Chapter Fourteen
DELANEY
At eight o’clock in the morning, Matt’s Diner was less of a restaurant and more of a public meeting place that had become very committed to its breakfast cover story.
“I’m so mad at you!” Adele mock-glared at me across the table, setting her coffee cup down with enough force to slosh a tiny wave of it over the rim. “When were you going to tell me you had dinner with Marc Kingsley?”
My soul attempted to leave my body.
“Keep. Your. Voice. Down,” I hissed.
I did a full perimeter scan of the diner to be sure no one had heard Adele’s wildly inaccurate statement. The guys at the counter. The couple by the window. Old Hank in the corner, who was mostly deaf but somehow always managed to hear exactly what you didn’t want him to.
Nobody looked up.
Okay. Okay, we’re fine. We’re totally fine.
In a town this size, one overheard sentence became five rumors by noon and something involving a Vegas elopement and a secret baby by dinner, similar to a bad game of “telephone” where the message started clearly and became more garbled and twisted with each person who told it.
I watched it happen to my Great-Aunt Jem’s friend, Linda.
She said she liked a guy’s truck, and somehow by Sunday she was allegedly pregnant with twins.
“Don’t make it more than it was,” I pleaded with her.
Why I was even trying to deny anything was a mystery to me. This was Adele. My best friend since we were little. My camp bestie. She had this whole quiet, cozy bookstore-owning, cardigan-wearing librarian energy that masked the fact that she was made of pure, unapologetic fire.
She raised one eyebrow. One. Because she knew she only needed one to dismantle me.
“Delaney Hart, as I live and breathe, do not lie to me.” She wrapped her hands around her mug, her satisfied energy flowing off of her in waves. She knew she held the winning hand. “I heard it directly from Penny who heard it from Grace Kingsley herself.”
I made a strangled sound that was not an actual word.
Ugh. Ugh. This was the fundamental design flaw of small-town living. There was no such thing as a private moment. None. You couldn’t sneeze without someone asking if you were coming down with a cold, asking if you’d tried elderberry syrup, or pushing some other homemade remedy.
I needed to remember: Small-town living meant no secrets.
“Okay, fine. Yes.” I held up a finger. “But also no. You’re making it sound as if it was a sexy romantic evening where we hand-fed each other, and it was absolutely not that.”
I didn’t miss the grin that crossed her face before she could squash it. The little sneak. She’d framed it that way on purpose so I’d rush to correct her and accidentally confirm everything.
Twenty years of friendship. Of knowing each other’s tells, and she could still play me like a fiddle.
“Glamma was there,” I said pointedly. “And so were Martha, Gladys, and Goldie.” I stirred my coffee. “It was less candlelit dinner for two and more of a surprise game show with four elderly audience members who were definitely taking notes.”
Adele leaned forward and propped her chin in her hand, giving me her full and focused attention. “Did they really ask you questions about each other?”
“Yes. And we weirdly knew a lot of things about each other,” I admitted, and then immediately regretted the way that sentence sounded. “Not like—it wasn’t—this is a small town. Of course we’d know things.”
“I knew it!” Her eyes lit up as if she’d found her favorite special edition hardback amidst a bunch of knockoffs. “I always said the hatred you two felt went so deep that there must be more to it.”
“Yes, more hatred,” I grumbled into my coffee cup. “Regular hatred, but make it layered.”
“Or—” she paused for maximum drama—“more like L, O, V, E.” She actually sang it as though she was a fairytale villain who decided to switch sides. “Love.”
“I’m revoking our friendship.”
“You can’t.” She waved her fork at me. “We’ve known each other since we were little. There’s some kind of clause. Once you pass fifteen years, the return window closes permanently. Sorry. It’s the law.”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
I stuck mine back out at her.
We were clearly very mature women.
“Order up!” Matt bellowed from behind the serving window, and Nora, our waitress, materialized beside our booth with our food in no time.
“Hey girls,” Nora said with a bright smile as though we were her favorite thing about this morning.
She had a sweet, open nature that everyone loved.
“One French toast with a side of well-done home fries.” She set that plate in front of me—perfectly golden, dusted with powdered sugar, and maple syrup pooling just right.
“And one veggie omelet for you, Adele.” She straightened up.
“Can I get either of you anything else?”
“I’m good,” Adele answered, and then cut into her omelet, took a bite, and let out a soft groan. “Perfection, Matt. Again,” she said loud enough for him to hear.
Matt grunted. In Matt’s language, that was practically a tearful thank-you speech.
“Same. Thanks, Nora,” I said.
She headed off, and I turned back to my French toast, which was objectively beautiful and deserved my full attention, and yet my BFF was not done.
Adele pointed her fork at me. “I invoke clause number five-twenty-nine of our friendship agreement. BFF’s must spill the secrets.”
I heaved a heavy sigh. “There’s nothing to—”
“You texted me in complete sentences.”
I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth. A drop of maple syrup dripped off the edge and landed on the table. I set the utensil down on my plate. “What?”
Adele nodded at me slowly, like a woman who had all the evidence she needed. “When you’re having a good day, you answer in one word. Good. Cool. Yup. Sometimes just a thumbs-up emoji and nothing else.”
“I do?” I mean, I wasn’t the greatest at getting back to people texting or calling, but I had a pattern to my responses?
“Yes. And when you’re pissed, or working through something, you write full sentences.” She paused. “Sometimes paragraphs.”
I stared at her.
Well, damn.
How had I never once realized that about myself? Not once. And now I was going to be self-conscious about it for the rest of my life. Great. That was great. Just fine.
I picked up my fork and dragged a piece of French toast through the syrup deliberately, making sure to catch some whipped cream, and popped the whole thing into my mouth. Chewing bought me an extra four seconds of not answering.
Adele shockingly stayed quiet, which was somehow worse.
“What if I’ve been wrong about him all this time?” I finally blurted out.
My friend stared at me for a long moment. “That’s possible.”
“You were there,” I said, leaning forward. “All those camp days. You saw how he was. How he humiliated me.”
Her head moved in a tight, controlled arc, barely more than a flick. “I did. And I fully supported your decision to hate him. He hurt you. He picked at things you did like it was a hobby.” She paused. “But maybe we were both a tiny bit wrong.”
“What?” I nearly choked on my next bite. “You can’t say that. That’s treason. You’re my person.”
“I am your person, which is why I can say this.” She set her fork down, which meant we were in serious territory.
“I’ve known the Kingsleys a long time. Marc included.
In a way you don’t, since you were only here for summers and vacations.
And even back then, when he was being insufferable?
He was also weirdly sweet. And very, very bad at peopling. ”
I thought about the facts he’d bring up during other people’s presentations at camp. Every single summer. Well, at least the ones my aunt made me go to.
“You know he’s high-functioning autistic, right?” she asked carefully.
I opened my mouth to respond and snapped it shut.
No, I hadn’t known that.
How could I not have known that?
Why after all these years, all the signs, I hadn’t put the pieces together?
It made total sense now that Adele named it.
“I’m not excusing it,” she said, holding up a hand.
“It took him time to learn better social skills. And who else could spout fifty facts about bats randomly? But back then, he just—he’d say things without any idea they’d land like a brick.
And by the time you two were teenagers, you’d built this whole dynamic.
Where you were both awful to each other, but also couldn’t stop circling. ”
I thought about the game Glamma had engineered. How easily the answers had come. And how many of them were true.
“You may,” I said slowly, “not be completely wrong.”
Adele did not gloat. She gave a single, restrained, one-shoulder shrug, which was her version of gloating.
“I don’t even know what to do with any of this,” I muttered. “My whole internal Marc Filing System is in shambles.”
“To be fair, I think it’s been in shambles for awhile, and you just labeled the folder ‘HATRED,’ so you didn’t have to open it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I came here for French toast, not psychological prodding.”
She grinned. “You get both. It’s a combo deal. And you’re welcome.”
I sighed the sigh of someone who had lost and knew it. “When did a man in glasses start looking so hot?” I said, mostly to my coffee cup.
Adele scoffed. “Um … according to you … Clark Kent.”
“Don’t.”
“You’ve literally had a thing for bespectacled nerds since the two thousands.”
“I said don’t.”
“Every Superman. All of them. The moment they put on their glasses, you were gone.”
I pressed my lips together. “This conversation is over.”
“All I’m saying,” she continued, completely ignoring me, “is to give him an actual fair shot. Not a ‘waiting for him to mess up’ shot. A real one. And if he blows it, we shun him.”
I laughed. “Did you just say shun?”
“Yes.”
“Are we in a period drama now?”