Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
“How did you do that?” Graham asks, stopping and turning to me once we’re on the sidewalk, astonishment written clear across his face.
“Do what?” I ask, sliding my sunglasses down from my hair and onto my nose.
“I’ve been in board rooms with powerful CEOs, and most would have shit their pants, sitting in front of you while you tore them a new asshole in the most polite and condescending way possible.”
I smile wide, preening at the compliment.
“I was a fifth-grade teacher. Everyone knows teachers are much more badass than any CEO out there.”
“You handled that in less than an hour.”
I lift my shoulder halfheartedly, suddenly shy.
“That’s less personal talent and more experience with living in a small town.
It’s not some big city, where you have a ton of hoops to jump through.
You just have to know who to talk to and how to get your way.
Chet is an asshole with entitled asshole kids.
When they don’t get their way, they throw hissy fits, and because of his position, he’s able to make their tantrums everyone’s problem.
I don’t like that, so any opportunity I can get to take him down a peg, I take. ”
“Well, I guess I should be lucky you’re on my team,” he mumbles, looking at the papers again in a bit of a daze. I take them, slide them back into the manila folder I brought, then put them into my bag.
“The luckiest,” I agree. We stand outside the building for another moment, me looking at him and smiling, him looking down at me contemplatively.
“Do you want to get lunch?” he asks after a moment, and my entire body stills.
“Lunch?”
“Yeah. Midday meal, sandwiches, salads,” he says, an echo of my own words.
I nudge his shoulder, watching his lips tip up more than ever before. He's teasing me. He still isn’t smiling, something I’m not fully sure he knows how to do, but I think I might spot the beginnings of a dimple.
“Oh. My. God,” I murmur, looking around dramatically, trying not to give in to the Graham-induced daze.
Today has really messed with my head, between the almost smile, the forearm porn, and his hand on my waist. Or maybe it’s that he and I are spending time together outside of the office for the first time.
Either way, my outburst works as planned, his eyebrows furrowing.
I grin, basking in his confusion. I like confusing Graham.
Something tells me that very few people can get him off kilter, and being one of the few who can feels special.
“What’s wrong?”
“I just… It’s happening!” I say. “We’re one step closer to friends!”
He rolls his eyes and lifts a hand as if to fend me off. “Okay, if you’re going to make it weird—”
“No, no. No take-backs. Come on, let’s go. There’s a good place around the corner.”
I grab his arm and lead him toward the small lunch place without another word. When we get there, I greet April, the hostess, and introduce her to Graham.
“Table for two?” I ask, glancing inside. It’s packed, which isn’t a surprise since it’s a popular lunch spot, but I was hopeful they’d be able to fit us in.
“Inside or out? Out is open, but inside is about a fifteen-minute wait.” Graham answers for me.
“Outside. Are you okay with that?”
“As long as you are. I need to get my vitamin D. It’s what gives me my sunny disposition.”
April grabs two menus and leads us to a table.
“You need more vitamin D? I think you’re sunny enough,” Graham says as we walk.
“That sounded like another compliment, Mr. Hawthorne. Be careful, I think it might become a habit for you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” he says quickly with a shake of his head, pulling out a chair for me to sit in.
“Sure it wasn’t,” I tease, then accept the menu from April. Graham sits, then takes his own menu, and we call into a. comfortable silence as we look them over.
After a moment, Rachel comes over with a pad to take out an order.
“Hey, June! How are you? I didn’t expect to see you here,” she says with a wide grin.
“Hey, Rach! We had to get some permits at city hall, and I’m determined to show Graham here some of Seaside Point's hidden gems. How’s Jonah?” I ask of her son.
“Oh, he’s great, working with Claire again this summer as a junior lifeguard. Probably yapping her ear off,” she says with an eye roll and a smile.
“She loves it,” I say, because she does.
“Well, we’re lucky to have her in town,” she agrees before looking to Graham and me.
“Do you two know what you want, or do you need another minute?” We both agree that we’re good to order, and Rach takes it down.
I reach for a tortilla chip in the basket at the center of the table after she walks off, but Graham stares at me skeptically.
“Do you know everyone in this town?” he asks after a moment. I smile and shake my head.
“Not everyone, but close. I grew up here, as did my parents and grandparents. Add in working in the school, and it’s almost inevitable.”
“Did you ever leave, or have you always lived here?”
“I went to college in-state, so I technically left Seaside Point then, but I missed it like crazy and came back a lot of weekends. Sometimes I’m embarrassed that I never tried anywhere else, but most of the time I wonder why anyone would ever want to leave.
I have everything I could ever want in this little town. ”
He’s looking down at the basket of chips, lost in his thoughts, though I can’t decide if it’s in a good or bad way.
“I can see that,” he says finally, and I smile, relieved.
I don’t know why I want Graham to like Seaside Point, but I do.
“It’s a good place. Good mix of a getaway and a small town you’d want to settle down in, I imagine.
You can’t say that about a lot of places: it’s usually one or the other.
” Pleasure blooms in my heart at the idea of this grumpy man enjoying my favorite place on earth, especially when he’s seemingly been everywhere.
“I bet it was nice growing up somewhere like this.”
“What about you? Where did you grow up?”
“Everywhere and nowhere,” he says, and I remain quiet, eager to hear anything he’s willing to share with me about himself. “We moved a lot. I was rarely in the same school for more than two years.”
“That had to be rough,” I say low.
In another world where my grandparents didn’t take us in, that could have been Grant and me, moving around from town to town, living our parents’ nomadic lifestyle as they tried to make something of their art dreams.
“I guess, but it taught me a lot. How to read people, how to choose and make friends quickly, and how to climb the social ladder. No matter what school I was in, I always made my way into the popular crowd. I think it helped me get where I am now. If I hadn't learned those skills so young, I probably wouldn’t have the job I have. I’ve used those skills to network, to make quick relationships, and build connections. ”
“Ahh, I suppose that explains your villain origin story of seeing friendships as networking. So, you’ve been doing it ever since?” He lifts a shoulder, grabbing a chip and chewing it thoughtfully.
“I guess, in a way. My job is making sure new locations open smoothly, become profitable, and run efficiently from the start, so I’m often moving from one location to the next.”
“So how does Seaside Point stack up? Is it exciting because it’s your first time being the head of a project, or a disappointment because it’s not a huge, full resort?
” There’s momentary flash on his face confirming my theory that he wasn’t happy to be assigned Seaside Point.
It’s gone almost as soon as it came, replaced with something new, more contemplative.
It’s almost as if that was his reaction when he was first given the job, but now, after some time, he’s changed his view.
“It’s...” His eyes drift to me, gaze locking with mine in a way that has the world pausing, the other diners' voices dulling. Emotion crosses his face, a mixture of sincerity and honesty, erasing the normally cold and distant look. Warmth that has nothing to do with the beating sun moves through me. For a moment, he’s the man who chatted with me in a dimly lit bar, the one who I was completely enthralled by.
“It’s grown on me.” The words hang in the air between us, and my mind starts to run with them, making stories that don’t belong in a workplace relationship.
After a moment, he looks off into the distance, making me feel silly for romanticizing a single look.
“It’s just not what I expected. I’m used to full resorts, ones that are a kind of ecosystem in and of themselves, where I only have to focus on the inner workings. ”
“You had to have known, though, that was what you were getting when you came here.”
He nods. “I did.”
“So why accept it? If it wasn’t what you wanted, why take the job? Sutton told me you’re hot shit at Daydream. I bet if you had told them you wanted something bigger and better, you’d have gotten it.”
His gaze moves back to me, and he lifts an eyebrow.
“Are you talking to Sutton about me?”
A blush burns on my cheeks, but I brush it off, lift a nonchalant shoulder. “She may have given me some intel to figure out how to deal with your surly attitude.”
“Was it helpful?”
“She told me not to back down, and I’d be just fine.”
He’s quiet for a moment before I get another one of those near-invisible lip tilts and an unexpected answer to my earlier question.
“I accepted the job because I needed a challenge,” he says, that spark of entertainment melting away, replaced with something different, a burnout or a complacency that I am far too familiar with.
He goes silent, and for a bit, I think that’s all I’m going to get.
It’s more than I expected, if I’m being honest, so I’m willing to take it, but then he expands.
“I’d been going through the motions for a while, trying to build a career, to get each new promotion.
The only person who rose in the Daydream Resorts ranks faster than me and at a younger age is Rowan, and he’s part robot.
” I know that much from Sutton. “But I kept getting these promotions that I was aiming for, kept setting goals and hitting each one, and every time it felt...hollow. I kept wanting more, thinking it would make that feeling go away, but nothing seemed to work.” The words sound like a confession of sorts, and if it were anyone else, I’d reach out and hold his hand.
“I know it sounds stuck-up and very first-world problems of me, wanting a more impressive, high-paying, high-powered job because nothing makes me feel satisfied,” he says, with a humorless laugh, shaking his head. “I probably sound like such a jackass.”
I give in to the urge then, reaching over and placing my hand over his. His eyes lift, and I shake my head when we meet. “No, you don’t. I get it,” I say, hesitant.
“You don’t have to say that, I know it sounds out there, to be bored with doing well.”
“No, no. I do. I get it.” I lick my lips, my pulse pounding, suddenly nervous.
“They gave me the option to transfer to another school, keep teaching next school year, and I didn’t take it, even though it was the safe choice.
The smart choice. I think… I think I was looking for a way out for a while.
I was unhappy and unfulfilled. It’s weird to say you don’t love your job when it’s teaching kids and, in a way, shaping the future.
Especially when your whole life, you were told that’s what you would be best at.
I went to school for years, working to be a teacher, only to realize.
..” I look off, taking in a deep breath before giving Graham a confession I’ve never said to anyone else, whispered so low that if his hand didn’t shift to squeeze mine tighter, I’d think he couldn’t hear me.
“I don’t like it. Teaching made me miserable, and then the guilt of hating it made me even more miserable.
I ignored it for a while, but by the end of this year, I was so tired.
I was burnt out in a way I’d never experienced.
” I take a deep breath, laying another confession out on the table.
“But since I left, I haven’t felt tired at all.
So I get it. I get doing something that makes no sense at all just to see if it might make you feel alive.
Sometimes you just have to be brave and take a leap of faith and trust that the universe will catch you. ”
“I think you’re the bravest person I know, June,” he says, squeezing my hand once more and making my heart leap.
“I quit my job, I didn’t run into a burning building,” I say, trying to break the tension. It doesn’t: instead, he continues to stare at me.
“Bravery comes in all different forms. Trusting your gut might be the most crucial one.”
His words settle into me, sinking deep and reminding me that I promised to do that this summer: trust my gut, take leaps of faith, take opportunities that are presented to me.
I think about all of the ways I haven’t been brave lately, all the things I’ve been too scared to do.
I want to tell him that he has the wrong idea, that I’m not that girl, to set him straight, but before I can refute his claim that I’m brave, our lunch comes, and we fall into a silence that I readily accept as possibly the biggest sign of my cowardice of all.
“Compliments like that definitely creep into friend territory,” I say with a small smile, desperate to change the topic. His face stays stoic as he watches me for long moments before opening his mouth to speak. But before he can, Rachel is back to check in on us, breaking the moment.
I wonder for the rest of the day, though, what he was going to say.