Chapter Fourteen
The bell above the cafe’s door jingled with the usual cheer, but the moment I stepped inside, it fell flat. Conversations dimmed, fork tines clinked against ceramic, and a half-dozen pairs of eyes flicked toward me before darting away.
I told myself I imagined it. My hair refused to behave this morning. Maybe I forgot to button my shirt all the way. But when I slipped onto a stool at the counter, a pair of women in the table behind me leaned in and whispered loudly.
“-saw them at the diner last night. Had her head on his shoulder.”
“...poor girl.”
My stomach dipped as if I’d been yanked up a roller coaster; I silently cursed my impeccable hearing.
Rhett and Claire. Why did they think it would matter to me? Was I that obvious? My reflection in the chrome napkin holder only proved their point.
Rachel swooped in with a mug before I could plaster on an unbothered smile. She slid it to me without asking, her permanent marker perched behind her ear. “I figured you might want it hot this morning. It’s a little cooler out.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She raised a brow—clearly unconvinced. I curled my fingers around the mug, steam and sugar temporarily fogging my thoughts.
“Thanks,” I added quietly, staring at the heart-shaped foam. Rachel’s frown deepened as I hunched until my chin nearly hit the counter, wishing I could melt into the tile. But the whispers continued to swirl.
“Fiancée, I heard.”
“Came all this way for him—”
“Perfect together, don’t you think?”
Caffeine. I just needed chocolate-flavored caffeine. That would fix this.
Margot slid into the seat beside me a moment later, sunglasses perched on her head. “Hey, Rachel. Mind if I grab a cortado from you?” she said before swiveling to me. “You look like you’re about to be sick. Should I be worried about my new shoes?”
“People are… talking.”
She propped an elbow on the counter, chin in her palm. “It’s Bluebell Cove, Georgie. They should have named it Gossip’s Harbor.”
“Margot—”
Her lips twitched. “Alright, fine. It’s about Rhett and Claire, isn’t it?”
That was it. I needed to dunk my head in my latte and never come out.
“Thought so.” She tapped her nails against the counter and sighed. “You know, you could save yourself a lot of misery if you just—oh, I don’t know—admitted you have feelings for him.”
“I don’t.” The words tumbled out fast and entirely unconvincing to even me.
“Mmhm. And I don’t shop online when I want to avoid talking to my mother.”
“This appeal for honesty is classic coming from you.” I took an abrupt swig of my drink and turned to her. “When are we going to talk? As in, have a real conversation?” My voice was loud and a little too harsh. I didn’t know what came over me, only that my skin buzzed like an exposed nerve.
Margot blinked. Her berry-colored lips thinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she scoffed, snapping her attention away as Rachel conveniently returned with her cortado.
“Hey now, what did I walk into?” Rachel cut in, hands on her hips. “I was gone for two minutes.”
“Georgie won’t admit that she has feelings for—”
“Shut up, Margot,” I snapped, flushing as the conversations around us seemed to hush. Or maybe I had been imagining it again. The two studied me as I dumped my face in my palms and groaned. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”
Margot laughed—the second real one I’d heard since she returned. “Don’t be ridiculous. Half of my job involves getting my head bitten off. That was nothing.”
I didn’t realize Rachel disappeared until she returned with a hefty ham-and-cheese croissant. “You need to eat something,” she declared as she slid the plate to me.
My eyes drifted from the half-drunk latte to the pastry. “I can’t pay you for any of this,” I mumbled guiltily. Marigold’s hadn’t been open in days, and I had no idea when the repairs would be done. That would require texting a certain someone—or, worse, seeing him face-to-face.
Rachel waved her hand. “That doesn’t matter.”
I wanted to say that it did—to me. But I couldn’t muster up the words that I didn’t even understand.
Silently, Margot slipped her card across the counter. “Put it all on mine. Seriously.”
Unwanted tears pricked my eyes, but I buried myself in the croissant instead.
When I finished—in record time—I emptied my mug and sunk into the stool, satisfied. Maybe all my problems really could be solved by some espresso and a snack. The light seemed warmer, the whispers quieter, and my head finally felt like it had been screwed on.
“Well, I don’t know what this person— what Claire is going to do, but there’s still so much that needs to be done.” They watched me with thinly veiled concern as I sent them a wide grin. “We’ve got a week and a half. Let’s get to work.”
The click of Margot’s heels followed me out the door.
???
By midmorning, chaos reigned in Ruth’s upstairs office once again.
Sticky notes blanketed the desk like a neon blizzard. Ruth’s old computer was on the verge of overheating. Margot’s spreadsheets multiplied whenever I turned, morphing into my own personal bedtime monster.
“Mrs. Henderson, I promise we’ll have gluten-free options,” I said into the phone, my pacing probably having worn a path in Ruth’s rug. “No, I can’t guarantee funnel cake. But—hello? Mrs. Henderson?”
The line went dead. I pressed my palm to my forehead and groaned.
Margot didn’t look up from her laptop. “That’s the third one today.”
“The third Mrs. Henderson?”
“The third person to hang up on you. Although, honestly, I wouldn’t put it past her to call under aliases.
” She jabbed her stylus at the screen. “And in the meantime, the popcorn guy’s still out.
The snow cone lady’s machine is beyond repair.
And the churro cart won’t even consider driving to the Cove if there’s rain in the forecast.”
I dropped into the chair across her side of the desk and buried my face in my hands. “I hate to say this, but Claire better be a miracle worker.”
“If the two of us can’t figure it out, she’s going to have to be.” Margot’s tone was clipped, but it softened as she continued, “Hey, breathe. We’ll figure it out.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Rhett leaned in, holding two coffees. His shoulders filled the doorway, and he appeared about as confident as a stilt walker with acrophobia. “Uh. Hi.”
Avoiding him was going to be impossible if he kept showing up wherever I was.
Margot’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Well, if it isn’t our Renaissance man.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees, heart rate pounding uncomfortably.
“I thought you might need a refill,” he said, setting one cup in front of me even as I didn’t meet his gaze.
I muttered thanks, not daring to look up as our fingers brushed across the plastic cup.
Margot, bless her meddling heart, was far less subtle. “You free to take calls? Georgie’s this close to collapsing.” She pinched the air in an annoyingly familiar fashion.
“He’s busy,” I muttered before he could speak. “Marigold’s.” Showing him my back, I pretended to urgently type something into my phone even though I was just having trouble swallowing the lump in my throat. I didn’t have any business unraveling around a man with a girlfriend.
After a stretch of silence, Rhett said, “She’s right. I should keep working on Marigold’s. But I wanted to… stop by. See if you need anything.”
“We’re fine,” I lied, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
The tension in the air was thick enough to withstand an explosion.
Rhett shifted his weight, his hand still resting on the edge of the desk.
In my periphery, his mouth twitched like he might say more, but Margot’s hawk eyes pinned him in place.
I refused to lift my gaze from the carpet fibers crushed beneath my sneaker.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Alright. I’ll let you get back to it.”
When the door clicked shut, Margot swiveled toward me with the force of a hurricane.
“You’re impossible.”
I dragged my hands down my face. “What was I supposed to do? Ask him to pull up a chair?”
“That sounds exactly like what you should’ve done.”
“He has a girlfriend,” I hissed, lowering my voice as if Ruth’s dusty filing cabinets might overhear and tell the town’s gossips. “Or a fiancée. Or whatever Claire is. I’m not —”
Margot leaned back until her chair squeaked. “Not what? Threatened? Jealous?”
I snatched a sticky note off the desk and crumpled it into a ball. “Hungry. Can we please order lunch?”
Unfortunately, lunch turned out to be two day-old muffins and the leftover croissant Rachel had snuck me earlier. Captain’s was in the midst of a particularly busy midday rush—I could hear the muffled hum of conversation through the floor—and Ruth was too preoccupied to get our order.
Margot and I ate in silence, hunched over the desk.
My brain throbbed with numbers, deadlines, and the mounting dread of what the festival might look like if we didn’t pull off a miracle.
Sleep was beginning to escape me every night, as I frequently found myself woken up by dreams of a flooded Main Street and a crowd of excited visitors with nowhere to go.
Around two o’clock, my phone buzzed with a text from Rhett.
Rhett Briggs: How’s it going up there? Need me to come back?
I stared at it until the glow made my eyes hurt, thumb hovering a millimeter from the screen. My chest warmed with that giddy fuzziness, the way it had before. Margot leaned over my shoulder without an ounce of shame.
“Answer him.”
“I’m not going to.”
“You just typed half a sentence.”
I set it face down, cheeks burning. When had I done that?
“Accident,” I mumbled pathetically.
She gave me a look that said she knew. Of course she knew. But this time, she let it drop.
???
The beach lay quiet, gulls wheeling overhead as waves rolled in with a lazy rhythm. Easton bounded ahead, ears flopping, yanking my arm every so often whenever he found something new to sniff in the sand.
I tugged my sweater tighter. The evening breeze carried something sweet and smokey—maybe someone’s barbecue drifting from their backyard.
It should’ve been peaceful. But my thoughts twisted their way back to the festival, to Marigold’s, and to a pair of dark eyes that flashed in my mind with unrelenting consistency.
My phone buzzed again—another message from Rhett.
Rhett Briggs: Can we talk later?
I stared until the words blurred. Easton barked at a seagull and flopped into the water, blissfully unaware of my spiraling.
What did he want to talk about? Was something wrong with Marigold’s? Had he decided to head back home early now that the festival was a disaster? Or maybe it was about his particularly silky-haired girlfriend.
Stomach souring, I shoved the phone deep in my pocket and spun away from the water.
We hadn’t made it far down Main Street before Ruth materialized on the sidewalk and dragged us into Captain’s for dinner. She had insisted, waving away my protests with her wooden spoon, “You can’t live on muffins and caffeine forever. Sit. Eat. End of story.”
So I sat, tucked into a well-hidden booth with Easton curled on my feet. The diner thrummed with the usual evening energy: older residents swapping stories over a burger and fries, teenagers jostling for milkshakes, and Ruth hollering a new order into the kitchen every handful of minutes.
And then the bell jingled.
Rhett stepped in, looking largely unaffected by the sea of eyes now trained on him. And he wasn’t alone.
Claire followed, her heels clicking against the tile like they were snapping for the room’s attention.
She stood taller than she had the night before, maybe because of the way she carried herself—chin high, shoulders back, utterly unshaken by anything in her path.
Not a hair out of place, she cast a polished smile around the diner. Everything about her was perfect.
The whispers rippled through the restaurant instantly. Heads swiveled. Utensils fell. The jaws of every teenage boy in the room collectively dropped.
“Evening,” she greeted brightly, scanning the room with the air of a pageant queen.
Rhett spotted me in the far corner. Our eyes caught, and for a heartbeat, something flickered there. Guilt? Regret? Or maybe I was just projecting, because Claire looped her arm through his with the ease of someone who knew she belonged beside him.
Then they turned—straight for me.
If there hadn’t been a sixty-pound furball on my feet, I would have bolted and never looked back.