Chapter 8
EIGHT
SCOTT
Between the Lines’s letter arrives on Friday morning, and I read it standing in my kitchen in my boxers, eating cold leftover pizza like the sophisticated adult I am.
She’s glad I said yes. She’s terrified too. She’s been counting the weeks.
And then I get to the part that makes me choke on my pepperoni.
She mentions spending her evening planning “your reveal event” with someone who makes her want to argue about seating charts. Someone infuriating and unexpected. Someone who made her a column for wild cards in his perfectly organized document.
The strangest act of kindness anyone’s ever shown me.
She’s talking about me.
She’s writing to Coastal Quill about Scott Avery, and she doesn’t know we’re the same person, and she called me infuriating and unexpected and said the wild card column was a kindness.
She thinks about me. Enough to write about me in her letters.
To me.
She’s writing to me about me.
I sit down heavily on my kitchen stool, miss the stool entirely, and end up on the floor with my dignity in shambles.
This is going to be a very long few weeks.
The second planning meeting happens Saturday afternoon at the Twin Waves Public Library, a gorgeous old brick building with tall windows that let in the July sun.
“The AC is broken,” Mrs. Kaplan announces cheerfully as we file in, fanning herself with a paperback copy of a murder mystery. “Has been since Tuesday. Repair guy says Monday, maybe. There’s lemonade in the back. Try not to die.”
The meeting room is approximately nine hundred degrees.
Someone has propped open every window, which lets in the smell of salt air and sunscreen and the distant sound of children screaming on the beach.
A ceiling fan rotates lazily overhead, accomplishing nothing except moving the hot air in a circle.
Grayson takes one look at the room and starts unbuttoning his shirt collar. “This is inhumane.”
“This is summer,” Michelle says, already glistening. “You should be used to it.”
“I spent fifteen years in climate-controlled office buildings. I’ve gone soft.”
“You’re sweating through your shirt.”
“I’m aware. Thank you for announcing it.”
I’m trying very hard not to sweat through my own shirt, which is a losing battle. I wore a button-down to be professional, which was a mistake. I look like a man slowly being poached.
Jessica arrives last, bursting through the door with her massive tote bag, her hair escaping from its bun in approximately forty directions. She’s wearing a sundress the color of sunflowers and sandals that slap against the floor with every step.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she says, dumping the tote bag on the table. It lands with a thud that suggests she’s carrying at least three encyclopedias. “Austen had a crisis.”
“Another one?” Michelle asks.
“He got his head stuck in a paper bag. Then he panicked and knocked over my bookshelf. Then he looked at me like I was the one who’d traumatized him.” She blows a strand of hair out of her face. “I love that cat, but he’s a menace.”
“He’s a perfect angel,” I say, before I can stop myself.
Everyone looks at me.
“He attacked you,” Grayson points out. “Drew blood. You needed a bandage.”
“That was just him expressing himself.”
“He was committing assault.”
“He’s a complex cat. It’s okay.”
Jessica is staring at me with an unreadable expression. “You’re defending my cat. The one who mauled you.”
“Mauled is a strong word.”
“You have a scar.”
“It’s small. It adds character.”
“To your shoulder?”
“Shoulders can have character.”
“That’s the strangest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” But she’s almost smiling, and something in my chest loosens.
We settle around the table, me on one side, Jessica directly across from me because the universe enjoys my suffering. The heat is oppressive. Michelle has already commandeered the one functioning desk fan, pointing it directly at her face.
Michelle puts her head in her hands. “Can you two flirt somewhere else? We have an agenda.”
“We’re not flirting,” Jessica and I say in unison.
“You’re absolutely flirting. It’s exhausting.” Michelle waves her hand toward the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Let’s reveal the authors based on correspondence length. Who has been writing letters the longest?”
Jessica checks her list, and her finger traces down the page. Her nails are painted pale pink. There’s a smudge of what might be ink on her thumb.
“Coastal Quill,” she says. “Eight months. Most letters of any pair in the program.”
My heart does something complicated.
“Coastal Quill should go last, then,” Michelle says. “Save the best for the finale.”
“The most anticipated, anyway.” Jessica makes a note, her pen scratching against the paper. “I’ll let him know he’s the closing act. He’ll probably freak out. He seems like a panicker.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask, keeping my voice very, very casual.
“In his letters, he’s always worried about saying the wrong thing, being misunderstood, disappointing people.” She shrugs, and the movement makes her sundress strap slip slightly off her shoulder. She pushes it back up absently. “It’s endearing, actually. He tries so hard.”
I fight to keep from smiling. “Maybe he has reason to worry,” I manage.
“Maybe. But I think he’s harder on himself than he needs to be. Most people are.” She looks up, meets my eyes. “Don’t you think?”
“I think—” My voice comes out strange. I clear my throat. “I think some people have more to worry about than others.”
“Cryptic.”
“Honest.”
We’re staring at each other across the table, and I’m suddenly very aware of the heat, the fan spinning uselessly overhead, the way her eyes look almost gold in the afternoon light.
Someone’s phone buzzes, breaking the moment.
“That’s the caterer,” Amber says, standing. “I need to take this.”
She steps out, and the room reshuffles. Michelle goes to refill her lemonade. Grayson follows her, probably to complain more about the heat. Jo is deep in her phone, texting someone.
Which leaves me and Jessica, alone on opposite sides of the table, with nothing but approximately a thousand degrees between us.
“So,” she says.
“So,” I agree.
Silence. Outside, a seagull screams. The ceiling fan creaks on its rotation.
“This heat is—” she starts.
“Unbearable,” I finish.
“I was going to say ‘character-building.’”
“That’s a generous interpretation.”
“I’m a generous person.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. It’s an actual laugh, not the polished chuckle I use in board meetings, and Jessica’s eyes widen slightly.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. I just—I don’t think I’ve heard you really laugh before.”
“I laugh.”
“You do that thing where you exhale slightly harder through your nose.” She demonstrates, a little huff of air. “That’s not laughing. That’s just aggressive breathing.”
“I don’t aggressively breathe.”
“You absolutely do. It’s very on-brand for you.”
“What’s my brand?”
She tilts her head, considering, the light from the window catching the gold in her hair. “Repressed. Efficient. Probably has strong opinions about thread count.”
I should be offended. Instead, I’m fighting a grin. The heat presses down on us, thick and lazy, and in the distance, kids are laughing on the beach.
“What’s your brand, then?” I ask.
“Chaotic good. Overly caffeinated. Probably talking to her cat at this exact moment via some kind of psychic connection.”
“That’s not a brand. That’s a cry for help.”
“It can be both.” She grins, and my chest flips over.
I open my mouth to respond, when Michelle returns with her lemonade.
“Did you two resolve anything while we were gone, or did you just argue the entire time?”
We glance at each other.
Look away.
Michelle sighs. “This is painful to watch.”
The meeting continues for another two hours.
We finalize the author order—correspondence length, shortest to longest, Coastal Quill closing out the evening. Which means in six weeks, I’ll be standing on a stage, revealing myself to a room that includes the woman I’m falling for.
Which is totally fine…
“Moving on to refreshments,” Michelle says, flipping to a new page in her notebook. “Amber, you had ideas?”
“I had ideas,” Amber says. “Then you all rejected them. Then I had new ones. Then Scott said we needed to ‘consider the budget implications.’” She makes air quotes. “So now my idea is plain crackers for everyone.”
“I didn’t say plain crackers.”
“You implied it.”
“I did n—” I stop, because Jessica is laughing into her lemonade and I’ve lost the thread of my argument entirely.
We eventually compromise on finger foods and a dessert table.
Jo presents her decoration concepts next, pulling up photos on her phone and passing it around the table. Fairy lights. Vintage book displays. Something called a “literary photo booth” with props like oversized glasses and cardboard book covers.
“People can pose like they’re inside their favorite novel,” Jo explains. “We’ll have frames that look like book covers. It’s very Instagram-friendly.”
Everyone nods enthusiastically. I nod too, even though I don’t entirely understand why anyone would want to pretend to be inside a book when they could just read one.
“I love it,” Jessica says, and Jo beams.
Somewhere in the middle of debating photo booth placement, Jessica’s phone buzzes, vibrates itself off the table, and clatters to the floor.
We both reach for it at the same time.
Our heads collide with a crack that echoes off the library walls.
“Ow—”
“Sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry, I should have—”
“I was closer, I just—”
We’re both rubbing our foreheads, half-laughing, and Mrs. Ziegler peers over from the front desk with a frown like she’s reconsidering her career choices.
“I’ll get it,” I say, retrieving the phone from under my chair. The screen is already cracked—old damage, not new—and when I hand it back to her, our fingers brush.
Neither of us mentions it.
I think about it for the rest of the meeting.