Chapter 1 #2
Bad Beans had quickly become our favorite coffee shop when we moved to Dahlia Point.
It wasn’t actually in Dahlia Point, but after scouring social media for the best coffee places in the area when I’d come home for spring break, Nikki had insisted upon trying it despite the twenty-minute car ride inland toward the airport.
It was worth it, obviously, and she never let me hear the end of it, insisting we take the drive out there at least once a weekend.
They had a menu about a mile long and constantly rotated seasonal drinks and specials—when Taylor Swift dropped her The Tortured Poets Department album, they had a special cookies and cream cold foam drink for that day only, or on Star Wars Day (May 4) they served some weird blue drink that was supposed to resemble what they drank on Tatooine.
Nikki liked to experiment and get different drinks, but I stuck to my iced vanilla latte.
Some people associated vanilla anything with being boring, but I preferred to think of it as keeping to a routine. I knew what I liked, and there was no point in deviating. Routine kept me focused, especially during a time when my focus was desperately needed.
Bad Beans happened to be on the way to Otter House, so I usually stopped to get a latte for myself, but I didn’t get one for my sister unless I’d gotten approval beforehand.
Her meals were supervised, and typically, outside food and drink wasn’t allowed.
Repairing her relationship with food took priority over peanut butter and jelly cream cold brews.
But with those three words, my mood lifted. She’s doing well.
I rolled my windows down and blasted Holly Humberstone, sticking my hand out to feel the late-spring air breeze through my fingers.
I’d finished almost a quarter of my latte by the time I made it to the palm tree–lined driveway of Otter House and pulled into a marked visitor’s spot in the parking lot.
It was clear a conscious effort had been made to not make it look like a recovery facility, with perfectly manicured landscaping and a big stone fountain with a pineapple at the top in front of the building.
It was probably one of the reasons Nikki had felt comfortable with this place over the several others we’d looked at.
It didn’t feel so sterile and sad, and maybe it was somewhere she could actually see herself getting better.
After putting both of our drinks into a carrying tray, I trekked across the parking lot, balancing the tray in one hand while my tote bag hung half open off my shoulder as I tried to stick my keys into it.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and as I struggled to fish it out of my jeans, I collided shoulder to shoulder with another person going about a hundred miles per hour in the opposite direction.
“Oh shit.” A guy’s voice startled me, and before I could react, I toppled backward and fell down hard onto the concrete.
A mess of ice cubes and coffee spilled down the front of my T-shirt, soaking me in sticky liquid.
I groaned as I shakily got to my knees, feeling my whole lower body vibrate with pain.
“Goddamn it.” I grimaced at the sight of our lattes, now a crime scene of cold brew, espresso, and oat milk in the parking lot. There was no salvaging them.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
I was so distraught I’d almost forgotten about the latte assassin, but there he was, already on his feet and decidedly not covered in cold brew, extending a hand to me.
“Come on, let me help you up.” There was an unexpected kindness to his voice—something foreign, like he might as well have been speaking another language.
My eyes were immediately drawn to a scar that trailed up from the base of his thumb and wrapped around his wrist, disappearing into the inside of his forearm.
It was deep, but a soft, faded red color, which meant it had healed the best it could a long time ago.
He wore a silver ring on his pointer finger that glinted in the late-morning sun.
“Are you gonna take my hand?” His deep voice pulled me out of my daze. “I look kind of ridiculous just standing here now.”
I cautiously slipped my hand into his, feeling calloused skin on his palm.
“All right, now the other.”
He motioned for me to take his other hand, crossed over the other arm, and with more force than I expected, hoisted me onto my feet.
At five seven I liked to consider myself almost tall, but I barely came up to his chest, and with the sun backlighting him in a paradoxically angelic way, it felt like his shadow was swallowing me whole.
I finally got a good look at his face, and had to remind myself to breathe. I have never believed the sight of someone could literally take your breath away, but my lungs were struggling.
His jawline was angular and strong, and light freckles dusted his nose and cheeks.
Another scar grazed the bottom of his chin, though not nearly as angry looking as the one on his wrist. His hair had probably been styled back at some point, but most of it had come undone, and chocolate-brown locks cascaded in messy waves onto his forehead.
But it was his eyes that sucked me in—the deepest blue, dark and endless like the ocean in a storm.
Then he smiled at me, endearing and just a little guilty, and everything in me softened.
“I really am sorry. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “No use crying over spilled coffee.”
He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, dropping his gaze to the now-empty plastic cups that gently rolled around on the pavement. He bent down to pick them up and stacked one into the other.
“There’s a coffee shop down the street,” he said, gesturing outward with the plastic cups. “I can get you something else, if you want.”
I almost said yes to that enticing smile of his—the kind that I was sure got him whatever he wanted. But I was there for a reason, and the more I dillydallied with the latte assassin, the less time I had with my sister.
“Don’t worry about it,” I reassured him. My whole body still buzzed, but whether it was from the impact or something else, I wasn’t sure. “I need to get going.”
“Okay, well . . . see you around,” he said with casual assuredness before sidestepping and letting me walk by, and I tried to convince my body not to betray me and look back at him.
“Morning, Nat.” Beck was already at the check-in desk, and greeted me when I walked in with a puzzled look. “You’re, uh . . .” She gestured to the front of my baby-pink T-shirt, where my spilled latte was on full display. “Guess your coffee run was unsuccessful.”
“Don’t ask.” I fished my ID out of my wallet and handed it to her. “Thank god Nikki has enough clothes here to stock a boutique.”
Beck grinned as she handed me my visitor’s pass before walking me back to Nikki’s room.
As I made my way through the halls, passing closed doors with all kinds of stories behind them, I couldn’t help but think about the guy in the parking lot.
Had he been visiting someone like I was, a family member or a close friend, so they didn’t have to spend all their days here alone? Did he feel guilty, like I did?
The smell of acetone hit me as soon as I walked into Nikki’s room, where she was crouched over on her bed, painting her toenails a vibrant pink.
Like everything about my sister’s entire existence, she’d found a way to be as maximalist as she could with her temporary room, from the pink-and-orange-checkered comforter on her bed to the strings of rainbow beads that hung in front of the window.
As the sun streamed in, it sent a confetti of colors across the pale wooden floors.
As soon as Nikki looked up at me, she let out a snicker. “Are you wearing my cold brew?”
“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to be more risky with my fashion choices? Consider this a risk that did not pay off.”
She laughed as I began digging through the college dorm–grade dresser in the corner of her room. The drawer was half empty, and I clocked about six shirts strewn across the itchy armchair in the other corner.
“Are these clean?” I picked up a tie-dyed crop top and folded it into a little square.
“Oh, yeah, I just did my laundry.” She sounded bored, and turned her attention back to painting her toenails.
“Nik.” I picked up another shirt to fold. “You have to put your clothes away after they’re washed, otherwise they’re going to be a wrinkled mess when you go to wear them.”
“Well, I did.” She let out a frustrated groan. “But then I couldn’t decide what to wear to yoga this morning, and didn’t have time to put it all back.”
“You have time now.” I tossed the rest of the shirts at her, and she yelped.
“Um, hello? Wet nail polish!”
There was a faded navy Sky Valley University crewneck in one of the dresser drawers (which upon further inspection was definitely mine), and I quickly changed.
Nikki and I didn’t share clothes too often, since we had decidedly much different styles, but when I became aware of some of the hallmark signs of certain eating disorders, I realized she’d been hiding her weight loss in oversized T-shirts and hoodies, including mine.
Hindsight was 20/20, but that didn’t make the revelation suck any less.
“What compelled you to make these risky fashionable choices?” Nikki asked, nodding at the stained T-shirt in my hand.
I heaved out another sigh as I lowered myself onto her bed. “I was distracted getting out of my car and I tripped. Spilled everything all over me.”
There wasn’t really a point to telling Nikki the truth, mostly because there was a guy involved.
I wasn’t a dater, for no reason other than it wasn’t currently worth the time or effort for me, but my overeager little sister didn’t buy that excuse.
She’d take one encounter with the latte assassin and escalate it to the point of setting up a wedding board on Pinterest. It was better for all of us to stay grounded and present.
“At least you smell good now.” She shrugged.
I playfully shoved her arm. “Excuse me, are you implying I didn’t smell good?”
“You said it, not me.”
Nikki tied her platinum-blond hair up into a bun, her grown-out brunet roots a tangible indicator of the two weeks she’d been here already. But a healthy glow had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes weren’t so glassy and sad.
Then again, she’d never really looked sick to me, but that was one of the first things I learned after her diagnosis.
Sometimes it wasn’t obvious, and that was what made finding out hurt that much more.
She would still do her makeup and wear her loud outfits, and she’d go out every weekend with the friends she’d already made here.
When I’d come home some weekends we’d bake slutty brownies and eat the whole tray while we binge-watched Laguna Beach.
But it should have been more obvious to me. I was her older sister, and if I couldn’t see her struggling, then who could have?
“What?” She eyed me suspiciously.
“Nothing.” I shook my head at her and smiled. “You look good, Nik.”
She rolled her eyes and flopped back onto her bed. Even if she didn’t believe me right now, it was still important she heard it from me.
“Can we watch Legally Blonde?” she asked.
“I thought you’d never ask.”