Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Bella and I fell into a rhythm. We ate meals with our friends and reserved afternoons for some sort of group outing, even if it was just resting in the shadow of a tree and talking about what a tool Preston was.
Nights were spent by the bonfire, and one of my favorite things was listening to Bella tell stories about her mother and their wacky adopted Salem family.
Part of the appeal was how irritated Preston was to hear the stories.
Everybody else loved them. Even Daisy, who I was convinced was inviting Preston into her cabin nightly.
I didn’t care enough to prove my theory, but there were signs that Preston was working out his stress with the buxom author.
As for Daisy, I understood why she was attaching herself to Preston.
She looked at him and saw money. He was hosting an author event.
It was obvious she believed she could elevate her author career by hitching her wagon to his teeny-tiny post. She was in for a rude awakening, though.
She was just a means to an end for Preston.
He wanted Bella back, if only so he could publicly humiliate her and get the people in his social circle to talk about something else.
Once the retreat was over, Daisy wouldn’t even be a fond memory.
She didn’t see it. What Daisy had noticed was that Preston had a continued interest in Bella.
She had marked Bella as an enemy. Rather than call Preston out on his bad behavior—why did nobody tell this guy he was a turd?
—she projected all of her anxiety onto Bella.
Interactions with Daisy had become uncomfortable.
There was nothing I could do about that, though.
The one time I’d tried to talk to Daisy, away from Preston, she’d accused me of wanting to steal her away as part of a game.
I’d shut down communication then and there.
Even if I wasn’t fake engaged, Daisy would never be my type.
She was far too vapid, and there was an underlying meanness to her that I didn’t find attractive in the least.
Despite Daisy’s need to put on a show, bonfire nights were fun. Bella and I spent our mornings writing out by the lake—we were both making good headway on our current projects—and we spent nights wrapped around one another.
Nothing had progressed beyond that, and I was strangely content just holding her. She made little sighing noises in her sleep. She smelled like cloves, too, which she said was a combination of the soap and body spray her mother made and sent her at regular intervals.
Taffy Oakley sounded like a hoot, and I was determined to meet her however things turned out between Bella and me.
And yeah, suddenly I wasn’t so certain this fake arrangement wasn’t going anywhere.
The mental shift hit me out of the blue, and by our fifth day together at the retreat, I was no longer assuming we would go our separate ways.
What I was confused about was what it actually meant, and whether I should broach the subject with Bella.
I did not want to rock the boat. My current favorite activity was cuddling up with Bella at night.
Sometimes, if we had a few cocktails by the bonfire, we dropped off immediately without talking.
Other nights, when we didn’t drink, we talked about our favorite horror movies and books ad nauseam.
I should have been bored by it at this point, but I wasn’t.
Her brain was as fascinating as her crooked smile.
I loved hearing her analyses of movies and books, listening to which tropes worked and didn’t.
She had a natural knack for breaking things down. I loved it.
She was the first woman in—well, ever—who had continuously made me think. Usually, if I had sex with a woman or dated her for two weeks or so, I was bored beyond belief. I opened an exit door early on so she wouldn’t get attached, knowing I never would.
It was the opposite with Bella. I was already attached.
We’d only known each other for a month, but I felt as if we’d been in each other’s lives forever.
I was comfortable with her. I told her ideas for books and she shot holes into them, something that would have bothered me with anybody else.
I wanted to hear her take, though, and truth be told, she understood horror tropes even better than me.
She would be a natural if she wanted to write it, even though she was determined to stick to her current genre.
I suggested we have breakfast in downtown Savannah on the Friday before our first reader weekend. Mostly, I wanted to give her a break from Preston’s—and now Daisy’s—steady glares. I also wanted some breathing room to broach the subject of writing what she loved.
So we volunteered to shop for everybody.
We were running low on snacks from our first shopping excursion and picked up lists from our friend group.
I refused to do the shopping for anyone else, but had no problem picking up Hayley’s favorite lemon wafer cookies and the mini-cupcakes Bree loved to eat in a single bite before kissing Brody with a full mouth of frosting—a game they both enjoyed.
When I suggested taking a break and heading back to Savannah for a few hours, Bella jumped at the chance. We skipped breakfast at the campground, and I took her to one of my favorite places when we were back in the downtown area.
Treylor Park Double Wide Diner was, yes, in a double-wide.
It was kitschy, but the food was amazing.
I’d known exactly where I wanted to take Bella for breakfast when she jumped at the chance to leave the campground for a day.
The way her eyes sparkled as I led her into the restaurant told me I’d made the right choice.
“Wow.” She looked around reverently, her big eyes shining with delight. “I love a good gimmick restaurant.”
“I bet you get a lot of those in Salem,” I said as I put my hand to the small of her back, relishing her warmth, and guided her to a table.
“Well, everything in Salem is Halloween themed,” she replied.
“I’m not sure anybody ever sat down and said ‘we should brand everything around the witch trials’ because that sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.
However, at a certain point, it became obvious that was going to be Salem’s thing.
“As for restaurants, they’re all basically decorated year-round for Halloween, but they don’t just offer things like pumpkin ravioli.
Most of the restaurants have shifting menus.
They really lean into the seafood for summer—it’s fresh and cheap—and then once August rolls around, it’s time to push the pumpkin martinis and squash dishes. ”
“I really want to go there with you for Halloween.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think better of it. Rather than try to haul them back—a losing effort if I’d ever seen one—I watched her closely for her reaction.
“I would love to show you around.” Her smile was perky. “My mother has texted three times to ask if I want her to reserve a hotel room.”
“This early?”
“Oh, the hotels are already booked up for Halloween. One of the secrets of Salem is that they have hidden reserve rooms for important people. Say someone promoting a horror movie needs to be seen in Salem, suddenly they’ll be able to come up with a room or two.”
“Ah.” I bobbed my head. “I’ve got it.”
“I’ve told her, as one of the top horror writers, we would be able to float that to get one of the rooms released, but she kind of wants to use her influence to get you one.”
I studied the planes of her face. Somehow, in a month’s time, I’d managed to figure out most of her expressions. Right now, she was feeling trepidation. “So what’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just didn’t know how serious you were.”
“If it’s a money thing, I can give you my credit card number to give to her to reserve the room.”
“Just like that?” Bella’s brow wrinkled in suspicion. “You don’t even know my mother. What if she runs off with your credit card number?”
I shrugged. “First off, she would never do that. She believes in karma far too much to even consider it.” I’d talked to Taffy again during one of her brief video calls with Bella two days before.
The conversation hadn’t been long, but I really liked the woman.
I knew exactly who she was. “Secondly, if she did that, I would just cancel my credit card and get a new one. It’s not a big deal. ”
She blinked. “You’re very trusting.”
“Okay.” Was that a good or bad thing? I couldn’t tell.
“I was with Preston for three years, and he still hid his screen when he was putting in his pin number into an app.”
Ugh. That guy was the king of the turds.
The last thing Bella would ever do was try to steal from someone.
Since Preston didn’t have real feelings for anybody—I was starting to think he was incapable of loving anybody but himself, like a true narcissist—he would never understand who Bella was at her core.
I did, though. She was amazing.
I opened my mouth to say just that when the server arrived. She looked harried. Since the restaurant was always busy—the kitsch drew people in—I knew better than to drag things out.
“I’ll have the Double Down Breakfast with the Grapeful Dead and a glass of water.”
Bella’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “You’re drinking first thing in the morning?”
There was nothing I could do but laugh at her response. “It’s my favorite cocktail, and I figured we would take a walk downtown before heading out to shop. I want to stretch our break through lunch.”
“Oh.” She seemed to consider it. “Good idea.” Her eyes went back to her menu.
“Sorry,” I said to the server, hoping to keep her from being impatient. “She’s a newbie, and I want to make sure she has the best Treylor Park experience she could possibly have.”
To my surprise, the server nodded. “It’s okay. I love a virgin.”