Chapter 1 The Museum of Vintage Taxidermy and Other Curiosities #3
“Don’t worry about your rating,” he said confidently. His body angled itself toward hers, making her insides swoop. “That guy probably deserved the one star. Anyone can see you’re a very decent person, and he was clearly taking advantage of that.”
An involuntary snort blew out of her. “When it comes to me, people tend to think it’s the other way around.”
His forehead wrinkled like he was taking her accusation seriously. “Is that right?” He took a step forward, and she took a step back until the car pressed against her spine.
There was no one particular feature on Elliot’s face that Lainey found so striking.
It was simply the way he stood. The way his brows furrowed and his eyes softened when she spoke, as though he was actually listening and not waiting for the next pause to jump on.
The way his jaw widened ever so slightly when he smiled. He was just…easy to look at.
She was staring at him. Which would’ve been humiliating if he wasn’t staring back at her, his gaze holding hers, steady and alive. “Was that guy your…?” His voice trailed off.
He was flirting with her. Usually this sort of thing required a detailed dissection with Bree, but this man flirted with an intensity that left her questioning whether anyone else had ever actually been attracted to her in her life.
It wasn’t that any of his sentences were particularly suggestive.
There was simply an undeniable certainty to the interest in his voice.
An intention in the way his eyes glided over her face.
She didn’t respond right away, which seemed to make him rethink the hand resting on her car’s roof, but before he could retreat, she said, “No, he’s just a guy I went to high school with. A guy who vastly overestimates the closeness of our friendship.”
His laugh was low and restrained. Private. He leaned deeper until his elbow rested on the top of the car and his face was a breath away from hers. The space between them felt tangible, like something she could sweep away with her hand and instantly, they’d be touching.
He seemed to be registering their proximity just as she was. His eyes drifted down to her lips, then back up to her eyes. A leg stepped between hers. Her body hummed. One inch—maybe two—and they’d be…
He swiveled his head toward the pair of cars rolling into the parking lot.
The sound of a bumper bottoming out against the cracked pavement shuddered through her system.
She guessed the silver truck was his. Visitors loved to cart around town in shiny new pickups.
He took a step back, his eyelids fluttering as if she’d poured a bucket of cold water over his already damp body.
“Looks like your car’s here—”
“Can I get your number?” He couldn’t wait for her to finish before getting the question out. “I’ve been here a couple of days, and it’s been…” He pressed his lips together as a line formed on his forehead. “This was the first good conversation I’ve had in days.”
A tiny thrill fluttered under her ribs. “How? I was yelling at the other passenger for the first half of it.”
Something about her statement made his face go pale. “You’re right.” He winced. “I’m sorry. You’re working right now. This was…” He gestured between the two of them. “This is probably so uncomfortable for you.”
“No, it’s not…” His cheeks were turning a deep shade of purple. He was mortified. It was adorable. “Hand me your phone,” she ordered.
“What?”
“Hand me your phone.” Her finger brushed against his jacket. The insignificant near touch was so much bolder than she’d intended. “I’ll put my number in it.”
With a small, sideways smile, he removed his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her. Lainey couldn’t remember if anyone had ever asked for her number in real life. It was all so old-fashioned.
She tried to recall that look on Elliot’s face when she handed his phone back to him the whole drive home with equal parts hope and dread.
There was a reason she avoided vacationers.
To them, she wasn’t a person but an experience.
Another excursion during a boys’ cabin trip, slotted in somewhere between ice fishing and shotgunning Coors Light.
It was an uncomplicated dynamic to be sure, but so often a disappointing one.
Tourists came and went. Here, they weren’t living in reality.
Lainey could still picture the senior superlative written above her name in her Timber Creek High School yearbook: “Most Likely to Leave and Never Look Back.” When she’d read it in her first-period AP French class, she’d felt uncharacteristically seen by yearbook editor Amelia Kornacki.
But Lainey had quickly learned that leaving a place forever was nearly impossible with no money or special skills apart from an irrepressible wiliness and an artistic competence that Mr. Rodkey, her art teacher, had characterized as “confoundingly aggressive and tasteless.”
It was hard to accept that somewhere down the line, that spirited girl had gotten stuck, and her reality had become a little flat-roofed house in the woods with a busted porch light and mounting debt.
Reality was reeling from piercing headaches and stressing over her dwindling supply of expensive pain meds from a chronic migraine condition she’d developed just before she could legally drink.
It was the remarkably loud family of foxes that lived under her front porch and had thwarted all attempts to fix said porch light with their surprisingly human-sounding screeches.
Reality, she saw as she climbed up the darkened front porch, was taped to her door: a notice to vacate the only place she’d ever called home.