Chapter Fourteen
Keeley
“Wow, don’t you look nice, dearie. Got a date with that handsome boy?”
I look up to see a smiling, well-meaning Mrs. Hathaway approaching me in the lobby. I’ve just come downstairs with the intention of holing up in the Spring View library for the rest of the day and working on some elementary outlining for my Evoke article.
“There’s a twinkle in your eye that suggests so!” Mr. Hathaway is next to his wife, one hand supportively placed under her elbow and the other wrapped around his cane. He’s wearing his trademark bowler hat, like always, while his wife sports what looks like a fresh lilac rinse.
These two are the cutest.
The couple have got to be approaching their nineties, if not there already. They both have deeply lined faces, stooped postures, and move slowly and carefully, like something could break at any moment. But despite this, there’s something incredibly, unfathomably youthful about them. Like there’s a light glowing from within, reflecting through their eyes and making them appear younger than they are.
The Hathaways are longtime residents of The Serendipity. In fact, they must be the oldest people living here, and they seem to know every tenant by name. You can often spot them in the rooftop garden together, or sitting by the pool together, or reading in the small library room on the building’s ground floor… together.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen one Hathaway without the other. And I must say, even with my current boycotting feelings towards love, it is pretty darn inspiring to see how in love they still seem to be after a lifetime spent together.
“Oh, no, no. No date. Just…” I look down at my fitted purple shirt with the sweetheart neckline, and my cute light wash jeans with ripped details, then back up at Mrs. Hathaway. “Wednesday,” I finish.
What I don’t say is that it’s been a few days now since my almost-death by running. Each morning since that impromptu and very sweaty grocery store run, I’ve carefully planned my outfit so there will be absolutely zero risk of running into my new friend Becks again in yet another state of chaotic disarray.
And yes, I might’ve done my hair and put on mascara and lip gloss, too.
But just because I wanted to feel pretty today, that’s all.
I mean, I haven’t actually seen Beckett since we went to Spring Foods together. I’ve heard the sounds of him softly playing guitar in the mornings, the musical notes carrying from his apartment. But if I happen to run into him today—or get locked in a confined space with him—while I look presentable, then so be it.
Super weird how that keeps happening. I think the universe genuinely likes to laugh at me.
Surprisingly, Mrs. Hathaway does not seem satisfied by my response to her question. Instead she smiles like she’s sure I’m wrong and I really do have a date, after all. She pats my hand, her wrinkled skin cool to the touch. “He’s a lucky man.”
Her kind words and the small gesture seem intimate in a way that makes me feel strangely emotional. Like she’s sealing my worth with her touch.
“Guess you haven’t heard that Andrew and I broke up,” I say quietly, shifting my backpack on my shoulder.
Mr. Hathaway looks away so quickly, I first worry he’s going to tweak his neck. But then, it almost looks like he’s… hiding a smile?
When he turns back to me, though, there’s no hint of a smile on his face, leaving me wondering if I’m imagining things now. “Oh, yes, we were already aware of that. I think my wife was referring to?—”
“That fine specimen of an Irishman who’s moved in next door to her?” someone interrupts, and we all turn to see Roberta from the first floor standing next to us. Her eyes are eagerly glowing with the glee of an impending gossip session.
Honestly, this woman knows everything about everyone in this building. It’s impressive.
But everyone is clearly misinformed this time.
I shake my head vehemently. “Becks and I just?—”
“Got caught in a passionate embrace in the elevator?” Roberta asks with a big smile. “Started doing your laundry together? Went to hang out with your brother already?”
“None of those statements are quite accurate,” I start, but Mrs. Hathaway is patting my hand again.
“I think it’s lovely that new love is already blossoming for you,” she says softly.
“Oh, no, we just met?—”
“So, what are you waiting for?” Roberta shoots me a theatrical wink. “Lock down that delicious piece of man candy before someone else does. Anyhoo, got to run!” She waggles her fingers at us and continues across the lobby, heels clicking.
I turn back to the Hathaways and hold up my hands as if clearing my name. “Beckett’s just a friend and my temporary neighbor, as I’m sure you’ve heard. He’s only here for the summer.”
And then, he, like me, will be gone from this place. If all goes according to plan.
“A summer of love,” Mr. Hathaway says, clearly not hearing a word I’m saying.
I blanch at the L-word. I am officially allergic to love now. “Nope!”
“True love will show up exactly when and where it’s meant to,” Mrs. Hathaway adds, not listening to my protests either. “This place has a funny way of working things out the way they’re supposed to work out. Or not work out.”
She’s looking at me rather pointedly, and I wonder—not for the first time—if everyone but me believed Andrew and I were all wrong for each other and would eventually go our separate ways.
Which begs the question: how blind was I?
But Mrs. Hathaway’s words have struck another chord—though surely not the one she intended—as the topic of my article-to-be-written suddenly jumps to mind.
I take in the clearly still very-much-in-love couple before me, and I adopt my objective reporter persona.
If I’m going to stick with my ideal article topic—to disprove the legend that this building brings people luck in love—I might as well start with the Hathaways. They’re clearly a success story in the love department, but they’re also about a million years old. Surely they met and fell in love before they moved in here… which means that their love would have grown somewhere else organically, instead of being the product of a stupid “lucky in love” legend.
“Where did you two meet?” I ask.
Mr. Hathaway smiles. “We met right here in this building.”
My fragile hopes are dashed. “You don’t say,” I reply feebly.
Mr. Hathaway clearly doesn’t notice my disappointment, because he continues on excitedly, “We moved into The Serendipity after the apartments opened back in the sixties. We were living next door to each other upstairs when we fell in love.”
His wife tuts good-naturedly as she winks at me. “He’s conveniently leaving out the part where he didn’t even notice me until we got trapped in the elevator together…”
Her words startle me.
“ This elevator?” I point in the direction of our building’s elevator, my thoughts rewinding to the tumble I almost took the day Beckett and I met. How he caught me before the elevator trapped us together.
“That one, indeed,” Mr. Hathaway confirms. “And what a lucky twist of fate that was, because from that day forward, I knew Janey here was the one for me. We got married and moved away for a time, but life eventually led us right back here, where we first met, to see out the rest of our days together.”
“That’s awesome,” I say even as my stomach pinches slightly.
Writing about beautiful, lasting love feels disingenuous to me, given my own experiences. I want stories of heartbreak. Betrayal. Being shunned for the supposed best friend, like I recently was.
Now that sounds like the type of thing I can authentically dig into.
Not to mention, these kinds of stories are relatable. They pull at your heartstrings. And they’d be popular with readers—especially single twenty-somethings reading a lifestyle magazine like Evoke who’ve had similar things happen to them.
As adorable as they are, I don’t need happily-ever-afters like the Hathaways have.
“Do you know of a lot of people who’ve fallen in love here?”
Mrs. Hathaway smiles. “Absolutely.”
Again, not the answer I was hoping for.
“Hey,” I say, needing a change of conversational pace. “You said you moved into The Serendipity right after the apartments opened. What was the building before?”
If I can’t get the answers I need for my article from the Hathaways, maybe I can get the answer to the question Becks asked at the grocery store about the age of the building.
“It was a college dorm for Spring Brook.” The elderly lady nods decisively. “Back then, of course, it was a women’s college, and the campus was in the town center. This place housed some of the students.” She smiles fondly. “I imagine they hosted gentlemen callers in the library and held dances in the ballroom.”
“Wow, I had no idea,” I breathe, feeling like this is information I absolutely should have known. A former Spring Brook student myself, I knew the college historically had been all-girls and that the campus had been relocated to its current spot sometime in the 1960s, but shame on me for not realizing that I currently live in one of the old dorms. “That’s cool.”
“Lots of interesting history ’round these parts,” Mr. Hathaway says with a smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, my wife and I had best be off. We have a date with our bridge club.”
“Enjoy!” I bid the Hathaways goodbye and head towards the front door. And that’s when I hear the music coming from the small library room just off the lobby.
Beautiful, unfamiliar music that I somehow know instinctively is him. Music that has me ditching my plan to go to the library and instead walking straight towards the sound. Like he’s the Pied Piper and I’m completely under his spell.