7. Sawyer
Every summeron our drive up from the city, we would drive past the hillside and through the main road. To get to the lake house, we’d have to loop around the storefronts and up the road to the private estates. I didn’t focus much on any other focal points, or houses—or people for that matter. Except when we’d zip by the houses that lined the hillside in our Escalade—my grandfather talked about how they were nothing more than eye sores. He said anything less than a two-story house was not a real home.
The lake houses were sparse from one another, but we still knew the other summer residents. Of course, we did. They had status and savings, and those were the type of things my grandfather appreciated about someone. To my understanding, we socialized with our inner circle and whoever sold us our seafood broil or steaks to throw on the grill.
I never understood why there was such an upturned-nose attitude over Rider, maybe that’s not something for me to understand. But either way, I knew that the Banks family was all about the hustle and bustle. Anything else, anyone else, simply didn’t exist.
I was taught to believe Rider was a place for nobodies.
The Hillside Cottages housed the people whom he called nobodies.
And to my surprise, they housed the people who ended up feeling most like home to me. And the one at the end along the riverbend belonged to Lucy. And Lucy was definitely not a nobody. She was somebodythat I wanted to know. Beneath her flustered disposition, I felt her welcoming glow. There was a cloud of serenity that radiated off of her.
With my hand curled into a ball, I was knocking at Lucy’s front door.
“Sawyer.” Her eyes widened as she hunched over, pulling at the bottom hem of her shirt. “What are you doing here?” She tried to stretch her shirt over her thighs, trying to hide the fact that she was wearing nothing but an oversized, faded 90210 Beverly Hills tee.
Not oversized enough, when she walked away from the door for a split second, her ass played peek-a-boo beneath the hem of her shirt. She returned to the door wrapped up in a throw blanket.
“I am sorry to have stopped by like this.”
“No, it’s okay. Just thrown off, that’s all.”
“I told you I was going to find you someone.”
“Uh, yeah,” she peered her head out the front door and looked around then scratched the side of her head. “You’re going to have to use more words.”
It took me a second before my brain caught up with her words. “Right!” I quickly reached into my back pocket and held up three business cards. I spread them out like playing cards, “I come bearing gifts,” I said waving them in the air.
She let out a curt laugh, then stepped off to the side. “Come on in.” She led us down the hall and into the kitchen. It was small but had a lot of personality from what I could tell. Ceramics and vintage dishware were on display on the shelving. “Coffee?” she asked.
“Yes, please.”
She tugged at her blanket, making it tighter around her body before bending over into the opened box on the floor. “Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said as she pulled out two mugs, unwrapping packing paper from around them.
The house was bare for the most part, but it was far from a mess. There were boxes and a lot of them, but everything seemed to still have a place. It was an organized mess if anything.
“Creamer?”
“Black is fine.” The coffee roared in completion, filling the awkwardness in the room. I leaned up against the fridge and watched as she stirred her coffee. “It’s nice to be able to put a face to the owner of the house. And to see where Gus spends the better half of his Sundays.”
She had let me into her space so effortlessly, willingly. And I sat here strung out, worried that I’d say something stupid. With both mugs in hand, she slid into the breakfast nook underneath the window. I moved across the room and sat in the spot across from her as she pushed mine across the table. Hers had a cardinal on it, and mine had Tweety Bird with a surface-level chip on the beak.
“So,” she dragged out the single word.
“Right, yes.” I slid the cards across the table. “There’s a real estate agent in there that’s the best I have ever known, but he’s in New Haven. That one,” I pointed as she filtered through, “she’s efficient but she’s a little harsh. Okay, a lot harsh and I may have wanted to cry when I met her, but we will not be talking about that.” Then she got to the last one. “That’s Kai. They also work down at Jitters when it’s a slow season for them, but they’re my buddy from growing up.”
She held Kai Bellair’s card up in front of her for a beat before throwing the other two across the kitchen, both flying in different directions. “Bellair, huh? I think we have a winner,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, then walked the business card over to the fridge, securing it beneath a magnet. When she returned to the table, she dropped the blanket off to the side as she climbed back into the booth.
“Again, I’m sorry to have just come by unannounced like this.”
“No, no. You’re all good. I appreciate it, seriously. This makes my life easier, so thank you,” she smiled into her coffee before taking a sip.
“I’m glad that I was able to help. You know, right when I thought that I had won everyone over, and knew the ins and outs of the town, you showed up.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not like you’ve never been here before.” She knitted her brows. “You all came in like a hurricane every summer, acting like you owned the place. Surely you tried to know someone’s name at some point. Right?” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.
The flawless sweet facade that masked some sort of hidden spicy attitude started to slip away. She extended out her claws and latched them right into my ego.
“A hurricane, huh?” I leaned forward, across the table. She sunk back into her seat and started to twist the charm on her necklace. “You were paying attention?” I asked, a little more cocky than I would’ve liked.
Normally, I’d despise having people draw their own conclusions about me from the outside looking in. But knowing that she knew who I was struck a chord with me, it almost made me feel warm. Regardless, she had her preconceived notions that didn’t seem too positive. Almost like there was hope, even a chance, that she would think a little bit more of me.
God, what was wrong with me? Caring what people thought.
“No. I just meant that—Yeah, actually, I don’t know what I was thinking.” She slid her coffee out in front of her. “You never gave us townspeople the time of day. But what do I know, I stopped seeing you around as years went by.” She drew her mouth into a thin line and closed into herself, a little more closed off than she’d been.
I pushed my coffee away into the center of the table and leaned back against the bench, mimicking her movements. I studied her, trying to find what her words were really saying. I could’ve rebutted, defended myself. Find the exact thing she needed to hear to change her mind. But I didn’t blame her.
“You know, I’m not like the rest of them,” I finally said.
“So I’m told,” she said in a whisper.
“I don’t blame you for thinking whatever you do, though. I never ventured out from behind my confines.”
“You make it seem like you were held captive.”
Sometimes I felt like I was.
I ran my fingers through my hair, “I mean, I was in the city more than I was here. I never saw the point of getting to know people or their names.”
“And now?” She ran her thumb over the handle. The claws had retracted themselves.
“Now, I figured if I was going to live here full time, I might as well make a community for myself.”
She dropped her shoulders, and her face went soft. “Can I ask you something?” she asked cautiously.
“Always.”
“What was it that made you get Gus to sell? I just can”t wrap my head around it. I don’t mean it in a bad way or anything, it’s just…What exactly did you say?” There was a sadness about her as she gnawed at her bottom lip.
“I don’t think it was any one thing in particular. I honestly threw it out there as a joke one day, but as you can see, he did not take it as one. He almost jumped out of his skin at the idea.”
“Interesting,” she said with a disturbed tone as she stood from the table. She clutched the bottom of her shirt keeping it in place as much as possible. She placed her mug in the sink, and I followed after. We were a foot apart. Inches, really.
Her perfume hit me like the first day back at The Hideout and I lost all train of thought. She spun on her heels to face me, her arms crossed against her chest. “Well, you better do his place justice,” she demanded, pointing a stiff finger at me with a scowl. Her hip was cocked out. Lucy might be small but she stood strong.
I moved her hand down and out of my face and held it in mine. Except I wasn’t the one who pulled away first this time. She brought her hand to her collarbone and fidgeted with her necklace.
“I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way,” I said breathy between the two of us.
“Uh, anyway,” she coughed out. “I have so much I have to take care of, but I appreciate you bringing those cards over.”
“I completely understand.” I took a step back.
Her energy shifted and she turned on a serious voice. As if she was saying it was nice doing business with ya, I’ll see you around. I didn’t want this to just be a business deal with Lucy. I wasn’t going to sit back and whimper like I had the other day. I had a feeling that Lucy wasn’t the person that you let time pass and wait around for. She was the girl—the woman—that you make first moves for and be forward with.
She pointed over to the business card on the fridge, “And I will make sure to give Kai a call later this week.”
I walked over to Kai’s card and pulled it out from under its magnet. I found a stray pen near a notepad that sat on her counter and clicked it. “If you find yourself free tonight, and I know that it’s last minute, The Hideout is having a little re-opening. Nothing major, really. But I’d like to see you there. And if not,” I wrote my number down on the back of the card, “give me a call if you need any help. I am a great baseboard cleaner.”
I clicked the pen into itself and returned it to its place on the counter before sticking the card back on the fridge. I looked over at Lucy, a deer caught in the headlights.
She nudged out her hip again and a playful grin danced on her face. “Are you saying my baseboards need cleaning?”
I took my keys out of my pocket and twirled them around my finger. “I’ll see you around, Lucy,” I said before walking out, leaving her standing against the kitchen sink.
I was not going to be playing it safe with Lucy, especially not when she looks and smells and talks as exceptionally as she does.