Chapter Nineteen
“Soooo,” Gabriella huffed as she hauled the bucket of chimera feathers up the ladder. “Friends, huh?”
Vi scoffed, adjusting her grip on the canvas. “Stop saying it like that.”
“I’m just surprised! I thought you meant nod at each other in the street friends. I didn’t know you two hung out. People were spotting you together all week!”
“Yes, because we’re friends,” Vi said, cursing this small town and its relentless gossip mill.
She wasn’t even sure what time Gabriella was talking about—people could’ve seen them at Cozy Grotto Café, or watching that Piranha movie, which, to her surprise, was just as funny as Nick had said.
They’d been hanging out a lot since the barbecue last week.
She kept expecting him to pull back, but he seemed surprisingly eager to accept every one of her invitations.
Like he’d been waiting for her to ask. Which was confusing—if he wanted to hang out with her, he would have just asked her already, right?
“Sure,” Gabriella said, sounding skeptical. “But still. You hated him less than two months ago.”
“I didn’t hate—”
“Tilt it upward?”
Vi held the canvas up. Gabriella leaned back on the ladder, covering one eye and then switching to the other.
Vi didn’t know what she was looking for, but she wished her sister would hurry up.
She was sweating. The canvas in her arms was heavy; the tarp underneath her bare feet was slippery with paint.
If she fell, she was going to have to send her skirt to the dry cleaners again.
Gabriella gripped the bucket of feathers by the base. “Little to the left.”
Vi staggered to the side. She was reaching the edge of the tarp.
Gabriella didn’t want to turn her house into an artist’s workshop, so they’d settled with turning the garage into her art space.
It was small and cramped and the roof leaked.
When it rained, they had to cover everything, so it wouldn’t get wet.
It usually worked, except for one particularly torrential downpour, which led to Gabriella incorporating the water stains into her paintings.
Some of them would go up in her bookstore exhibition.
“I didn’t hate him,” Vi repeated, straining under the canvas weight. “I just thought he was a jerk. And that he was loud and annoying.”
“Right,” Gabriella repeated. “And now he’s . . . what? Quiet and interesting?”
“No. He’s just . . . He’s different when you get to know him.”
Gabriella grinned. “Vi. Honey. You have to know what this sounds like.”
“I don’t have a crush,” Vi argued. “He’s just . . . He’s nice and he’s hot, so I’m getting confused. That’s all.”
Gabriella stared down at her.
Vi’s cheeks burned. She hoisted the canvas higher to hide it, like if her little sister watched her too closely, she’d be able to tell that Vi had slept with him last night. Again.
Gabriella shook her head. “I’m sorry. Did you just say a guy was hot?”
“I say guys are hot,” Vi said weakly.
Gabriella cackled with a smug annoyingness only accessible to younger siblings. “You never say anyone is hot! You stay away from any indication you might be capable of attraction. You’re like a nun. Now you openly admit a guy is hot, and it’s Nick Wicker?”
“Well, he is!” Vi glowered. “Can you drop the damn bucket already?”
She waited for Gabriella to giggle again, say something like, Oooh, Vi’s swearing at me. But she stayed silent.
Vi looked up. Gabriella was staring down at the sticky canvas with a mournful expression.
“Gabs, what’s wrong?”
Gabriella shook her head, her lips pressed together tightly. “It’s nothing.”
Vi let the canvas sag in her arms. “Gabs.”
“It’s nothing,” Gabriella repeated. “I just . . . Am I making a total idiot of myself with this artist thing?”
She looked around the room at all the half-finished paintings and lopsided sculptures and her failed attempts at wood carving.
Papier-maché birds with wonky beaks and drooping trees made from beads.
She’d gone so deep into a hole after her husband died.
Vi had brought her an adult coloring book, hoping it would give her something to do.
She’d come over the next day to find that Gabriella had covered her room in drawings of the garden, her own hands, a few clumsy but earnest attempts at Vi’s face.
I want to try painting next, she’d told Vi, the first thing she’d asked for without having to be prompted since her husband had died.
Vi had driven to the nearest craft store and got a paint kit. Anything to get that dull, dark nothingness out of her little sister’s eyes.
“This was always just for me,” Gabriella continued, hugging the bucket to her chest. “But now I have the show coming up, and . . . what if I pour my heart out, and everyone looks at it and it’s stupid?”
“It’s not stupid,” Vi said instantly, heart lurching in her chest. She thought back to every time she’d finally let her guard down around a guy, only to be met with a bewildered stare.
Every fake laugh and empty pleasantry she’d said, so she wouldn’t say the other things, the real things, in case somebody thought they were stupid.
“Gabs,” she said, “look at me.”
Gabriella looked at her, eyes brimming with tears.
“It’s not stupid,” Vi assured her. “Your heart isn’t stupid. Okay?”
Gabriella gave her a shaky smile. “I know,” she said. “I’m just . . .”
Vi held up the canvas. “Let her rip.”
Gabriella laughed wetly and turned the bucket over. Vi braced the canvas on top of her as feathers rained down, sticking to the jagged wet lines painted over the canvas.
Feathers landed on the tarp around Vi’s feet. Vi staggered, trying to find her balance. Her foot caught on a feather and she skidded, letting out an embarrassing shriek as she tumbled down onto the tarp. She kept her grip firm on the canvas. It never hit the ground, even as she lay there groaning.
“Oh crap,” Gabriella called. “You alright down there?”
“I’m great.” Vi blew a feather off her face and tried not to think about all the paint soaking into her thick skirt. “How does it look?”
Gabriella hummed. She was still perched at the top of the ladder, half-empty bucket hanging from her hand. “I don’t know. It’s kinda . . . meh.”
“You’ll fix it,” Vi said, older-sister instincts kicking in. Then—also because of older-sister instincts—she continued: “Glad my skirt sacrificed itself for such meh art.”
“I’ll pay for the dry cleaning,” Gabriella told her, and shook the last of the feathers out of the bucket.
“Gee,” Vi said, chimera feathers fluttering down around her. “Thanks.”
Gabriella climbed back down the ladder and helped Vi up, picking feathers off her paint-sodden skirt.
“So,” Gabriella said brightly. “Other than getting changed, what do you have planned for today?”
“Suze’s kid is having a birthday party,” Vi replied. “But that’s not for a few hours.”
“So, what are you doing?”
“Other than soaking my skirt?” Vi paused, going through her ever-ready mental schedule. “Well . . . nothing.”
Gabriella’s dainty brows shot up. “Seriously?”
Vi nodded. It was a Saturday, which usually meant volunteering at the food bank.
But Heath had texted to let her know that they didn’t need her today.
Apparently, someone else had taken her spot.
It made her suspicious—and if her suspicions were correct, also very touched—but she didn’t want to make any assumptions.
Not everything was about her and her suddenly lighter schedule.
“Free time,” Gabriella said wondrously. “What are you gonna do?”
* * *
Vi decided to spend her free few hours driving thirty miles over the speed limit around the outskirts of town.
She slowed down as soon as she saw a car in the distance.
She didn’t want to race. She just wanted to go a little too fast, out here where no one could see her.
Then she wanted to slow down and get on with her regularly scheduled life.
So she was especially annoyed when her car started sputtering halfway through her lap around town.
“No,” she said as the car slowed. “Wait. Don’t do it.”
She pressed the accelerator. There was another sputter from the engine.
“Don’t,” she warned.
She barely had time to pull off to the side of the road, almost knocking into the trees that lined the road on this side of town, before the engine made one last pop and went still.
Vi twisted the key in the ignition. Nothing.
She got out of the car and opened the hood. No smoke. Everything looked like it was in working order. Probably. She didn’t know the first thing about cars.
She sighed and got out her phone, finding the number for Orc’s Garage. No one answered.
Vi considered. Orc’s Garage was the only garage in town. She could google a garage outside town, but it wouldn’t be able to get to her in time for her to make the party.
She scrolled down her contacts until she got to the Ns, then spent a while considering calling someone to come and get her, leaving her car out here for the rest of the day.
You two are friends, she reminded herself. You can call him to talk about your car.
She wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans. Then she sucked in a breath and pressed Call, expecting it to go to voice mail. Nick didn’t seem like the type to answer calls. Six rings later, Vi was losing hope.
Then on the seventh ring, he answered.
“Nick Wicker here. Mechanic and book club leader extraordinaire. Is there a book emergency I can help with?”
Vi bit back a snort. “That’s how you answer your phone?”
“Every single time,” Nick said. “Is this a booty call? Pretty early for it.”
Vi sighed. “Not a booty call.”
“Oh shit. Do I need to come over and rescue Mosey from somewhere high again because he refuses to fly down?”
“No, I—” Vi stared into her engine, full of not-so-shiny parts she didn’t know the function of. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a Saturday. I need . . . I called your garage, but nobody answered, so . . .”
“We’re not always open on Saturdays.” Something plasticky rustled on his end of the line. “Car trouble?”