Chapter 3
Three
I spent the rest of the weekend helping Mom finish painting the kitchen cabinets. Even though I was nowhere near as delicate with my brush handling as she was, I knew she was letting me help because otherwise I’d go insane cooped up in my room in front of a blank Google Doc.
Mom wanted me to “have fun” this summer, but a few weeks in I felt like all I was doing was waiting.
Waiting to hear back from agents, waiting around until I could visit my sister, waiting for customers to visit the bookstore so I could point them to the sports-romance section, waiting for creative inspiration to strike me like lightning in an open field.
Waiting was not fun for someone like me—I wanted to be able to plan accordingly, so there were no more unexpected happenings that could unstick me from the solid ground I was comfortable on. My dad passing had filled my quota for unexpected happenings for the rest of my life.
So come the following Monday, I was bright-eyed and ready to not be waiting as I drove out to Otter House for visitation hours.
Even though nothing eventful usually happened during my visits, and Nikki and I would spend our time vegging, online shopping, and watching early 2000s rom-coms, I knew I needed to be there. I was her older sister, so there was nowhere else I should have been.
But when I parked in my usual spot and made my way up the cobblestoned path to Otter House’s main entrance, the single most eventful thing that had happened to me since my summer had started was standing there underneath the shadow of the overhang, and he looked like he was waiting, coffees in hand.
He wore a Charleston RiverDogs T-shirt that was faded just enough to look intentionally vintage, and his hair was windswept just enough to look intentionally messy. When I got closer to him, I caught a whiff of fresh and clean cologne coming off his T-shirt.
“Hey,” he greeted me with a similar smile as last time—unassuming but frustratingly enticing.
“Were you—” I turned around to make sure he was in fact talking to me. Wouldn’t want to be embarrassed in back-to-back encounters. “Were you waiting for me?”
“I told you I owed you,” he replied with a shrug. “I really did feel bad for knocking you over. I was in a rush to leave, and—” He paused and shook his head. “Anyway, I was hoping you’d come back around the same time.”
He handed me an olive branch in the form of an iced coffee, sandy colored from maybe a bit too much milk or creamer, and when I took it, the brushing of my fingertips against his shot static up my arm.
“Well, thank you.” I tapped my pink-painted fingernails on the plastic of the cup, hyperfixating on a chip on my pointer finger. I’d have to have Nikki fix that. “You didn’t have to do that, but I will never turn down free coffee.”
That got him to laugh, and the static moved into the pit of my stomach, buzzing and excited.
“I’m Brooklyn, by the way.”
Obviously the latte assassin had a name, but now that I knew it, it humanized him and made him all too real.
“Like the city,” I said with a soft smile.
“Like the bridge, actually.”
It was my turn to laugh. “I’m Nat. Well, Natalie, but Nat to most people. Like the tiny flying bug, I guess?”
“Are you telling me you spell your name with a silent g?” He arched an eyebrow at me.
“What? No. You know what I mean,” I said. “Guess I’m not nearly as funny as you.”
“Guess not.” His grin widened.
Not embarrassing myself in a second encounter had decidedly failed.
Guys didn’t normally frazzle me, but the heat I felt spreading across my cheeks said otherwise, and I could have jumped off a cliff and into those gorgeous ocean-blue eyes of his to cool myself off. When I figured he was studying me in a similar way, that fuzzy static erupted through my whole body.
A breeze whistled through the trees, and it seemed to reground us both. He had a reason to be there too. We both moved to the front door at the same time, sharing a half awkward, half sincere chuckle.
“It’s not really my business, but are you visiting someone?” he asked.
“I am.” I nodded. “My sister.”
“Got it.” He paused and stopped in front of the door, pressing his hands together in front of his mouth. “I’m sorry, that was so—was that overstepping? I’ve been told I’m a yapper, and the foot-in-mouth stuff comes naturally to me. You don’t have to tell me.”
Whether I was put off by his blunt foot-in-mouth question didn’t matter, it got me to laugh all the same. I had never met someone who lent themselves to being so effortlessly endearing. It was nice, and so distracting. “It’s fine, really. I don’t mind. I mean, you’re here, too, so.”
He reached over me to open the door, motioning for me to walk in front of him.
“Are you visiting someone too?” We made it into the air-conditioned lobby, and I hadn’t realized how warm I’d been out there. “Or are you just hanging around looking for your next latte assassin hit?”
I imperceptibly flinched, realizing there was no way he would have gotten the joke that only my internal monologue had heard. Instead, he seemed to take the joke in stride.
“Nah, you’re my only mark.” He paused, and the lines in his forehead faded as his expression softened. “So, the thing is—”
“You’re late.”
A red-haired nurse I didn’t recognize stood beside Beck at the check-in desk, her hands on her hips and her gaze narrowed on Brooklyn.
Brooklyn made a dramatic showing of checking his smart watch. “By like three minutes.”
“Punctuality matters, Brooklyn.” Her voice was kind even as she scolded him. “You’ve got a week left. Let’s try not to have any more setbacks before this is over, okay?”
Brooklyn heaved out a resigned sigh as he turned to me. “Guess I should go. I’ll see you around?”
The realization of it all shocked me cold, like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on me. He wasn’t there to visit someone. He was there because he had to be. I didn’t have time to grapple with the revelation as he looked at me with those blue eyes, enticing me to jump off that cliff again.
“Sure.” I nodded.
He gave me a comical salute before following the nurse down a separate hallway, and I watched him, tall and gently swaying like a big tree in the wind, until he was out of sight.
“Ready to go?” Beck recaptured my attention.
“What?” I whipped around to face her, looking up at me with a puzzled expression. “Oh, uh, yeah. Let’s go.”
I should have been less surprised. Otter House was big, and they treated a variety of different mental health illnesses and disorders.
In the throes of my research, I’d learned that they also did partial hospitalizations as well as outpatient therapy.
It just hadn’t even occurred to me that that was why he was there.
As Beck took me back to Nikki’s room like she had half a dozen times already, I couldn’t stop the questions from swirling in my head. Why was he here? Was all that cool and charming bravado only a front? Was he going to get better?
When I walked through the door of Nikki’s room, seeing her standing there braiding her hair, looking so goddamn okay, a feeling of gratefulness surged through me, and I flung my arms around her.
The realization hit me all at once, and for the first time I truly believed that Nikki was going to be all right.
“Hello, hi, to you too.” She hugged me back with a chuckle. “You okay?”
I pulled away, holding her face in my hands as I smiled at her. She and I shared the same hazel eyes as Mom, and for once in what felt like weeks, a brightness twinkled in hers. “Yeah. I’m all right.”
I took a step back and cleared my throat. “Actually, I need you to fix a chip in my nail.”
“How’d you chip it already?” She groaned. She turned her back to me to rummage through a drawer in her bedside table. “All that hard work I put into making sure you have cute nails and you just soil it.”
I held up my hands. “Mom and I were painting, and you know I type aggressively.”
“You’re lucky I like you,” Nikki said as she sat down across from me on the bed.
I smirked back at her. “Yeah, I love you too.”
>> <<
It didn’t occur to me until later that week when Nikki and I were taking a walk around the courtyard that I had actually been looking for Brooklyn, but the way my heart careened into my throat when I finally saw him told me all the things I wouldn’t readily admit.
There he stood, big and tall but not nearly as imposing as you expected someone of his stature to be, having an animated conversation with another guy.
The early afternoon sun hit him just right, and when he laughed at something the other guy said, I half expected a chorus of angels to come down in a beam of light singing “Hallelujah.”
“Hello?” Nikki shook my arm.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head, trying to unstick my thoughts from whatever vapid daydream I was having. “What were you saying?”
“Are we continuing our Lindsay Lohan movie run or are we pivoting?” Nikki asked. “You’re the movie connoisseur.”
“Pivoting,” I echoed. I subtly glanced over at him again, realizing I had already been lingering longer than I wanted to. I needed to casually pivot us without raising suspicion, before he noticed us and opened up the floodgates of Nikki.
“Yes, we’re gonna pivot,” I repeated as I took her arm in mine. “Herbie is where I draw the line with Lindsay Lohan movies made before 2020.”
I thought we were in the clear, but the moment I turned my back to him, he called out to me. So close, and yet so far.
“Hey! Wait!”
“I’m sorry, do you know that guy?” Nikki whispered, keeping her head down close to mine.
“Sort of, yeah. Wait a second.” I sighed before resigning myself to the inevitable.
When I finally turned back around, there he was, backlit by those goddamn angels as he smiled down at us.
“Hey, Nat,” he said breathily, and turned to Nikki. “And Nat’s sister.”
“Hey, yourself,” I greeted him, unable to stop my lips from curling into a grin. Thankfully he seemed to have that effect on everyone, not just me.