Chapter 3
Felix
Ipaused as I stood there in front of the diner, wondering if this was really a good idea.
After all, it had been three days since I had seen her last; three days since she had replied to one of my texts, three days since I had offered to walk her home after dinner and she had declined and taken off as though her butt was on fire.
And three days that I had been turning it over in my head, trying to work out what I had done to spook her off, when it felt like the night had been going so well until then.
Something had shifted when she had gone to the bathroom, when I had paid the bill, but I wasn’t entirely sure what.
We had been talking travel and food and dream destinations all night long, and the conversation had flowed with ease, or at least, that’s what I’d thought.
Only for, all of a sudden, her to tell me that she needed to get home for an early night, thank me for dinner, and rush away into the dark, quiet streets of Whisper Falls, leaving me with nothing but the remains of my cannoli for company.
I had tried texting her a couple of times, but she hadn’t gotten back to me.
Might have been the wrong number, I reasoned, though I doubted she would have intentionally blown me off like that.
Half of me knew that I should have been giving her the space she needed, but another part of me wouldn’t be able to rest until I could figure out what had really gone on here.
I just wanted to see her again, to make sure that she had truly decided she wanted nothing to do with me.
Which was how I had found myself standing outside the diner, staring up at the building in front of me and wondering whether she would thank me for trying to see her again. Screw it, I had already come this far, might as well see it through.
I spotted her behind the counter before I had so much as pushed open the door, and I couldn’t help but feel a grin turn up the corners of my lips at the sight of her.
God, she was cute. Same kind of cute she had been when she was telling me about her dreams to go to London, the shows she’d watched as a kid that had made her fall in love with the place, how she had spent her whole life in Whisper Falls but had dreamt of travelling before.
Her eyes lit up when she talked about the places she wanted to go, and I would have done anything to see that expression on her face again.
And, when she saw me approaching the counter, I clocked a very different look in her eyes. Surprise. She was taken aback at the sight of me, and her head jerked back into her neck as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
"Oh," she blurted out. "Felix, I-"
"Could I get a coffee?”
No way was I going to take up a seat in here without paying my dues. She stared back at me for a moment, as though not entirely sure how to respond to my sudden presence here, but then reached for the coffee pot and poured me a cup before she pushed it across the counter towards me.
"Milk and sugar are over there," she said, pointing to the far end of the counter. I wrapped my hand around the cup and looked at her for a long moment, searching her gaze for something more going on under the surface. I just wanted to understand what was going on inside her head right now.
"Thanks," I replied. "I...are you busy right now?"
She looked around the diner slightly pointedly, shrugging.
"Nobody else in here."
I followed her gaze, and had to admit that she was right. It was much quieter here than it had been the first time I had visited.
"I guess everyone must have found out about those cannolis at Ford’s, huh?" I remarked, trying to break the tension with a joke. She smiled slightly.
"Guess so."
"They really were great," I added, glad to have a chance to talk about our evening together. Because, as far as I had been concerned, it had been a lot of fun. We’d chatted all night, but things had taken this random turn and I still couldn’t put my finger on what had shifted so suddenly to throw her off her game.
"I had a good time the other night," I continued, running a hand through my hair, trying my best to keep my voice casual. I wasn’t entirely sure it was working.
"Yeah, me too."
"Yeah? Glad to hear it. I got the feeling..."
I trailed off, and she looked up at me, where she had been busying herself with arranging the cutlery. It seemed like whatever I had said had caught her attention.
"Got the feeling...?”
"I don’t know," I admitted. "That you wanted to get out of there pretty quickly."
She sighed, cocking her head to the side.
"I told you, I had to be up early for work…"
"I know."
A silence fell between us, neither of us sure what to say. I wasn’t sure if I would get any more of an answer if I went delving deeper, or if she had already made her mind up about the way this was going to go.
"I thought maybe we could do it again sometime," I offered. "While I’m in town. It’s good to talk with someone who really knows the place…"
"I think I’m good on that."
Her voice was low, but firm, as though she knew she would not be moved on this. My shoulders slumped slightly, and I looked down into my coffee, wondering if it might hold the secret as to what I had done wrong.
"Look, I don’t want to bother you," I told her, deciding I would just cut to the chase. That had been my mantra on all of these travels, to say what was on my mind, because I would be out of there soon enough that it wouldn’t even matter.
"And if you had a bad time the other night or I did something that hurt your feelings, you can tell me… "
"No, it was nothing like that," she assured me quickly, her brows knitting together. "I meant it when I said I had a good time. I just..."
She chewed her lip for a moment, as though calculating whether she wanted to come out with whatever was on her mind.
I leaned forward, eager to hear whatever it was she had to say.
I didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t be honest with me, and I wasn’t sure what I might have done to give her the impression that was the case.
"Mia, she recognized your surname when you paid the bill," she explained. "Kingston. Turns out that your family business did some business with her- look, it’s a long story."
My heart was already sinking, hearing her bring up my family name like that.
There was a reason I had been on the road so long, and a big part of it was because I didn’t want to have to deal with the weight that came with bearing that name.
Not that I wasn’t proud of what my father had achieved, setting up one of the biggest and most prominent real estate companies in the whole country, but that didn’t mean that I wanted it to be the first thing people thought of when they looked at me.
"And I...I guess you must get a lot of women who come to you trying to get something," she went on. "Maybe dinner, maybe travelling with you, maybe something else, I don’t know. But I never...I never wanted you to think that I would do something like that."
"Dina, why would I think you would do that?" I replied, incredulous. "I was the one who offered to take you to dinner. I didn’t think you knew something about me, or that you were trying to get something out of me…"
"No, I know," she corrected herself, shaking her head. "I just – I get the feeling that’s what people would think if they knew that we had been out together. And, well, I know that you’re going to be leaving soon enough, but I have to live here the rest of the year, and I don’t want people thinking that I’m the kind of girl who would...
who would be interested in a man from a family like yours for reasons I shouldn’t be. "
"What reasons?"
"Like, money reasons!” she exclaimed, tossing her hands in the air as though it should have been obvious.
"I get that you’ve probably never had to think about money in your life before, Felix, but people like me, we have to.
I’m working here to take care of myself, to support my mom, to put my bother through college...
I can’t risk letting people change their judgement of me. I just can’t."
"You really care that much about what people think?"
This time, she looked slightly irritated at the way I was talking to her, and I realized how it must have sounded.
"People assume things," she replied. "And people would assume things if they saw us going out to dinner again. And I don’t want to deal with that. That’s all there is to it."
"I’m sorry," I sighed, rubbing my hand over my face, coffee forgotten on the table in front of me. "I didn’t mean to put it like that. I’m not saying that I don’t get it, I just hoped that you would have a chance to get to know me for me before you found out where I came from."
She planted her hands on the table, and offered me an apologetic look.
"I’m sorry too," she confessed. "I had a lot of fun the other night, but...I meant what I said. And besides, you’re going to be moving on to your next adventure soon enough, right? No point getting tied down here."
She smiled as she said it, but there was a note of sadness to her voice. For a crazy moment, I thought about offering to take her with me, but I doubted that would do much to salve the uncertainty in her mind right now.
"I get it," I replied, and I looked down at her hand, splayed on the counter before me, just a few inches from my own. It would be so easy to reach out and touch her, and, for a second, I thought about doing just that. But it would only make it harder to turn around and walk out of here, and that’s what I knew I needed to do.
"See you, Dina," I told her, and I got to my feet and headed towards the door before I could try and come up with yet another reason to stick around just a little while longer. I heard her say goodbye behind me, but I didn’t turn to check, not wanting to break my stride until I got out into the cool evening air.
I stared up at the moon above me for a moment, the waterfall thundering in the distance. I almost wanted to go up there right now, head down so that I could blot out the rush of thoughts running through my head.
But it wouldn’t do any good. Once again, my family name had defined me.
I didn’t know why I kept fooling myself into thinking it wouldn’t happen.
Everywhere I went, it was like my family was right behind me.
Didn’t matter where I travelled, which was the first thing I had done when I had gotten my inheritance; I loved my family, but I felt like I was going to be crushed under the weight of all they expected from me, and I needed to figure out life on my own before I came to terms with what it meant to be one of them.
Because it had been so damn easy for my brothers.
Harry and James, they had stepped into my father’s shoes as soon as they had gotten the chance; gone to business school, got their degrees, followed him into the industry to bring the company to new heights.
And that was what they had thought I would do, too, but the idea of just doing the exact same thing as all of them, giving up so much of what I thought made me me, it didn’t sit right with me.
When you came from a family with money, people treated you a certain way.
Expected a certain kind of thing from you.
But I just wanted to be approached like anyone else, not like I had to be handled with kid gloves; not like I might be the miracle worker who funded whatever project they had in mind, or someone they could schmooze for cash or luxury.
Sure, I got why those things appealed to people, but there was more to life than that.
As lucky as I knew I was to have those things to fall back on, sometimes, they felt like they were holding me back.
And as silly as I knew it was to let myself get into such a mess over the fact that Dina didn’t want to see me anymore, I had really felt something for her.
It felt like something deeper than the short, temporary romances I’d stumbled into on the road before.
Even in a small place like Whisper Falls, she felt impossibly bright, a spark I couldn’t quite get out of my head.
Well, guess I was going to have to figure out a way to make it happen.
The comments she had made about money played in my mind, and I wondered if there was something I could do to ease that burden from her, at least. Show her that I was grateful for her company and being honest with me, even if she didn’t want to see me again.
And, as I began the walk back towards the Linden hotel, I breathed in a deep lungful of the cool air, the sky darkening to blackness above me.