6. Taven
TAVEN
By Friday afternoon, Chasity Robinson is no longer just a person; she is a local-interest story.
Her existence weaves itself into the fabric of town conversation, tucked between the weekend weather forecast and complaints about the high school’s new football coach.
I hear whispers of “the runaway bride” at the hardware store while I search for wood glue.
“Lachlan says she’s staying at the inn indefinitely.”
“Her car’s still at the garage. Totalled, probably.”
At the school office, the secretary lowers her voice as I pass her desk. "She just looks so sad, you know?"
I grab my mail from my box and pretend to sort through it, but my ears tune to their frequency.
I tell myself it is the simple, unavoidable osmosis of living in a town this small.
Information is currency, and I am just standing near the bank.
But a more honest part of my brain, the part I usually keep locked down, admits it is not that simple.
Every time someone says her name, my focus sharpens like a reflex, a dog hearing a high-pitched whistle.
The school day drags. During my last-period lesson on algebraic expressions, my mind drifts.
I stare at the whiteboard, chalk in hand, but the numbers blur into the memory of dark coffee spreading across my grey t-shirt and the panic in a pair of wide, brown eyes.
A voice from the back row slices through the haze.
“You good, Coach? Having a midlife crisis or something?”
A few kids snicker. I turn from the board to see fourteen-year-old Jake Millim, shortstop and resident smart ass, grinning at me.
The rest of the class watches, sensing a crack in my usual armor.
I am suddenly, intensely annoyed that I have become emotionally perceptible to a room full of eighth graders.
The bell shrieks, saving me from having to formulate a response.
As the students stampede out, I slump into my chair, the paperwork for the upcoming baseball season a meaningless stack of paper on my desk.
It is unsettling. A woman I met for less than ten minutes—a woman who effectively assaulted me with a beverage—has somehow burrowed into my thoughts.
The fact that she occupies this much space in my head after one chaotic encounter irritates me almost as much as it throws me off balance.
After practice, the chill in the mountain air bites through my hoodie. I pull into the inn’s parking lot, telling myself I just want coffee that doesn’t taste like burnt dirt from the faculty lounge. The bell above the door chimes, announcing my arrival.
The first thing I see is Lachlan, leaning against the front desk, a slow, knowing smirk spreading across his face. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches me. My gaze drifts past him, snagging on a figure in the dining room.
It’s her. Chasity. She stands by the wide windows, late-afternoon sun haloing the loose strands of her hair.
She is folding napkins. Not just folding them, but executing the task with the fierce concentration of a bomb disposal expert.
Each crease is precise, each corner perfectly aligned before she adds the finished product to a neat, growing stack.
She looks like she’s trying to earn her next breath.
I start toward the coffee pot, but my eyes keep flicking back to her.
“We’re starting a support group,” Lachlan mutters, his voice a low hum intended only for me. “For emotionally compromised mechanics and teachers drawn to women who almost run them down with their coffee cups.”
"Shut up."
My jaw sets. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of a reaction, focusing on the dark stream of coffee pouring into my mug. I don’t look at him. I don’t stop looking at her.
The more time I spend in this place, the more her act grates on me.
It’s a relentless, exhausting performance.
She smiles too fast, a bright, brittle thing that never quite settles in her eyes.
She apologizes before she has even done anything, a pre-emptive strike against some imagined infraction.
“Sorry,” she mumbled the other day when I held the door for her, as if my holding it was a burden she had caused.
Every conversation she has is a small, quiet negotiation.
She acts like her very existence requires permission, like she is waiting for someone to finally tell her she is taking up too much space.
Watching her is like looking at a reflection in a pool of murky water, showing back a version of myself I have spent years trying to bury.
It is a familiarity that scrapes at something raw inside me, a feeling I have absolutely no desire to examine.
That evening, the community centre hums with the organized chaos of a small town on a mission.
The air smells of sawdust and sugar cookies.
Long tables groan under the weight of donated goods for Saturday’s fundraiser, a desperate attempt to patch up the little league field the storm tried to swallow.
And in the middle of it all, a ghost in a beige sweater.
Chasity volunteered. Lachlan mentioned it with a raised eyebrow when I saw him earlier, a silent question hanging between us.
Now I watch her move through the fluorescent-lit room, her shoulders hunched as if expecting a collision.
She flits from one task to another, a study in cautious utility.
She folds raffle tickets with that same unnerving precision I saw at the inn, her hands steady while the rest of her vibrates with a low-grade tremor.
She helps Dottie Mattheson carry a box of ancient, unlabeled preserves from her car, apologizing when a jar clinks against another.
“It's okay, dear,” Dottie says, her voice a foghorn. “You’ve got excellent casserole-carrying posture. Good, strong back.”
Chasity’s mouth opens, then closes. She looks completely bewildered by the compliment. She just nods, a small, jerky motion, and retreats to the relative safety of the bake sale table. For a while, she just stands there, a ship without a rudder, until Rosa grabs her by the elbow.
“Honey. Your hands are clean. Help me make these pies look less like a truck ran them over.”
I watch the change happen in small, incremental shifts.
It starts when Rosa nudges her, a gesture of inclusion, not pity.
A flicker of something other than anxiety crosses Chasity’s face.
Later, Jake Millim—the same kid who called me out for a midlife crisis—shoves a tangled mess of Christmas lights into her hands.
The ones we use to line the concession stand.
“Coach says you’re good at untangling things,” he says, completely serious.
I brace for her to stammer out an apology, to shrink away from the challenge.
Instead, she takes the knotted ball of wires and sits down at an empty table.
Her brow furrows in concentration. Ten minutes pass.
Fifteen. The room’s buzzing volume fades into the background.
There is only her and the lights. Then, a quiet whoop of victory.
She holds up the freed string, a small, triumphant smile on her face.
Jake gives her a solemn high-five. And she laughs.
It’s not the startled, jumpy sound from the diner.
This one is different. It’s quiet, but it’s real.
It rolls out of her without permission, unburdened by surprise.
The sound lands somewhere deep in my chest, a sharp, sudden ache under my ribs.
She isn’t just a runaway. She’s been adrift for a long, long time.
This town, this room full of busybodies and bake sales, might be the first port she’s seen in years.
The last of the potluck dishes clatter in the kitchen as Rosa argues with someone about who gets to take home the leftover seven-layer dip.
The lingering scent of sugar and sawdust hangs in the air.
I slam another folding chair onto the dolly, the metal scraping with a sharp complaint that echoes in the cavernous hall. One more stack and I can go home.
Then I see her.
Chasity stands near the main entrance, her back to the shrinking crowd.
She has one hand pressed against the cool glass of the door, her head tilted.
The hard lines of anxiety around her eyes have softened.
Her mouth is slightly parted. There’s a stillness in her, a complete absorption in the simple sight that feels like a violation to witness.
It is the look of someone seeing something for the first time, or maybe the first time in a very long time.
My feet move before my brain gives permission. I set the chair I am holding down, the legs scraping quietly on the linoleum. Every instinct screams at me to turn around, to finish my task and get in my truck and drive away from the complication she represents. But I walk toward the doors anyway.
As I get closer, the exhaustion I saw on her when she first arrived this evening is still there, a faint watermark beneath the surface, but this quiet fascination is layered on top. It’s a fragile thing. I find myself wanting to guard it.
“The sidewalks get slick after dark,” I say. My voice sounds rougher than I intend.
She startles, her hand dropping from the glass. The wonder evaporates, replaced by that familiar, guarded tension. But just for a second, I saw it.
I gesture vaguely with my chin toward the inn, its lights visible down the street. “I can walk you back.”
The excuse hangs between us, thin and functional. But the truth is a heavier thing, settling low in my gut. This protective instinct has entirely too much to do with the sharp, inconvenient truth that I already want her to stay.