doing this successfully for so long that it was impossible to argue with him.
Forty-five minutes later she finally left the studio. The weekly newsletter wasn’t hard, but it was boring, and she never remembered to write down what she’d actually taught in each class so she had to think really hard. And it forced her to make a mini lesson plan for the following week. And as much as she refused to admit it, that wasn’t a bad thing, because her first few weeks had been…less than successful.
It wasn’t a lack of knowledge. Lacey had been a professional dancer since she was eighteen years old. She was bursting at the seams with knowledge. But teaching was its own craft. She envied Gavin’s ease and the way he always knew what to do. Lacey was pretty sure the only reason the teens hadn’t rebelled against her was because she had a Cool Factor. Like a hip young wine aunt with a fast car, except Lacey didn’t have a fast car.
Maybe she wasn’t a bad teacher, but she didn’t think she was necessarily a good teacher. It was hard to tell if the mistakes made were her fault or her students’ fault.
But teaching wasn’t forever. Crane Cove wasn’t forever.
Teaching and Crane Cove were how she was going to get her feet back under her. Pay off her debts. Save money. Start over somewhere with a clean slate and slightly older joints.
Lacey wished she didn’t care so much what people thought of her. That she hadn’t enjoyed that tiny rush of acceptance when Monica had thought she was dating Sam.
She left her newsletter open on Gavin’s computer so he could proofread it before it got sent out. The “as/ass” typo on the summer camp flyers haunted her. Then she picked up her bag and her keys, made it to the door before she realized her water bottle was still on the desk, turned around to get that, then left the studio for the day.
The repeating rain showers that had left puddles all over the street had let up for the time being, but gray clouds still loomed ominously overhead, so Lacey hurried to her car.
Even though she was up to her eyeballs in debt, particularly the credit card kind, she owned her car outright. Lacey was proud of that. She was a colossal fuck-up in so many ways, but she’d managed to make all of her car payments. It wasn’t cute, fancy, or fast, but it was hers. The red Corolla had been her first purchase after she finished her last cruise ship gig three years ago, and when she’d decided to leave Los Angeles for Oregon, she’d stuffed it so full she couldn’t look back at what she was leaving because she couldn’t see out the back window.
That was eight months ago.
The rain started again as soon as she pulled out onto the street, coming down in sheets instead of drops. With her windshield wipers on full blast, Lacey cursed the rain and Sam Shoop. She was going to get soaked looking for him. Because most likely he was at Stardust Coffee or Cranberry Brothers Brewing, if he was in town at all.
Maybe she could let the rumor fester until the morning. What was she supposed to do after she found him? Grab him by his ear and drag him to Edith Nelson’s house to clear up the whole misunderstanding?
Lacey drummed her fingers on her steering wheel, the space behind her sternum constricting and twisting in a painful squeeze. Indecision was worse than indigestion.
“Fuck it,” she muttered, flipping on her blinker at the stop sign, going right towards the grocery store instead of left towards the other end of downtown. Anyone who gave a damn had probably already heard. Rumor-squashing could happen in the morning.
The parking lot of Hudson’s Grocery was blessedly deserted. Maybe she should buy a lottery ticket while she was inside.
Tampons. Pads. Ice cream. Hurricane Flow was on the horizon, according to her period tracking app, and Lacey was out of the essentials. Borrowing a tampon from an eighth grader was a humiliation she’d only wish on her worst enemy.
Lacey yanked one of the half-size carts out of the corral.
Tampons. Pads. Ice cream.
She repeated the list to herself like a mantra. Pay day was Friday, and she couldn’t afford to wander the store buying whatever snacks caught her eye.
Her stomach grumbled.
There’s leftovers at home , she reminded herself as she walked past an end cap full of cookies and crackers. Why did the last few days before her period turn her into a bear preparing for hibernation?
Tampons. Pads. Ice cream.
Luck was on her side because sanitary products were buy one, get one 50% off. Which freed up a little money in her budget to get some nice ice cream, instead of the generic brand Hudson’s carried. Not that it tasted bad, but the good stuff tasted better .
And in the frozen section, Lacey truly felt like the universe was apologizing for her shit day because she could see the little sale tags hanging under her favorite brand of ice cream. Yes, it looked picked over as hell, but she could see a solitary pink container left in the case.
Maybe today wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
A slender man wearing a plain black sweatshirt and a baseball hat stopped in front of the ice cream. He looked like a burglar escaped from a low-budget home security commercial. Lacey stopped her cart behind him on the other side of the aisle, a respectful distance away while she waited for him to make his selection.
She couldn’t be held responsible for the sharp “No!” that escaped when he grabbed the last Tillamook strawberry ice cream. And she equally couldn’t be held responsible for the defeated “Oh, for fuck’s sake” when he turned and happened to be Sam Shoop.
Sam frowned. “It’s not a liquid.”
“It’s the last strawberry,” she snapped. “That’s my favorite flavor.”
“Grab a Neapolitan. It has strawberry.”
“It’s not the same,” Lacey ground out. “Why don’t you get the Neapolitan, and I’ll take that strawberry? You owe me.”
Sam held the ice cream closer to his chest. “I already bought you a replacement coffee. We’re even.”
“No, we’re not. Because that coffee wasn’t even an apology coffee. It was a Trojan horse.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Sam didn’t sound mad, or even raise his voice. He sounded tired, laced with exasperation. It threw Lacey for a moment.
“You told Edith Nelson we’re dating,” she explained, half the wind out of her indignant sails.
“I did not,” he responded sincerely.
“What name did you give to Edith this morning?”
And then she waited, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, for his response. The overhead music, which was usually unnoticed noise, seemed to blare in the silence between them.
Sam opened his mouth, and shut it with a deepening frown.
“Trouble in paradise?”
Lacey jumped. She hadn’t heard Kiki Bowman sneak up behind them, which was impressive in her black platform boots. They made her almost as tall as Lacey.
Kiki smiled broadly at them, confusion growing on Sam’s already befuddled face.
“Strawberry is a good choice,” Kiki said, sliding around Sam to get access to the freezer case, “but I’m a mint chocolate chip person.” She grabbed two cartons, and placed them in her cart. “Any fun plans tonight?”
“No,” Sam answered, slowly lowering the strawberry ice cream into his cart like Lacey wouldn’t notice. “Just getting some ice cream. What about you?”
“Horror movie marathon. It’s like my only night off this week so I’m trying to make the most of it.”
“I don’t like horror movies,” Sam and Lacey responded at the same time.
Kiki grinned. “I don’t know if I would’ve put you two together, but it’s cute.”
“I’m dating Lacey,” Sam said matter-of-factly.
Kiki quirked an eyebrow, and Lacey would’ve laughed if it wasn’t so painfully embarrassing.
“Yeah, I know,” Kiki said, backing up her cart since Sam and Lacey were effectively blocking the aisle. “Have a good night, you two.”
Lacey waited until Kiki was out of sight. “What’s my name, Sam?”
“Umm…” He pursed his lips, looking up at the ceiling before answering. “Casey?”
“Lacey. My name is Lacey.”