Chapter 12Hazel
Chapter 12
Hazel
I’m supposed to be researching the Shopper Shark brand, but instead, I’m staring at my open suitcase… thinking about what to wear to dinner with Jack.
It’s 5:30, so in a mere half-hour, he’ll be here. At my door.
Even though it’s silly, I want to look good tonight.
There has to be something in here that’s not black.
When did I start wearing all black? I don’t remember making a decision. I used to wear purple, blue, and green…
I shuffle aside yet another black tank top and then a pair of black denim shorts.
Okay… here we go. This top is beige. That’s fun.
I cringe as I hold it up. Here I am, trying to put a spin on my life again. Beige is not ‘fun.’
Beige is boring .
My wardrobe is like my life lately, back in Windsor. Drab. Stuffy. Dull. At least I have Alexis. But, besides her… what am I doing with my life?
I sit at home eight hours a day, working my tail off in my little work-from-home station, which consists of a desk and office chair facing the wall.
When I turn off my computer, I walk or head to the rec center. Slogging up the Stairmaster feels like punishment unless Alexis is there to entertain me while I burn calories. I only do it because I don’t want to put on weight, not because I enjoy it.
Three evenings out of the week, I go over to my parents’ house for dinner. Most of that time is spent playing peacekeeper between my mom and dad. My mother always says things are better between them when I’m around. Well, that’s pretty wild because it feels like a frigid wind is blowing between them when I'm there. I can’t imagine how bad it must be when I’m not around.
My cell phone chimes.
I sit on the edge of the bed and open the notification. It’s a message on social media from a friend I haven’t seen since high school. We’ve traded messages now and then, mostly around our birthdays.
“ Oh my gosh, Hazel, are you really in Hawaii? That photo of the moon over the water is amazing. I am sooo jelly. You have the BEST life. Hope you have a great time—more pics, please!!”
I toss the phone on the bed with a sigh.
It’s weird how my life can look so great and glamorous from the outside and feel so glum and sterile from the inside.
On social media, I’m polished, slim, put-together, and always smiling. I only post pictures that show beauty, happiness, and fun times.
But… on the inside, the story is different.
Maybe I wear dark clothing because most of the time, that’s how my soul feels: dark.
There’s very little sunshine in my life. Not just because New Hampshire goes gray for the winter. I mean, inner sunshine.
Happiness.
Joy.
What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I feel happy?
I close my eyes, and my thoughts zoom back to my parents.
Their marriage hasn’t been going well since all of us girls moved out of the house. At first, my sisters shared the burden with me. We all tried to chip in and cheer them up, get back that warm family feeling that we used to share.
But then, my older sister, Julia, moved to Tucson to start a family. My little sister, Rosie, hopped on a plane to Australia one summer, and she’s been bouncing from continent to continent since, barely ever dropping in on Windsor.
These days, it’s just me…
Me, putting on a smile.
Doing the song and dance.
I go to my parents’ house and try to bridge the gap between them by reminding them that they’re a team.
I’m trying to be the perfect daughter.
I open my eyes and look up at the ceiling fan.
My life back in Windsor is not going well. But… I’m not in Windsor right now. I’m in Hawaii.
The clock on my nightstand shows me that I now have only twenty minutes before Jack will knock on my door.
I should really be doing that prep work for the Shopper Shark client, Chad. There’s no way Jack’s harebrained scheme about fixing Chad’s financial crisis will work. I’ll most likely have to rewrite that darn email sequence again.
But, instead of diving into research, I pluck up the cutest black dress that I packed.
I carry it to the bathroom, strip down to my skivvies, and slip it on.
As I turn side to side in the mirror and judge my reflection, I tell myself it doesn’t matter what I look like. This is a work meeting, Hazel.
That’s all.
I open my makeup bag and sort through various bottles and tubes.
A fluttery feeling stirs in my core as I carefully line my eyelids with my Sephora Shimmer Taupe pencil.
I try the mantra again.
This is a work meeting. This is a work meeting. That’s all.
It doesn’t matter what I look like.
Jack can sling more compliments at me if he wants, but this time around, his charm won’t affect me. I won’t swoon.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I’m not immune to Jack Morgan’s compliments.
Far from it.
And… this effort I’m putting in, here in front of the mirror...? It’s for him.
My heart pitter-patters as I sort through shades of matte lipstick. I swipe on my Maybelline Cherry Red, blot the edges, and pucker my lips to see the effect.
Not bad.
Twenty minutes later, I’m all gussied up. I added silver earrings and a turquoise bracelet to my look and traded my flip-flops for a pair of ballet flats.
I grab my computer bag when I hear a knock at the bungalow door and tell myself one last time, It’s just a work meeting.
The sea breeze tickles my face and pulls at the ends of my hair. Jack sits across the table from me. We’re once again at the Tiki Grille, but this time on the far end of the outdoor seating area, closer to the pool.
Now that it’s 6:30 and the sun has set, underwater lights illuminate the clear, chlorinated water. More white lights run in little strings above our heads.
Two baskets of appetizers—a plate of fried squash blossoms and a shrimp cocktail — take up the middle of the small, round table. My laptop is out on the table, where a plate should be.
I ordered a white wine, thinking it might calm my nerves.
That was probably a mistake.
The few sips I’ve had already seem to be going to my head.
Jack leans back in his chair and studies me as he rubs his chin. He hasn’t touched his Corona. It’s sitting by his laptop, the lime sticking up out of the top of the bottle.
His eyes are stormy, not the clear, twinkling green of his more playful moods. He’s troubled.
By what, I don’t know.
Maybe his talk with Chad from Shopper Sharks didn’t go as well as he hoped.
Or maybe he feels the same tension between us that I feel. It's not easy being on this tightrope wire.
Here we are, supposedly hashing out a work task in the same outdoor seating area where we flirted for hours last night.
My fingertips dance across my keyboard. “Okay, I have their email sequence pulled up here.”
“We’re really gonna do work?”
“Urgent, Jack. The task is marked urgent.”
“You look really, really beautiful,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t say that, but I’m saying it. I wanted to say it back at your bungalow, but you rushed past me.”
I did rush past him—propelled by these freaking butterflies, which whir in my belly like an engine.
Secretly, I’m thrilled by what he’s saying right now. But I can’t let him know that. I keep my lips pinched in a line.
“I mean, wow ,” he adds.
He’s wearing the usual Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. His hair is wild, and his features are a deeper bronze now that we’ve been on this island for two days.
“I don’t want any of your silver-tongue tactics,” I tell him.
“I’m not trying to persuade you to do anything right now,” he says. “No agenda.” He puts both hands up as if to prove his innocence. “Just trying to be a gentleman.”
“Okay… Well, then, thanks.” I clear my throat and re-cross my legs. “Shopper Sharks.”
“Right. Shopper Sharks.”
“They’re one of our Gold Package clients, so they’re supposed to have an optimized, done-for-you email marketing sequence and maximized search visibility on Google. Sorry if this is stuff you already know. I just know you’re sort of new…”
“New?” He grunts, still with that troubled look. “I— ah hem .” He shakes his head a bit like he’s trying to clear it.
He’s been dazed like this since I opened the door.
My inner goddess is doing a tap dance.
It worked.
I still have it. Whatever mojo I had back when I used to date. It’s not gone. For a second, back in that room, when I stared at my luggage and saw all that black, doubts started to pull me under. I thought I’d become some boring, forever-single woman who would die alone.
But when I opened the door, and Jack’s jaw dropped, life sparked deep inside of me.
I felt beautiful.
That glow propelled me here, and now I’m trying to keep that lit-up feeling under control.
Here at the table, I have to remain professional.
“I’ve been with Buzzy almost a year, Hazel,” Jack says. He pulls his laptop out of his computer bag and opens it beside the plate he heaped with appetizers.
“Oh, I know. It’s just that there’s so much that we do. It can be hard to get it all straight.”
“It’s not hard for you, given how you just listed all that stuff like you were reciting the alphabet.” He grins. “You know, when I was a kid, this dude who lived down the road could sing the alphabet backward. How’s that for a cool party trick? I tried to learn it, but I could never get past O-N-M-L. That part always gets me.”
“K-J,” I supply. Then I glance at him over my laptop. “Maybe we should focus.”
“K-J! Man, that’s right. Quick, too. You must have a lot of neurons firing up there.”
I type for a minute, to pull up a spreadsheet.
“How long have you been doing this, anyway?” he asks. He picks up his ice water and takes a sip.
His Adam’s apple bobs. It takes all of my effort not to look up to his lips. I don’t want to remember how it felt when he stepped in close on my bungalow’s front stoop. When we whispered to each other…
“I’m not good at this,” I’d said.
“I think you’re perfect.”
I remember so well the feel of his breath on my sensitive lips when he said those words.
I was so nervous. He was so confident.
Stop.
Now I’m the one shaking my head slightly. “What—with the company? Er, six years or so…”
“Always a Sales Lead?”
“Oh, no way. I started at the bottom and stayed there for a while, doing the grunt work.”
“No wonder you know the inner workings so well. But—here’s something to consider. Sometimes, a car salesperson doesn’t have to know the nuts and bolts of how an engine fires. We deal with people, Hazel.”
A frustrated sigh escapes my lips. I push back my hair. “You know what’s wrong with that approach? People are a big mystery. They change their minds all the time. Nothing’s ever certain.”
They lie.
They omit truths.
They promise one thing and do another.
They leave.
I draw in a sip of wine and do my best not to think about past hurts. “At least nuts and bolts make sense.”
“Yeah, but even if you know all the schematics of how every single nut and bolt in the car fits together, you’re never gonna sell it to someone who feels bad. You gotta get the person feeling good, in the mood to believe in what you’re pitching.”
“This isn’t about believing in some tooth fairy, Jack. This is about what we can actually offer.”
“I’m not suggesting we sell ‘em snake oil to cure all their ailments. I’m just saying I checked out the email sequence you tinkered with, and it’s already stellar. Perfect. Flawless. Beautiful .” His eyes snag mine. “Our problem is Chad.”
I lean back in my chair.
He slipped in that ‘beautiful’ word—along with one of his looks, again—for my benefit. Even though I know he’s using his charm, I feel myself falling for it.
I do quick battle with a smile but lose.
It sneaks onto my lips for a minute. “Fine. Whatever. You’re going to insist on going about this your way, aren’t you? You said yourself that you’re stubborn.”
“Now you’re getting me.” His grin produces those show-stopping, mother-pleasing dimples, the same ones our photograph featured so prominently.
No wonder my mom texted me to say that she printed the pic at CVS and is going to buy a frame. I bet the frame has ‘Hazel & Matt’ custom engraved along the bottom.
That’s a problem for another day.
I have enough on my hands at the moment.
Namely, the hunk of hotness sitting across from me in a bright Hawaiian shirt. He spins his laptop so I can see it. “Check it out,” he announces.
I see a real estate agent’s website on the screen. The house on display is a sprawling two-story Victorian with crooked shutters.
“Chad’s money pit,” Jack says happily. “My buddy?—”
“Your bread aisle friend…”
“Yep. Mark Whitley, what a guy. He got me in touch with this realtor out in Seattle, and I connected her with Chad. They already had a few bites, and it’s only been eight hours.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Do you realize this has nothing to do with Buzzy Digital Marketing and our services?”
“Hazel, trust me. This is going to work. Once Chad sees the light at the end of the tunnel with this house thing, he’s going to be a new man. Forget the Gold Package or whatever, he’ll be snapping up our big-ticket offerings.”
“The Gold Package is our big-ticket offer.”
“Oh.”
I reach for my ice water.
Impossible .
He is literally impossible to work with.
And the dazzling smile he’s now flashing me really isn’t helping matters.
The swoony woman inside me—the one who so desperately wanted to be the little spoon to his big yesterday on that beach towel—is enjoying this dinner already.
Curse her.
She’s doing it again, right here, right now. Fantasizing about him, imagining what it would be like to wake up next to him.
I look down in an effort to break the spell.
He chuckles. “I have an idea.” He pops the lime into his beer with his thumb, then holds it down while the fizz rises. “Let’s give this work stuff a break.”
“ Urgent , Jack.”
“I’ve got irons in the fire, I promise. And you—you already tried to work your magic, and it didn’t fly. You can’t make a perfect email sequence better, Hazel. If you tried, you’d be spinning your wheels.”
His words hit a little too close to home.
I’ve been “spinning my wheels” too much lately and getting nowhere.
I’m stuck in my life and don’t know how to get back into “drive.”
“Spinning my wheels, hm?” I repeat.
He nods. “Doing a bunch of work but getting nowhere.”
Eek.
He’s got me there.
It’s like I was just thinking earlier, in my bungalow. Back in Windsor, I’ve been doing the same song and dance. Going through the same routines. Getting nowhere.
Even though I know he’s making a valid point, I refuse to accept it. I stare at my laptop, resisting the suggestion.
We’re here to find a solution.
I feel my brow tighten as my eyebrows knit together.
As I stare at the spreadsheet on my screen, I try to gather my thoughts. “Jack…”
“We are on vacation, right?”
“Devina will be really upset if we don’t fix this soon.”
“Devina is on a warpath for her own reasons. We both know she’s probably getting canned soon.”
“Wait—what?” My hand drifts to my wine glass. I lift it and take a sip. Notes of pear and vanilla grace my tongue. Delicious.
“You’ve heard that, right?” he asks. “I thought everyone knew. I heard it from Rochelle, and she said she got it from one of the big wigs.”
“No, I haven’t heard that. I’m not like you… remember?”
“Meaning…?”
“I don’t make friends in the bread aisle. And I don’t have a habit of gabbing with the other sales leads.”
“Ah, right… you got the quiet lone wolf thing going on.”
“I have friends. Well, one good friend. That’s all I really need.”
“That can’t be all you need.” His green eyes are so darn inquisitive.
I look away. “It is. I’m very happy.” I sip more of the chilled white wine and try not to notice how empty my words sound, even to my ears.
Better to get back to the gossip, even if it makes me feel guilty to harp on it. “So, she really might be on her way out?”
“Yep, it’s already in motion, is what I hear. I thought for sure you had your finger on the pulse when it came to that. Think about it: It’s going to be either you or me who gets the bump in salary.”
“What bump?”
“I think it’s significant. Another twenty or thirty grand a year.”
“Oh… you mean the salary increase for stepping up into management.”
“We’re already managing things. This would just be more managing and a hefty raise.”
“Awesome…” I murmur sarcastically as I clutch my glass. “So, now we’re going to fight for the same promotion.”
“Toe-to-toe.”
“Perfect. That is just great . This is already complicated.”
“Confusing,” he mutters.
“Stressful,” I add.
His eyes twinkle. “But also—come on—it’s been sorta fun, right?”
His flirty comment makes my shoulders tense. I bet he’s referring to that moonlit kiss.
I clutch my wine glass tighter and take another tiny sip.
When a plate lands before me, I’m startled. The waitress came up behind me without a sound. She swoops over to Jack and deposits a plate of food in front of him with a clatter. Now our table is even more crowded.
The restaurant is packed, and clearly, our server is in a hurry. She got our meals mixed up. The minute she rushes away, Jack makes the trade.
“Seared ahi ahi and a side salad for you… medium burger and fries for me…”
I barely hear him. He brought up fun—a reminder of our kiss—and now I’m too flustered to talk.
I study my laptop because it feels much safer than trying to say anything about our complicated situation.
What could I say?
That kiss was amazing.
As I look at my computer, the top slowly folds down. A big hand is pushing it. With a click, it closes.
“We’re at a stalemate,” he says.
“With the Shopper Shark thing.”
“Yeah. You don’t have any moves left, and my move will take time to gel. I say we set it aside and have a real Vacation Dinner.”
“That sounds about as scientific as Vacation Brain.”
“Very similar concepts,” he says. He closes his laptop and stuffs it into his computer bag. “During a Vacation Dinner, the point is to get Vacation Brain.”
“That jelly-like consistency.”
“Jelly’s what you want. So, no work talk. That’s rule number one.”
His mock-serious tone makes me giggle. “Ooh, so there are rules.”
He sips his beer. “Yep.”
“Okay, I have one. At a Vacation Dinner, you don’t have to worry about how many carbs are in your croutons.”
“And you get to steal fries.” He shifts his plate so that the crispy golden potato strips are closer to my side of the table.
My mouth waters.
He tips ketchup into a dish and places it between us. “Also, you don’t have to worry if you get ketchup on your clothes.”
“It won’t even show on a black dress.” I reach for a fried potato, dip it in the ketchup, and take a bite. The fluffy potato, fried to a crisp, melts on my tongue.
“I’m not worried about you,” he chuckles. “I’m worried about me.”
“Okay, I have another rule for Vacation Dinners.”
“Hang on… I have an amendment. I don’t like rules. Let’s call ‘em guidelines.”
“Great… guidelines. Here’s mine. If the wine’s the best you’ve ever tasted in your life, you enjoy a second glass.”
“If the moon rises over the water, you get to gawk with wonder.”
“Oh, there will be gawking,” I laugh.
“And… if the woman across from you is beautiful, you can tell her that whenever you feel like it, without pretending you’re talking about something else.”
My breath hitches. I lift my eyes.
“I know I already said it,” he murmurs in that deep, rumbly way he has. “But I feel like saying it again. You look beautiful tonight, Hazel.”
“I tried to find something that wasn’t black but failed. Turns out, my wardrobe is sort of drab these days.”
“There’s nothing wrong with black. It’s a classic color. It suits you.”
“Because I’m boring?”
“Because you’re elegant. A little more sophisticated than the rest of us.” He brings a fry to his mouth and bites it. “You’re also different than a lot of people I meet. Super thoughtful. You sort of move at a different pace than most people… you’ve got a unique vibe. Yeah, more serious, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s pretty cool.”
A tight knot, somewhere deep inside me, gives way.
Stress I didn’t even know I was holding…
It evaporates.
Maybe I’m not broken. Maybe I’m not boring, drab, and dark.
Maybe I’m elegant .
And… yes, different than a lot of people. Maybe I’m okay, just being me. At least, Jack Morgan seems to think so.
I nestle my laptop into the computer bag at my feet and zip the top.
When I straighten up, I lift my glass. “To Hawaii.”
“To Hawaii,” he says, clinking his drink to mine.