Chapter Two
One Year Later
Grumpy/Sunshine—a romance trope where one character exhibits a sunny, optimistic personality and the other has a more taciturn demeanor, resulting in friction between the two.
I’m slightly surprised when Nathan Hart keeps his reservation. Almost as surprised as I am to discover I really am gritting out a second summer in Rancho Encanto.
Not that it’s all gritty.
Maybe he’s returning because I kept his secret. I didn’t broadcast to all and sundry that A Very Famous New York Times Bestselling Author Who Happens to Also Be Sexy had stayed in my motel while writing a book, and honestly, I could have. It might have been good for the motel.
His newest book released in May, right before he was due to show up the second time, and I bought it to put in the motel lobby because someday I’ll tell the world he wrote some of it here.
I read the back to see if it was set in Rancho Encanto, or a town that looked like it, but no. It’s set in the Pacific Northwest.
When he walks into the lobby and our eyes meet, I have to come to terms with the fact that his return likely has nothing to do with me at all. He seems almost furious that I’m at the check-in desk, which is weird because I’m a goddamn delight actually, and his options are limited either way.
The only other person who ever works the desk is my friend and new tenant, Elise, who lives in the motel with her daughter.
Elise seems to have an endless well of energy. She’s everything, everywhere, all at once. Always with a perfect manicure.
I’m supporting local businesses, she says whenever she shows up with a new sparkling set of nails.
Elise is the reason this summer started to feel possible. She moved in at the beginning of January, and I hired her to help me in February. She used to work full-time at Get Your Kicks Diner, but working at the motel gives her better hours and keeps her close to her daughter, and she’s given me an emotional link I didn’t know I was missing.
A reason to stay that isn’t just ... it was the place I ran away to.
I mark him as checked in, and I take out the key. This time I set it on the counter in front of him. He puts his hand over the top of it, and I can’t help but notice how big his hand is.
I haven’t felt anything like electricity since the last time I saw him. I’ve been working, and I’ve been happy—mostly.
I’m starting to feel more connected with people in town. I’m getting involved in different community organization efforts and small-business coalitions.
I don’t need electricity. I’ve disavowed it, in fact.
But looking at his hand makes me miss it.
Before he can leave, I take out my printed handout and press it onto the counter with purpose. “This is general information about Rancho Encanto, including restaurants that offer delivery.” He stares at me blankly. “And this”—I take out another paper and put it on top of the other—“is the itinerary for the week. A new one will be available in the office every Sunday and will offer information on events happening at the Pink Flamingo.”
“Do I have to take those?” he asks.
I want to say yes. To see what he’ll do. Unfortunately, I’m not that wedded to testing him, and also I’m supposed to be engaged in customer service, which means behaving in a manner that suggests the customer is always right, even when the customer is being silly.
Now, I’m also the owner of the motel, so I can do whatever I want. I can disenfranchise a customer if I feel like it, but I really shouldn’t disenfranchise a famous customer whose stay last year was very helpful to me the whole following year and whose repeated business would be a big help into the next year.
So I don’t say he has to. Instead, I smile and pull them back. “Of course not.”
He turns and walks out of the lobby, leaving me there feeling ...
Affected.
I don’t indulge myself. I remember a conversation I had with Alice—one of my nonagenarian long-term residents—just the other day.
Alice was married for fifty-seven years. She’s been widowed now for twenty. A couple of months ago I asked her if she’d ever marry again.
She’d smiled, serene, her chin-length white hair ruffling in the breeze. “No.”
“Because you loved Marty so much?”
She’d laughed. “I did love him. But that isn’t why. We married so young, we were flexible. Like saplings. Two young trees who bent around each other as they grew. Well, I’m a mighty oak now, Amelia. And I can’t bend. Not again. Not for anyone else.”
Alice is broad in all ways. Her smile is broad, her shoulders are broad, and so are her gestures. Age hasn’t shrunk her or made her demure. I want to claim that energy for myself without waiting sixty years to do it.
I claim it now.
I get my word count for the day in the comfort of the lobby, fielding the occasional guest request, and once the sun starts to go down, I head into the courtyard, where most of my long-term residents have assembled for their evening social.
In addition to Elise and Alice, there’s also ninety-one-year-old Ruth Moore, who told me that back in her cocktail waitress days she’d had to hide a knife in her girdle to keep handsy men in check. She’s still petite and feline, her movements as precise and cutting as her dark gaze.
Then there’s Albert Feynman, who is a playwright, or so he says. His hair is always slicked down, his glasses black framed and thick. He has a rotating collection of pastel button-up shirts, all with small embroidered palm trees on them. He’s always a little indignant that I earn money writing down-market smut , while he can’t sell his masterpieces.
I’m not entirely convinced he isn’t on the run from the law and the whole frustrated playwright thing isn’t a shtick.
Mostly because that’s what Ruth told me one night while giving me a hard candy from her purse. I have no reason to doubt her. It gives me something interesting to think about while I clean out the pool, and I’m always looking for something interesting to think about when I clean out the pool.
Albert is nothing if not snide about genre romances, and while it annoys me, fighting with him about it gives me life.
I actually do like Albert, even if sometimes I’m not in the mood for disapproving eyebrows and snide asides.
I am always in the mood when he’s being snide about others, of course.
All my long-term residents—except Elise and Emma—are over sixty. There’s also Jonathan and Joseph Stevens-Fielding, and the cribbage ladies—Lydia, Wilma, and Gladys, who I think of as my personal Golden Girls.
I try not to let myself get roped into cribbage games because they destroy me every time without mercy, and sometimes they play for money, and frankly I haven’t got any extra to lose.
The motel is my life, and it pays for itself almost entirely. My books pay for me, modestly. Somehow it all fits together, even if it’s a bit rickety.
I definitely don’t need to lose money to some canny old ladies who will only spend it on booze and cigarettes. I don’t feel bad thinking this because I’ll tell them to their darling faces.
“You’ll only spend your winnings on booze and cigarettes,” I say as I settle at the table, full from our barbecue dinner and a little sweaty from the lingering heat in the air. The sun is behind the mountains now, and it’s finally starting to cool down.
“I am shocked, Amelia,” says Wilma, her southern accent suddenly coming on much thicker than usual. “I am a lady.”
I’m powerless against them. They’re too cute. I love them too much.
I’ve spent the past year making a family here, and they’re certainly better than any of the family I’ve left behind. I decide to join, resigned to losing my hair salon budget.
It’s not a big budget. I’ve scaled back. I used to get my hair cut and dyed every six weeks. My natural hair color is a very dull brown (my mother calls it that), and Chris called it mousy . I didn’t want to be a mouse in LA. I wanted to be glossy. I wanted to stand out. Even though I never had aspirations of being in front of the camera, I knew that my looks mattered.
The role of Amelia in LA was played by a fancier version of me.
But now my looks only matter to me, and I don’t mind mousy, I decided.
The game immediately becomes hostile in the best way, with Gladys hurling insults at Wilma, and Lydia and I hooting with laughter.
Then I hear a door open. I look and see Nathan Hart walking out of room 32. He must be having an emergency, because if he leaves the motel, he certainly has never done so while we’re sitting out here.
He doesn’t seem bothered or seem to notice as he locks the door behind him.
“Oh, the handsome man is back!” Lydia says, her eyes going wide.
Lydia manages to look young and innocent despite being eighty-seven. I don’t know how she does it.
“If I were younger . . . ,” Gladys begins.
“I don’t need to be younger,” Wilma says, squaring up her shoulders in a way that emphasizes her assets. “I just need him to have mature taste.”
It takes me a second to realize they’re talking about Nathan. And his hotness. Which is apparently a universal thing, regardless of age.
“ Amelia is just the right age,” Lydia muses, that innocent tone not seeming so innocent to me now.
“Amelia runs the motel,” I say, “and therefore can’t fraternize with guests.” Guests who are famous authors and who also hate me .
Hate might be a strong word. Maybe. But he certainly doesn’t like me or want to be charmed by me in any way.
Wilma shuffles the cards in her hands. “What’s this , then, sugar?”
“You know what I mean!” I hiss, looking back over at Nathan, who is now headed down the path that will take him through the courtyard and right past—
“Excuse me, darlin’,” Wilma calls over to Nathan. “Could you help us with something?”
They all like to run their mouths, but Wilma will run it loudly and without shame. I should have known she’d cause me trouble one day.
Nathan looks ... caught in a way I certainly haven’t seen before. Apparently even surly hermits are powerless in the face of requests made by octogenarians. He starts to move in our direction, and I’m at once filled with horror and relief. Relief that he’s a decent human being—as I do think there’s a level of callousness you have to carry to ignore a woman like Wilma—and horror since I never know what to do around him, and I feel that particular brand of not knowing reads as exactly what it is: unwilling attraction.
I don’t have experience with this, and I don’t like it.
Mostly because there’s no ... this . I think he’s attractive, but I’m never going to do anything about it, mainly because he has caution tape all around him, but also I’m not supposed to be thinking about men right now.
“We don’t have a problem,” I whisper as he begins to walk closer to us.
“I’ll think of something,” Wilma says out of the side of her mouth, then brightens. “We need your help fixing the string of lights!” She shouts this, as if suddenly hit with a stroke of brilliance.
She’s lucky it wasn’t an actual stroke. I’m not quite so lucky.
Nathan looks up, and so do the rest of us, and indeed, the string of lights above us is twisted and crossed with the one next to it.
He approaches, and I freeze like a meerkat sensing danger. He looks at me, and our eyes meet, and I think maybe it’s time for me to introduce myself. Then I wonder if out here in the dim light he even recognizes me as the woman from the front desk. I’m mousy brown, after all. While I’m okay with this, I also accept that I don’t stand out.
So I don’t say anything even though he’s looking right at me, and when he looks away, it’s a relief. He reaches up over the table with ease and uncrosses the light string, and I can’t help but notice the way his T-shirt separates from the waistband of his jeans and shows just a little bit of skin.
Then in a moment, he’s done. He leans back, and the air rushes from my lungs in a gust. I’m still a little dizzy when he nods to Wilma. “Better?”
“Yes, very.” She bats her eyes like the coquette she is. “Thank you.”
He turns to walk away, and Lydia chuckles and says under her breath, “Hate to see you go, love to watch you leave.”
I turn to her sharply. “Lydia!”
“What?” she asks, overpronouncing the h in the word. “It’s true.”
“At our age we don’t get embarrassed if we’re caught leering,” Gladys says, her voice deep and no-nonsense. “First of all, no one thinks that’s what we’re doing. Old women couldn’t possibly be sexual. Us sweet old dears.”
“Second,” says Wilma, “even if they did ...”
“Who cares?” Lydia adds cheerfully.
“We’re past the age of caring what anyone thinks,” Gladys says.
“I want that,” I say. “I want to bottle that and make it mine.”
“Sorry, dear,” says Gladys. “I think it’s a thing that takes time, gray hair, wrinkles, heartbreaks, and all kinds of moments when you cared too much. Then one day you realize ... it never got you anywhere you wanted to go. The people who only want you when you bend and twist to suit them don’t stay anyway, and the ones who want you as you are settle in, and so do you.”
I’m far too familiar with people who don’t stay when you can’t bend. I’m much more familiar with heartbreak than they know.
But I left it behind me on purpose. Speaking it out loud would bring it here, and I’ve never wanted that.
“Settle into what?” I ask.
“Yourself.”
That is what I’m trying to do. It’s why I’ve taken my vow of celibacy and all of that.
It hasn’t bothered me once in all this time. It shouldn’t be bothering me now.
It’s just ... him. And he’s a problem I’m having trouble solving.
I pour the need for romance into my writing. I’m unfailingly cheerful in the face of Nathan’s lack of friendliness.
I’m also nosy, though. I tell myself it’s a side effect of being a writer. I always want to know about the inner workings of the people around me. I write intimate details for a living, and I’m curious—endlessly so—about the intimate details of people’s lives.
What does he do for release when he comes here?
He has the face of a god and the body of ... well, also a god, from what I can tell. Does he really spend the summers in total celibate monkhood?
It’s a double standard, I guess, to think that he wouldn’t. I’ve been celibate for two years, though I have circumstances.
I wonder about him more than I should. When I see the lights on in his room, glowing through his curtains, as I walk back to mine at night.
Even worse, I wonder about him when I get into the shower. When I get into bed.
My internal monologue isn’t passing the Bechdel Test, and I’d love to blame my romance-writing brain—he’s physically hero material, after all. I fear it’s more to do with the fact he’s hot, and I’m only human.
He’s also a famous, interesting writer, which means I also fear I’m giving a lot of space to his eccentricities because they’re potentially artistic, and I find that fascinating.
I’ve never been particularly susceptible to brooding artistic men. I was drawn to Chris because he was an extrovert. He could work a room, make people laugh and smile with ease. I live more in my head, and he always seemed to be in the present moment.
I never wanted to be with someone like me. I spend too much time thinking, too much time observing things around me rather than just living the things that are happening.
One thing that does bring me nicely into the moment is the giant shipment of decorations I get one afternoon. It’s warm enough that I have to wait until evening to get out the parrot string lights, flamingo lawn ornaments, and magenta lounge chairs, but once the sun starts going down, I attack my new project with the kind of focus I’ve been giving to Nathan.
Wilma, Lydia, and Gladys arrive at the pool area in all their state. Wilma in glitter, wearing jewelry and with her hair wrapped up in a bathing cap; Lydia in a baby-pink suit with a skirt; and Gladys all in black. I watch as the three of them enter the pool, then go back to planting flamingos in the white rock borders around the Astroturf lawn. Landscaping is a losing battle in the desert, and water is too precious to waste.
Rocks, fake grass, and plastic flamingos are a great zero-moisture alternative.
I’m focusing on the task at hand when the door to the lobby opens into the courtyard and a delivery driver walks out, holding a paper bag.
“Room thirty-two?” he asks when he sees me standing there bent over a flamingo.
“Oh, yes, just ... I’ll get it.” I walk over to him and take the bag, and I tell myself I’m being helpful and not angling to see Nathan. “Thank you.”
I head toward Nathan’s room and realize my heart is pounding a lot harder than it should be as I raise my hand and knock.
The door opens, and I see a momentary expression of surprise on his face—probably when he notices it’s me and not the delivery driver—as he reaches toward the bag.
“Oh! Help!”
We both move toward the scream as soon as we hear it. I whirl around and look toward the pool, while Nathan is half out the door, both of our hands still on the take-out bag.
Wilma is screaming like she’s in a horror movie, while Lydia is waving her arms. Gladys is looking at them with a hard stare, not engaging in hysterics of any kind.
Nathan lets go of the food and passes me up as he strides to the poolside, with me jogging behind.
“Oh, please help me, darlin’,” Wilma says, looking forlornly down into the water. “The filter reached out and grabbed hold of my necklace, and it was a special piece that I got from my Lonny, bless his dead, deceased heart .”
Before I can fully take in what she’s saying, Nathan strips his shirt off and jumps into the pool.
I know how I would write that .
His muscles literally ripple. Droplets of water follow the lines of each well-defined ridge. I’ve wondered what he does in his room at night, and the answer appears to be sit-ups.
He’s glorious. A stereotypical representation of ideal masculinity.
Most importantly, he’s being heroic.
Though I find his abs to be a point of importance as well.
He ducks under the water, and I watch, as do Wilma, Lydia, and Gladys, while he reaches into the filter. He surfaces a moment later with the necklace glittering in his hand.
“Oh, thank you, darlin’!” Wilma says. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost it.”
“Why did you wear it swimming?” As I ask the question, I realize just how little sense it makes that she would put on a precious piece of jewelry to swim.
“It makes me feel close to him.” Wilma is looking at me out of the corner of her eye like I’m not understanding something.
“And ... you value that closeness while in the pool?”
“We used to do calisthenics in the pool every morning. Until he died,” she says, deadpan.
“I . . . Okay.”
Wilma moves to Nathan and grips his arm. “Thank you, again. Darlin’, make sure you thank him!”
“Thank you,” I say.
He looks at me as he plants his hands on the side of the pool and hauls himself out. “No problem.”
I’m too stunned to speak as I watch his muscles shift and bunch while he stands himself up, as I watch the water sluice down his chest and ... well. Down.
He reaches out, and I realize I’m still holding his food, so I hand it to him and try very hard not to stare.
I fail.
“Enjoy ... enjoy dinner,” I say.
He nods and disappears back into his room.
“You’re welcome for the show,” Wilma says, laughing.
I turn toward her. “You’re not saying that you ...”
“I plead the Fifth,” she says, giving me a smile that suggests butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth—even in this heat.
“This is not a rom-com,” I say to her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can’t ... scheme your way into an entanglement.”
She laughs and laughs. “Oh, darlin’, when an entanglement is meant to be, you can’t fight your way out of it either.”