9. Nat
NINE
Nat
Shock wasn’t a strong enough word for what I felt after what Jack had said last night. The man had no right to be so harsh. I’d wondered for a while what he had against me, but maybe my family was reason enough. Maybe it was valid.
My grandfather was politically divisive and frequently antagonistic to those who opposed his views. He’d been known for his smear campaigns back when he was attempting to win the presidency and hadn’t been well-liked as a vice president.
As his granddaughter, I was a face of his family first campaign, and the vitriol toward my family and me was well-known. I’d only fallen away from the spotlight after my father’s tragic passing. I still resented my parents for putting me in that position.
But that wasn’t where the animosity toward my family ended. My mother was a billionaire who ran an empire that had its own host of problems, and I’d contributed to it by working for them. It was one of the reasons I’d left. I couldn’t be proud of the company I worked for.
I’d hoped getting out of the public eye would have been enough for the country to forget about me, but obviously, Jack hadn’t. Maybe he was in the same camp as the objectors and assumed I shared my family’s values.
I swiped left and right on my lock screen over and over. And because I was a glutton for punishment, I made a choice.
Was today the best time to call my mom? Definitely not. But my sister’s words had been ringing in my head, and I knew she was right. Someone needed to extend the olive branch, and if past experiences had taught me anything, it wasn’t going to be them.
I quickly unlocked my phone, pulling up my contacts and hitting send on Mom before I could back out. God, what was I doing?
It rang.
And went to voicemail.
“You’ve reached the voicemail of Catherine Breckenridge…”
I pulled it away from my ear and stared. Had my mom just bitch-buttoned me? I hung up. What the fuck?
I called back, and it rang once before immediately going to voicemail again. Okay, definitely bitch-buttoning me.
My blood started to boil. Excuses piled up, and none of them were comforting.
Maybe she was in a meeting. Maybe she was driving.
Maybe she’d meant it when she’d told me I was no longer a part of the family.
I thought about sending a text to my sister telling her I was right, but this was one thing I didn’t want to be right about. There was no winning in this situation.
I wiped away the moisture collecting in the corner of my eye and put my phone down. Maybe it was time to throw on some hiking boots. The outdoors never did me dirty, though I was afraid of it being too quiet and allowing me too much time to think. Dammit, why were my cheeks wet?
Two knocks sounded. Then another. I opened my door and found Jack standing on my front porch, hand clenched in a fist to knock again.
So it was going to be one of those days.
“What do you want?” I sniffed. He probably thought it was something a stuck-up Breckenridge would do.
His throat constricted as he swallowed down his shittiness. Probably.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he spoke, softer than I’d ever heard him. This wasn’t going how I thought it would. “I came to apologize.”
Okay, really not going how I thought it would.
“Apologize?” It came out sounding more truculent than I’d meant.
“I was out of line last night. You were pushing me, and I…” He took a half-step back as I glared, hopefully searing a hole through his undersized heart. “No. I never should have said what I said.”
I nodded, and he waited for a response, leaving dead air between us. Breaking the silence was a small mercy he didn’t deserve, but I did it anyway. “You’re right, you shouldn’t have. I’m glad you recognize you did something wrong.”
He gave me a small nod. An acceptance of his wrongness. It caught me off guard, but not enough for me to want this interaction to go any longer than it had to.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah, Nat. That’s all.”
“Cool.” I shut the door in his face and walked to the bed again, already overthinking my interaction, as any anxiety-ridden person would do.
It may have been salty, a little impulsive, and maybe immature, but I wasn’t ready to accept his apology. This was a major sore spot, and he didn’t have a goddamn clue what he was talking about.
The urge to explain myself to him started to pick at me, but I fought it. I didn’t need to reveal that I’d worked my ass off not to be like my family. That choosing myself for once meant losing my home. That made me feel like I was all alone.
I wanted to go see Hazel, but she’d notified me just hours ago that she and Leo were going back to California to deal with a problem at Camp Sunlight. She was vague about it, but if she had to leave the state, there must have been a major issue.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I’d been keeping the animosity between Jack and me under wraps with my friend, mostly because it felt tattletale-y to go to her.
Maybe even petty. I didn’t want our issues to reflect poorly on him, because I wasn’t a monster.
This had been his job for years. If I were pushed out for being unprofessional, at least I would still have my primary source of income.
But money was the only thing I had. And I would have traded all of it for one person to hug me right now.
It had been days, and everything he’d said that night on the dock still stung.
I needed a distraction, which was perfect because today was our day off and we were about to take part in another competition: the bake-off.
We’d moved it up to Thursday, after campers had left, with the express purpose of keeping them out of this contest. I couldn’t say I wasn’t nervous, because I barely cooked these days.
I was too busy traveling, and when I did have a kitchen, I tried.
But there was no baking, per se. I could read directions. That was all I’d need, right?
It took all of five minutes for me to be reminded that Jack Hawthorne was a douche. Especially since he made everyone like him, making me look vindictive for no reason.
Mouth gaping, I watched him goof off with Emerson. And Autumn. And Lamar. Even Kristy from Wildwood’s bakery, the Cozy Crumb, had a rapport with him.
What the hell had I done to make him hate me so much?
I realized I was glaring at him as he told the stupid punchline to his stupid joke.
“So I said, ‘Why do you have three flip-flops when I only have one?’”
Cue raucous applause. Cue my hackles rising.
If I kept responding like this, my shoulders were going to stay that way.
Everyone except for Mr. Hilarious dispersed and took their spots at their stations, leaving the space right next to me open.
For fuck’s sake.
Jack stopped in his tracks when he realized what he was left with.
He looked left, then right, probably calculating the level of effort it would take to have someone switch places with him.
But everyone around us was engaged with their seatmates, completely unaware of the drama that had the capacity to unfold.
I, however, could feel the tension weighing me down like a five-hundred-pound boulder on my chest.
He made his way to his spot, sitting down in front of his convection toaster oven.
We were seated in the mess hall at the long tables, in front of cooking stations set up for each counselor.
Our supplies and ingredients were beside each other.
That seemed like an oversight. Who knew what kind of sabotage could take place if your seatmate was a conniving jerk?
He tapped on the table, took a breath, and turned an inch toward me before looking back at his oven. Then he did it again. He was starting to earn the moniker of weirdo on top of asshole. “Natalie, I—”
“Jack attack, can you hand me that whisk right by you? I didn’t get one.” Sawyer pointed at his station.
Jack nodded and grabbed his second whisk, tossing it at Sawyer before stabbing his own whisk at them. Sawyer parried as though they were fencing. Jack then flipped his whisk between his fingers and placed it back on the table.
I mock coughed once Sawyer walked away. “Two-faced.” I coughed again. Maturity was overrated when you were in your thirties.
“What’d you just say?”
“You may have everyone here convinced that you’re some wonderful guy, but I know better.”
“Okay.” Jack’s voice dripped with condescension. I imagined him taking a long hike off a short cliff and smiled to myself, which garnered a confused expression from the man who haunted my dreams. And my reality.
“It’s all right. You’ve already made your mind up about me. But I figured something out.” I leaned in, making sure that no one else could hear me. “You’re just the hater in the comments. And I deal with those on the daily, so…”
His jaw clenched. “I am not. And it’s not like you’re an innocent party here.”
“Right. Go ahead and deflect. But you should ask yourself, if you’re such a nice person, how can you justify your treatment of me?”
Then I saw it. A wince. Dipped eyebrows. A break in his resolve. “Princess.” His fingers flexed, almost as if he wanted to reach out and touch me, but that made no sense. Right?
“Chop chop, now.” Bobby broke through the noise and addressed the room.
I turned to face him, leaving Jack right where I wanted him: behind me and out of my line of sight.
“Hello, everyone, and welcome to the first-ever Starlight bake-off. For today’s competition, we’re making toaster oven cake.
” Bobby stood in front of two tables with gingham cloths spread over them and gestured grandly.
“As you’ve noticed, each station has a recipe book and some basic baking supplies.
“In a moment, you’ll randomly come up one at a time and choose a Wildwood wild ingredient from the first table here, then two ingredients that will complement it from the second table. Remember to use your wild ingredient to make the best cake we’ve ever tasted.”