7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Maddie
I hate the Rolls-Royce and the Rolls hates me back.
It took me the better part of ten minutes to figure out how to move the seat so I could at least peek above the monstrous steering wheel, another five to figure out how to adjust the mirrors, and a deeply humbling thirty seconds to remember how to roll down a window after I accidentally deployed what I can only describe as a personal hurricane climate system.
The damned thing even played a welcome chime when I turned it on. That's right. The car played a jingle at me. Like it was mocking me or something.
But we made up and I have an understanding with the stupid machine now.
What I am less prepared for is Jazz's bakery appearing on the left side of Broad Street and having absolutely no available parking in front of it, which means I have to go around the block and park on Main, in full view of the Saturday afternoon foot traffic of the Wandering Gnome.
I'll have to climb down from this catastrophically oversized vehicle in front of people who all know my name.
I pull in, I cut the engine, and I sit there for a moment.
The car idles into silence. Around me, through the tinted windows, life goes on.
Old Mr. Prewitt, the troll who used to own the bait shop, walks his basset hound past the hardware store.
Two mermaid teenagers sit on the library steps with their phones, giggling at each other.
The Kowalski twins are coming out of the pharmacy with identical paper bags.
Sooner or later, someone will see me sitting in a car that would be at home in some castle driveway.
Ugh. I know I'm being ridiculous. I had no real choice here. Agatha is a minotaur and there's no way she would be able to sit in my compact car, not without having to crank her head out the window to accommodate her horns.
I simply had to take the Rolls to drive her to the Knitters Club, where I have no doubt she reigns supreme, huddled inside the library. Which gives me about an hour of free time, just enough to pop in to visit my bestie at her bakery.
I get out of the car, stare resolutely at the ground and walk like a woman wearing a scarlet letter.
My climb down is not graceful. The Rolls sits just high enough that I have to actually jump down rather than simply exiting like a normal person in a normal vehicle, and the step coincides with Mrs. Kowalski calling out "Maddie Berwick!
" from across the street with the specific delight of someone who has just identified a rare bird in an unexpected habitat.
"Hi, Mrs. Kowalski." I lift a hand. I don't dare look her way. "Nice day!"
I walk to Jazz's door like a woman who parks borrowed billionaire vehicles on Main Street every day of the week, and I walk through it.
The scent hits me the second I'm inside.
Warm sugar and browned butter and something with cinnamon in it, coming from somewhere in the back where Jazz's ancient Hobart mixer lives.
The display cases run the length of the left wall, and the mismatched chairs and round marble tables are exactly the same as they were when Jazz and I were seventeen and used to split a croissant after school because neither of us had enough money for one each.
We used to practically live here. It's really no surprise Jazz bought it from the old owners the moment it was put on the market.
Some things in Saltford Bay stay stubbornly, blessedly themselves.
Jazz is behind the counter. She looks up, clocks my face, then looks past me through the window at the car sitting on the other side of Main Street like it's waiting for a chauffeur.
"Maddie-girl." She sets down the pastry bag she's holding, very deliberately, with the calm of someone who needs her hands free to properly lose her mind. "Did you just climb out of that?"
"It's not mine." I huff.
She gives me a look that says she's gathering her strength to properly lose her shit.
"I know it's not yours, you drive a car that cries when it rains." She plants both hands on the counter. "Whose. Car. Is it?"
"It's a long story." I try my best to ignore the patrons who turn to gawk at the car in tandem with Jazz's antics.
"Sit down." She points at my chair. Yes, my chair. "Now tell me all about that handsome foreign prince you married in secret last weekend. Or better yet, is it a vampire? Please, let it be a vampire."
I try to get mad at her probing, but I don't manage it. I get it. Jazz and I, we're not exactly the type of gals who drive around in cars worth more than a nice family home. We're used-lot, compact cars kinda gals.
And I like it that way.
My chair is the one in the corner by the window, and by the time I've taken off my jacket and sat down in it, Jazz is already coming around the counter with two of her apricot croissants on a plate and a coffee so delicious it should be illegal.
She sits down across from me and pushes the plate and mug in my direction.
"Talk."
So I do. She already knows I'm working for Agatha Thornwood. Heck, half the town knew even before I moved to Stronghold. News travels faster than light in a small town like Saltford Bay. Especially when it comes to our local billionaire celebrity.
"Agatha can't fit in my car," I say as I take a sip. I groan, not bothering to hide how good it is. "So she insisted I borrow her grandson's to drive her to her appointment."
I pick up the croissant. Jazz is watching me with the particular expression she saves for when she's waiting for me to get to the actual point.
"Her grandson," she says, motioning in a circle with her hands. She's not the patient type.
"He's staying at Stronghold until Agatha is back on her feet."
"You're bunking with Demetrius Thornwood." Jazz's eyes become so comically large, I'm afraid they'll pop out and roll all over the table. She picks up her coffee and takes a sip without breaking her death glare. "You have to be shitting me."
Then her mouth drops open like she's about to go fly hunting like a frog.
"OMG! Is that why you look like you just got laid? Is this what happened? You're doing the dirty mambo with your old flame?"
"Jazz." I shush her, which is a mistake because Jazz never lowers her voice when someone shushes her.
"Well, you have the look of a woman who either got laid or spent the last seventy-two hours wishing she had." She tilts her head. "Which is it?"
"Neither." I break off a piece of croissant with maybe more force than the croissant deserved. Because damned Jazz, she's right. I did spend the last few days thinking about my ex in a completely inappropriate manner. "It's neither, and you need psychiatric help."
"Mm." Jazz reaches over and takes the other croissant off the plate for herself. "So what's with the glow then? Did you finally get to punch his sorry-ass face for dropping you like a dirty potato?"
"What? No, I didn't punch anyone." I scoff, though I'd spent years fantasizing about exactly that. "He's not that bad. He's kind of sweet, actually."
Jazz takes a bite of her apricot croissant like she has a grudge against it, but she doesn't interrupt. Say what you will about my best friend, but she's a great listener.
I put the croissant down.
"It's weird being in the same house as him, for sure," I say.
"But you should see how much he dotes on his grandma.
He's always checking up on her when he thinks I'm not there.
He's so much like the Dem I remember, it's easy to forget he's some famous billionaire now.
I mean, last night we even shared a PB&J. It was...nice."
Jazz is quiet, which from Jazz is a significant event.
"Maddie. Don't do this to yourself."
"I know, but he's not the arrogant asshole I expected him to be," I say, because I'm already in it now, already in the beat I can feel building behind my sternum that has nothing to do with apricot croissants.
"Which is worse, honestly. If he'd been exactly as awful as I prepped myself for, it would be easier.
" I look at the table. "Instead he's annoyingly, inconveniently, not awful. "
Jazz is quiet for another moment. Then: "That's better. Keep going. Explain to me how not awful he is."
I look up at her. The bakery hums around us. The mixer in the back, the gentle clatter from the kitchen, the low murmur of the two elderly elves at the table near the door.
"I don't know what I was expecting, really," I start. "We were so young when we were together. It should all be old history, but it just doesn't feel like it." I turn the coffee cup by its handle.
But Jazz and I both know I'm seriously understating what Demetrius and I were to each other. We were more than just high school sweethearts. We were in love, real love. The kind of love that lasts.
Then came summer and college applications and reality caught up to us. I know now that's why Demetrius did what he did.
The flashback comes to me with all the force of a heartbreak that never healed.
I'm wearing the blue dress Dem likes so much as the afternoon light goes that syrupy gold that makes even the gas station look expensive. I sit on a bench, taking in the old pier smells of salt, iodine and the end of summer.
From somewhere behind me a speaker is playing that ABBA song I love loud enough to drown the sound of the small crowd of evening wanderers on the pier.
Then I hear people gasp and shout and I turn around. That's when I see him.
Demetrius Thornwood, my boyfriend and the most serious person I have ever met, comes around the corner of the old bait shop just as the music gets into the crescendo.
I blink, confused. What is he doing? Is he dancing?
Demetrius moves towards me, doing something that resembles the hustle to the opening of Dancing Queen.
Two people walking their dog stop on the pier and point.
A family with a stroller slows down to stare.
My face goes scarlet and I press my hands to my cheeks and I am laughing so hard I can barely breathe.
Demetrius continues his dancing down the length of the pier.