Chapter Four #2
Cheryl stopped and leaned against the weathered wooden exterior of the town hall and crossed her arms. “Okay. Let’s talk this through.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s already done. Finito.” Maybe if I stopped talking about it, I could pretend just for tonight that this didn’t really happen. That Glamma hadn’t just publicly implied Marc and I had been harboring feelings for each other for two decades.
Which I hadn’t been. At all. Neither of us felt anything positive toward the other.
Obviously.
Adele raised an eyebrow, her mom-friend powers activated.
I exhaled through my nose. “Fine. The yoga classes to help the animal shelter passed. What else is there to say?”
The edges of Adele’s lips curled up. “It did pass.”
“And that’s …” Cheryl waited for me to finish her sentence, and when I made no move to do so she did it for me. “Good. It’s good.”
“But …” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Adele’s smile widened like I imagined a cat does when it starts chasing laser pointers. She was so damn good at making me face what I didn’t want to. “There it is.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Yes, you can,” Cheryl said, her bluntness, usually reserved for me in private, came out in full force. “You’ve done something similar to this before. You even said so.”
“But this time I have too much to lose if this goes wrong—”
“It won’t,” Adele insisted.
“But it might.” I crossed my arms tighter, digging my nails into my biceps.
Cheryl shook her head. “Okay, let’s go with this pessimistic attitude of yours. Animal yoga goes off the rails, and the residents of Ruby River think you did a shit job … what then?”
“They hate me.”
“What then?” she asked again.
I glared at her. “They kick me out of town.”
“What then?”
“I’m getting really annoyed—”
“What then?” Adele and Cheryl said together, like the world’s most irritating chorus.
“Fine! I have to go live with my parents in their pristine suburb in Seattle where no one talks about anything real, and I feel more alone than I did before my aunt died, and her ghost will haunt me for ruining the only legacy she left me—the only place I’ve ever felt like I might belong. And Marc—” I stopped.
Both of them leaned in.
“And Marc what?” Adele asked, way too innocently.
“Nothing.”
“You were going to say something about Marc,” Cheryl said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you absolutely were. Your face did a thing.” Cheryl used her pointer finger to circle near my face. As if that motion proved her point.
“My face doesn’t do things,” I protested, purposely wiping any expression from my face.
“It does this …” Adele scrunched up her nose and twisted her mouth, “whenever you mention him.”
“I do not look like that!”
“You kind of do,” Cheryl confirmed.
Why were they my best friends in this town?
I threw my hands up. “Okay, fine! Marc will probably write a very detailed report about how I failed, with charts and data points and probably a fucking bibliography, and he’ll be right, and I’ll have to live with the knowledge that Marc Kingsley was right and I was wrong, and he’ll never let me forget it, not because he’s purposefully mean, but because he’s Marc and he just … remembers everything.”
Silence.
Then Cheryl bit her lip, her shoulders shaking. “Um, I have to ask. How are they going to run you out of town? Last time I checked, we stopped using pitchforks on people.”
“Maybe they’ll form a committee. You know how Ruby River loves committees,” Adele suggested, clearly trying not to laugh. “The Committee for the Removal of Failed Yoga Instructors.”
“CRFYI,” Cheryl said, testing it out. “Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.”
“You two are the worst.” But I was smiling despite myself, even as my eyes stung with tears, but at least my panic was receding.
“I think the word best is what you were looking for,” Adele corrected me, pulling me into a hug.
“Also,” Cheryl added, “the fact that you’re so worried about Marc’s—”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Shut up,” I groaned.
“—that you’ve spent a lot of mental energy on this hypothetical report—”
“I will push you into traffic.”
“There’s hardly any traffic. We’re in Ruby River.”
“I’ll find some.” The tightness in my muscles slowly released as I bantered with my friends.
“Seriously, though. Even if animal yoga is a total flop. The gossip mill will pass and the Ruby River Gazette will post something about someone else the next week,” Adele said, her arms tightening around me.
“But what if it doesn’t pass? What if no one can let it go?” On some level, I knew my fear was irrational, but I couldn’t stop my stomach from clenching and my mind from going to a dark place.
If this class failed… if I failed, then I’d have to move back to my parents’ home in Seattle.
And after being here for the last three months, I didn’t think I could go back to that cold, sterile life.
Here, I felt more like myself than I had in a long time.
There, I was the mostly obedient daughter.
I didn’t want those shackles of expectation to fasten around me any longer.
I needed to have the freedom to be the me I was meant to be.
And while all of that was bad enough, my heart, which was already shattered from losing my person, my Aunt Jem, I’d feel like she misplaced her trust in me.
Her legacy was Sacred Serenity. But it was more than just the building.
It was more than the services we provided.
It was the comfort, the joy, the community we created in our space for the residents of Ruby River.
And if I lost that—I would lose a piece of myself and my aunt forever. I’d lose the purpose I’d finally found.
So much for being relaxed.
“Then, as your besties, we’ll create a distraction.” Adele sounded so confident.
“Totally. It’ll be something so epic people will be like, animal yoga what?” Cheryl laughed.
“Thanks, you guys.”
“You’ll always have us,” Adele responded and leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Always,” Cheryl agreed and wrapped her arms around both of us.
I drew in my first deep breath since Glamma destroyed my night, and then another, in and out, slow and steady. I let it fill my belly before slowly releasing it. They were right. And with friends like the two of them, I’d make it through this.
A familiar throat cleared, making us jump apart.
“Delaney?”
My stomach dropped like I’d missed a step in the dark. I didn’t have to look up to know who it was. I really didn’t want to talk to him tonight.
Marc stood a few feet away, his hands tucked into the pockets of a well-worn canvas jacket, posture rigid in a way that always made him seem like he was bracing for impact.
Knowing him, he likely calculated the appropriate amount of feet between us so he didn’t have to get too close. Because God forbid Marc ever do anything without optimal spatial parameters. I wondered if he had a spreadsheet for social interactions.
Column A: Distance.
Column B: Acceptable greeting phrases.
Column C: Probability of Delaney losing her shit.
Not like this morning, my subconscious threw out at me. Not when his body was pressed against yours in the most delicious way.
Damnit. I was being a total bitch. Marc couldn’t help how he was anymore than I could stop being me. And I was being an asshole even just thinking those thoughts about him and spreadsheets.
The streetlight nearby caught his glasses, obscuring his eyes, which somehow made the tension between us feel sharper. His mouth tightened as though he could hear my thoughts and wasn’t impressed. “We need to talk.”
Something about the way he said it—flat, precise—made my stomach contract.
“About what?” The question came out exactly the same as it had the summer I was sixteen and he’d “corrected” my bird identification in front of everyone on the nature walk.
Just like he’d found some way to criticize me every year of camp.
I couldn’t stop the quick snap of my words.
It was a knee-jerk reaction to him at this point.
He blinked. The way he regarded me reminded me of a GPS recalculating. Except he was reevaluating which direction he needed to go next in this conversation with me. “We need to discuss logistics for the animal yoga sessions. Given the vote passed with 70% approval—”
I threw my hand up in a stop motion. How in the world did he know this? He’d left before they took a vote. “Did you seriously just calculate the percentage?”
“Yes. Forty-two in favor, fifteen opposed, three abstentions.” He said this as though it was normal. Like everyone kept running tallies of town hall votes. But this was Marc, and I needed to remember that he dealt in facts and figures, not people.
Adele made a choking noise that might have been a laugh or a cough.
“Of course you did,” I muttered. Clearly acknowledging to myself that Marc dealt with the world differently wasn’t currently softening my attitude.
Marc’s face flickered with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Confusion, maybe. “You asked if I calculated it. I was confirming I had.”
And there it was. The thing he did. Where he answered exactly what was asked, missing the subtext entirely, and I felt like an awful person for being annoyed by his honesty. I needed to remember his way of communicating with the world if we were going to work together.
Adele’s gaze volleyed between us. “We can give you two a few minutes alone.” She grabbed Cheryl’s arm and tugged her forward.
Cheryl stopped moving the second she was in front of Marc. She had to look up—he was easily six inches taller—but somehow still managed to be menacing. “Try not to be an ass.”
“I don’t—I’m not—” Marc stammered, his hand coming up to push at his glasses.
“Historically, you have been,” Cheryl said matter-of-factly. “I’m just asking for improved performance metrics.”
Marc looked like he’d been slapped. “I … yes. Okay. I’ll … try not to be an ass.”