CHAPTER SEVEN
By sixteen, I didn’t ask Mom to drive me anymore. Too many late arrivals, too many empty promises and forgotten rain checks. So, I walked. The bag dug into my shoulder, my cleats clattering inside with every step, sweat rolling down my back by the time I reached the field.
I didn’t bother glancing at the bleachers during warm-up. Parents waved handmade signs, cheering their names and doling out ice-cold waters from their coolers. The one face I wanted to see never showed. I’d gotten used to it.
The game blurred with motion—sprinting, shouting, lungs burning. When the whistle blew, the girls flocked to the stands, laughing as their parents’ congratulated them with bear hugs and pats on the back. I peeled my shin guards off alone, shoving them into the bag.
“Hey,” a voice called. Teddy. He leaned against the chain-link fence, one hand holding a Styrofoam cup that looked like it had come from the gas station down the street. He lifted it with a sparkle in his eyes. “Orange soda. Closest I could get to Gatorade.”
I blinked at him, sweat streaking down my face. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to see you score.” He grinned, sheepish, and passed the cup through the fence.
Warm soda, sticky hands, and one less solo walk home. Small to some, but it was something. And at sixteen, something was more than I ever expected.
???
PRESENT DAY
“My shoes!” I squeaked, all color having drained from my face as the rain pelted the once-beautiful Italian leather. I gasped and wrenched my suede coat off, balling it inside out in some attempt to keep it dry.
Teddy watched me, infuriatingly calm as the onslaught steadily drenched him.
Then, because I was well aware of my coat’s price tag, I shoved it under my sweater.
He arched an eyebrow. “You look ridiculous.”
“No, I look like I’m ruining thousands of dollars!
” I shouted, whirling around as I debated which refuge was closer.
My brain seemed to short circuit. Or maybe I was too preoccupied by the sound of discoloring leather.
I didn’t bother with an explanation as I started out in a full sprint toward the diner.
“Where are you going, you lunatic?” Teddy yelled after me with a laugh, grabbing my sodden sleeve. “Follow me!”
Perhaps I’d gone insane without Candice’s weekly guidance, because I turned and ran after my ex-boyfriend without another word.
I clutched my ball of coat to my chest as Teddy set a brisk pace down Bluebell Lane. In all the absurd events of that day, I was too tired to question where he was taking me, or why we hadn’t turned away from the street lined with palatial estates.
He cut across an absurdly green lawn and beneath the portico of a home with vibrant yellow flowers climbing the pillars. I eyed Teddy as he pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the towering mahogany door.
“Are you squatting here or something?” I asked, following him inside. “I thought this place was vacant.”
“This is where Travel and Taste put me up,” he replied and flicked a light switch that activated a massive crystal chandelier above the foyer.
I’d never been inside one of the Bluebell Lane houses.
The glossy hardwood floors stretched up a bifurcated staircase with brass railings, beneath a maroon rug that looked older than both of us combined.
I could see the rain pelting the back gardens through several sets of French doors beyond the foyer, grey light pouring in from the towering windows beyond each threshold.
It certainly wasn’t the kind of wealth I’d encountered in New York.
Gilded-framed artwork, taller than me, hung like silent butlers flanking the entryway. Their centuries-old strokes of oil paint in shades of cream and navy and burgundy scowled at the puddle that steadily formed around my feet, as if they’d have to sweep in behind me to clean up the mess.
“Fancy,” I muttered after an extended silence.
Teddy jerked his chin to our right. “I can light a fire. Maybe you can dry your… coat.”
I didn’t miss the way his lips quirked before he turned away. Flushing, I wrenched the damp ball from beneath my sweater and ironed it with my palms as I followed him.
Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the sitting room, a set of bay windows, a leather Chesterfield couch and matching armchairs situated before a gaping fireplace with an engraved mantle.
My eyes scanned the endless display of titles on the walls, complete with the rolling ladder of my dreams. Dripping in ruined boots and wielding a crumpled coat, I felt more like a wet rat that had accidentally stumbled into Cinderella’s castle.
Teddy dragged a hand through his hair, peeled off his denim jacket and stooped beside the fireplace.
It was completely quiet aside from steady rain pelting the windows and the sound of scraping wood as he pulled some logs from the rack.
I shifted from foot to foot, the idea of braving the storm suddenly feeling ten times more attractive than it had before.
He turned abruptly as the logs caught aflame. I dragged my gaze away and pretended I’d been studying the collection of novels all along, and not the rippling shadows beneath his wet sweater. From the corner of my eyes, he pulled off his sneakers and launched himself back onto the couch.
“Are you just going to stand there?” he teased and patted the leather. “I promise I won’t bite.”
My lips parted but no words fell out.
Teddy lifted a brow. “I’m happy to walk you back to the diner, Margot.” As if on cue, a clap of thunder rattled the windows, and the rainfall promptly intensified against the glass. He sent me an infuriating smirk, stretching an arm along the back of the couch. “But it seems you’re stuck with me.”
An unwelcome flurry of butterflies exploded in my stomach.
“Fine,” I replied through gritted teeth.
Gingerly pulling my boots off, I draped my coat over one armchair and pointedly curled up into the other.
For a minute, I ignored his studying gaze and fixated on the sway of ochre-dotted branches lining the road and the streams of water traveling down the windowpanes.
Beside me, the fire slowly glowed warmer and warmer.
“You’re not on a sabbatical, are you?”
It landed like a bucket of ice on an otherwise pleasant moment. “I can’t believe you can still do that,” I said with a frown.
“What?”
“Never mind,” I murmured, playing with the hem of my jeans.
Even in silence, Teddy’s gaze grew more expectant. “So?”
“Why do you want to know?” I retorted, squinting at him.
He groaned. “I’m just trying to have a conversation with my old friend. A real conversation.”
Old friend. So, he didn’t even see me as his ex-girlfriend. The fact somehow felt more humiliating than what I was about to tell him.
“I was… let go.”
“Margot Wade? Fired?” Teddy shook his head. “I seem to recall that they tried to make you a manager at the Morning Bell after only a month working there one summer. You’re not telling me the whole story.”
I sighed and swallowed the thick lump that formed in my throat. “I submitted my own manuscript under a pen name, and got rejected. So, I kind of… uh, freaked out and fled New York. Without telling anyone.”
My face bright red, the explanation poured out in a rush. No one knew but Georgie. Nothing was quite so embarrassing as flaming out because I couldn’t handle the same rejection I doled out to authors for years.
I doubled down on my failure, effectively lighting my future on fire and stranding myself in my hometown in the process. Brilliant.
Expecting some sort of commentary on my spectacular display of self-destruction, my shoulders wilted.
Instead, Teddy said, “You’re still writing?”
For one, blistering second, I thought I might melt.
“Well… not currently.”
He rubbed his jaw and stared at the flames. “You’re not letting one little slip up stop you from writing, right?”
“It wasn’t exactly little,” I said with an indignant sniff. “And it’s not as if you’d have any idea what it was like.”
“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Teddy leaned forward on his knees, head cocked in the way that said I had his full attention. No less unnerving than it always had been.
I snorted. “Last I checked, you’re the only one of us who ended up so successful that you’re famous.”
A pink tinge appeared on his cheeks as he mumbled, “I’m not famous.”
“Stop with the false modesty,” I snapped before I could take it back. Then I blurted, “I just mean—none of us are getting hailed by adoring fans. You’re the only one who ended up doing everything you set out to do.” The conviction in my voice made my chest tighten.
He hummed thoughtfully. “Serena’s a fashion designer, Georgie’s made a life for herself in Bluebell Cove, and last I checked, Wes is getting paid to swim with sharks or something.”
Teddy trailed off, fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater. The message between the lines turned my stomach.
And he was right. Wes, Serena, and Georgie had all reached their goals. Each of them happy and successful and living the lives we’d dreamed about while stargazing on Seaglass Beach for our entire childhoods.
I was the outlier—the washed-up one, the walking cautionary tale. The worst part was that I had no one to blame but myself.
He watched as I slipped from my chair and perused the bookshelves.
Maybe I could wait out the rest of the storm with a good novel and no more uncomfortably insightful comments.
Teddy didn’t seem to get the memo, though, because soon he was right beside me, hands in his pockets and thoughts so loud there might as well have been a speech bubble above his head.
“What?” I said with a sigh, tracing my fingertips along a gilt-stamped spine that glittered in the window light.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he whispered. “I remember seeing you at Marigold’s funeral and thinking: ‘She’s going to conquer the world, isn’t she?’”
The small laugh sounded so close that I nearly jumped away.
“And look where I am now. Unemployed and living with my mother,” I retorted, forcing myself to continue reading book titles as if his abrupt nearness hadn’t spiked my heart rate.
Teddy leaned his shoulder against the bookshelf, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “You didn’t let me finish. The Margot I knew didn’t want to conquer the world—you wanted to write.”
“We shouldn’t talk about this,” I murmured.
“Why not?”
My fingers curled into my palms and I paced across the rug toward the windows. When I turned back, he’d followed me again. “Because, Teddy, that girl is gone.”
It felt like acid on my tongue. I wanted to believe it—so, it had to be true.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied.
“It doesn’t have to.”
“Seven years isn’t exactly a lifetime,” Teddy continued, oblivious to the heat steadily mounting beneath my skin.
I fixated on a thick droplet sliding down the glass. “Drop it.”
“You’re my friend, and you’re unhappy. I can’t just leave it alone.”
That dreaded word again: friend. It was proof, yet again, that the years I’d spent yearning had been completely pointless. No epic love story waited for me—just an insignificant relationship that was so meaningless he didn’t even remember it seven years later.
It soured in my stomach as I turned to him. “I guess it was too worthless for you to remember, friend—but you had a hand in this.”
The color drained from his face, and his mouth parted, but I was already storming across the room. I shoved my water stained boots on my feet and flew to the front door before he could try to change my mind. Barreling down the portico steps, I could hear him call after me.
I refused to go back.
My earlier resolve disappeared with a few smiles. It had been less than two days, and already I was clay in his hands. Being alone with him—and worse, close to him—was like the potent antivenom to the layers of anti-Teddy poison I’d carefully stationed around my heart.
As I broke out into a full sprint down Bluebell Lane, ponytail swinging behind me like a sodden pendulum, a fresh resolve settled in place.
I wouldn’t allow Teddy Bowman to repeat history.