Chapter Thirteen
Chapter
Thirteen
Today, prepare for calls to adventure and embracing the unexpected. Your evolution requires packing away the stories that weigh you down and following less toxic narratives for your life. Your boldness will transform you.
A couple of mornings later, April sat at a table by the window in Cloverwild’s dining room and read Madame Andromeda’s daily assertions for Scorpio on her phone. She forced herself not to glare at words like evolution and transform. Trigger words, as of late, but today, they hit a little different.
Daphne fucking Love.
April couldn’t stop thinking about her.
The dance.
The ankle.
The way they’d talked while lying on the cabin floor, like they were two teenagers at summer camp, the sentences flowing so easily between them, the laughter.
The dance.
Somehow, practically dry humping with Elena’s ex wasn’t exactly what she thought Madame Andromeda meant by embracing the unexpected.
Then again…
April squeezed her eyes closed. Absolutely fucking not. She sipped her coffee, then took out her sketchbook and flipped to a new page. Her mind worked—or tried to, clawing at ideas like fingers grabbing at the empty air.
And then…there.
An image, clear as day, though it wasn’t anything she could use for the Devon. No, this was for pale skin, randomly freckled and smooth.
Soft baby skin.
She smiled, just a little, then flipped her pencil over her knuckles once and started sketching, the dining room fading behind her.
It all took shape quickly, the sketch of what she’d eventually fill with warm colors for the wildflowers, the faintest flame flickering against the glass of a lantern.
Her fingers moving as though separate from her, driven on by some force she didn’t understand.
She loved it when this happened, when art and creation and beauty took on its own life.
Not because she wasn’t the artist, or because she hadn’t worked hard to create it, but because what she’d made felt inevitable.
It was, and she was simply the vessel through which it came into being.
She nearly had the entire outline before she slowed down or looked up, the dining room filling with guests as the clock ticked closer to lunch.
She hadn’t meant to sit here this long, but she knew Daphne was painting in the studio, and it didn’t seem right to hover while she created her masterpiece for the Devon.
Either that, or April felt suddenly shy around Daphne, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
“Hey, I need you both to try this,” Sasha said, appearing at April’s table with a plate in her hands.
April blinked up at her. “Both who?”
Sasha tilted her head toward something behind April. “Daphne’s on her way over here.”
April’s stomach undulated, but she squashed the feeling down.
“What’s that?” Sasha asked, setting the plate on the table as she sat across from April and nodded toward her sketch pad. “Looks interesting.”
April slapped the book closed. “Too early to tell.”
“You are a moody little mystery, aren’t you, Evans?”
April laughed, rubbed at the graphite staining the side of her left hand. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“Shocking,” Sasha said.
“Heard what?” Daphne asked, pulling out the chair next to Sasha. She still hobbled a bit on her ankle, but as far as April could tell, it was better. Just a mild sprain.
Today, Daphne’s hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head, lavender tendrils curling around her face.
She wore a plain white tee and loose light-wash jeans, paint smeared on both as well as her arms and fingers.
A slash of green streaked across her cheek, and April felt an irrational swell of affection.
It was paint. On her face.
Get a fucking grip, April Evans.
Daphne met April’s gaze, though, and her cheeks immediately went a little pink. April had quickly learned that Daphne blushed if someone so much as complimented her shoes, but, unless April was imagining it, her cheeks seemed to be flaming a lot more around April over the last couple of days.
She was probably imagining it.
“That April is an enigma Goth,” Sasha said.
Daphne frowned. “Is that a thing?”
“I just made it a thing,” Sasha said.
April laughed. “I’ll put it on my website.” She leaned forward, finally taking full notice of the plate Sasha had set down in the middle of the table. “Oh, hello.”
“That smells amazing,” Daphne said. “What is it?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” Sasha said, sitting on the edge of her seat as though she’d forgotten her own dish. “My buddy is the sous chef, and she lets me use the kitchen here and there between meal prep, just playing around.”
“You cook?” Daphne asked.
“A hundred percent,” Sasha said. “I spent the summer as a dishwasher in a Michelin-starred kitchen in Paris last year. I learned how to make a mean chocolate soufflé.”
“Bartending, cooking, dishwashing,” April said. “What the hell do you actually do?”
Sasha’s eyes went a little dark, her jovial expression faltering for a split second. “This and that.”
April’s brows lifted, and she pressed her hand to her chest before gesturing toward Sasha. “Enigma Goth, meet Enigma Butch.”
Sasha laughed. “I’ll take that title very gladly.”
April shook her head. Sasha baffled her more and more each time she hung out with her.
Still, she had to admit whatever Sasha had just placed on the table smelled incredible.
It looked like a pizza, but not like any pizza she’d ever known.
It was purple, for one thing, with a sweet and savory scent all at once.
Sasha plucked a triangle from the dish and set it onto an empty plate for Daphne, then another for April.
“I’m starving,” Daphne said, digging in immediately. Her eyes rolled back in her head. “Oh my god, Sasha.”
“Right?” Sasha said. “Blackberry ricotta pizza. I think it’s perfect for summer.”
April took a bite too, inhaling the aromatics from the basil as she did so. Tang exploded on her tongue from the berries, and the cheese added a decadence and luxury to the whole thing. The crust was incredible—thin, but still chewy, dusted with semolina.
“Fucking amazing,” April said with her mouth full.
“Yeah?” Sasha said, her eyes wide and hopeful. “I got the inspiration from when I was in Italy last fall.”
“You’ve been to Italy too?” Daphne said after swallowing another bite.
“I’ve been all over,” Sasha said, taking a bite of her own slice. “For the last couple of years, I’ve just been traveling around, seeing the sights, working odd jobs.”
“This and that,” April said, taking another bite.
“Exactly,” Sasha said.
“Where’s your family?” Daphne asked.
And there it was again, that dimming in Sasha’s expression. She cleared her throat, shifting on her seat. “I grew up in LA.”
“LA, really?” Daphne said. “That’s exciting. Are your parents involved in movies or something like that?”
Sasha’s smile was small. “Yeah,” she said. “Something like that.”
Silence fell over the table, and April got the distinct impression that Sasha wouldn’t exactly welcome any more questions. She glanced at Daphne, who widened her own eyes with meaning.
“Do you have a favorite city?” April asked, desperate to change the subject.
Sasha brightened. “So hard to choose. Prague. This little town in Montana you can’t even find on a map. Bangkok is spectacular.”
“I’ve never been anywhere,” Daphne said, sighing. “Tennessee. Boston. Now Clover Lake.”
“I haven’t either,” April said, a sort of longing tightening in her chest. New York City, a little town in Maine where her parents liked to hole up in a cabin every July, Boston. She was thirty-three and she’d never even left the East Coast.
“I highly recommend expanding your literal horizons,” Sasha said. “I’m taking off across the country at the end of the summer myself.”
“You are?” April asked, pausing with her pizza slice inches from her mouth.
Sasha nodded. “Heading west for a month or so before I head out of the country again. I’m planning on visiting some sites I’ve never seen, like the Wave in Arizona and Carlsbad Caverns.”
“So you’re an outdoor queer,” April said.
Sasha laughed. “I appreciate the natural world.”
“That sounds incredible,” Daphne said as she took another bite.
“It does,” April said, her voice taking on a dreamy tone. She cleared her throat, then looked up to find Sasha watching her.
“Hey,” Sasha said, leaning forward, “you’re both more than welcome to—”
But she cut herself off when the dining room went oddly quiet, and the heads of almost every single guest turned toward the wide double doorway that led into the lobby.
“What’s going on?” Daphne said before ripping off the end of her crust with her teeth.
“No idea,” April said, but she got up and headed toward the lobby, just in case Mia needed help with anything.
She wove around other people bottlenecking, but the crowd didn’t thin as she left the dining room.
A bevy of guests congregated around the reception desk.
They formed a sort of circle, but April couldn’t see who was at the center.
“I’m such a big fan,” said Grace Latimer, an octogenarian hippie April recognized from her and Daphne’s watercolor class.
April picked up her pace but then froze when she saw the familiar luggage sitting off to the side—two huge suitcases, mint green with ruby-red cherries printed all over them.
“Okay, everyone, let’s give Ms. Monroe some room,” Mia said, coming out from behind the desk. “She’s here to relax, after all.”
The crowd parted a bit, and there was Dylan Monroe, brown hair longer than the last time April had seen her, ice-green eyes sparkling, and dressed in wide-legged jeans and a cropped T-shirt that featured a picture of a tabby cat wearing heart-shaped glasses, the word Lover printed underneath.
“Thanks, Mia,” she said. “And thanks, everyone, I’m so excited to be back in Clover Lake.” She waved, but then clearly stepped away from the group. The guests disbanded, chattering as they went.