Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Aspen felt like shit.
Not physically. Physically, she was in the best shape of her life. She hated that she might have hurt Maddy’s feelings at her welcome home dinner Friday night.
It had been forty-eight hours and her jaw still carried the faint ache of a weekend spent clenching through the residue as she replayed every confused, hurt, and angry look Maddy had given her that night. Okay, the angry one wasn’t all that abnormal, but the other two definitely were.
Morning light came through her bungalow’s windows in long rectangles, and Aspen moved through her routine on autopilot—coffee on, plants watered, hair up, face washed, retinol patted in with the methodical four-finger press—while she replayed Friday night for the two dozenth time.
She should have been proud of herself. She’d held the line, no teasing, no smirking, no lingering looks. But, she’d gone full pendulum and been a total asshole.
Balance. That was what she needed to find. A way to stay emotionally detached without swinging too far in the opposite direction.
The Friend Zone. That was the move. She’d put Maddy in the friend zone.
Not that they were friends. That had never been their dynamic.
But maybe it could be now. Yes. Friends.
That could work. Friends did not flirt, or check each other out, or spend four years studying their ass off just to have that person’s eyes locked on them while arguing about foreign policy at the head of a classroom. Friends did none of that.
It had been all about the chase before. The thrill of vying for the attention of an unattainable woman.
A teenager’s hunger for Maddy Sterling to look at her with that intense hunger that said I’m going to eat you alive.
Granted, it had been aimed at her as the opponent Maddy intended to dismantle. But that was neither here nor there.
They weren’t in high school anymore. What Maddy needed as a thirty-three-year-old woman who had just returned home for the first time in fifteen years—what the situation actually called for—was a friend.
Aspen could do that. She would do that. They just had to establish some common ground.
Aspen moved toward the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Today, they were going to the storage unit together. It was the perfect environment to field-test their impending friendship.
A plan began to take shape in her mind.
PHASE ONE: PICK MADDY UP.
Not like a date. The ten-minute drive across the bridge just didn’t make sense to do in two separate cars.
It was logical. Maddy loved logical. Plus, driving separately wasn’t what friends did.
Friends rode together. She’d text Maddy and ask her—no, not ask, tell her—that she’d pick her up and they’d drive over together. Easy.
PHASE TWO: STORAGE UNIT BONDING.
Collaborative labor. The storage unit was messy, unorganized, chaotic—a space where Maddy’s brain would light up like a lithium fire and Aspen could simply be there lifting boxes, taking orders, and being useful.
No flirting. Just two adults working together toward a common goal.
She’d been helping Bunny load and unload things in that storage unit for years.
She knew where everything was. She could be helpful instead of provoking. Piece of cake.
PHASE THREE: SAFE, PLATONIC CONVERSATION.
Topics definitely off-limits: Friday night’s dinner, Maddy’s father—best to just avoid any mention of parents at all, actually—high school, dating, sex (!!
!), and Maddy’s wardrobe choices. Possible safe topics include: work, sports, music, food, hobbies, books, the weather, restaurant recommendations, and bitching about traffic on the 5.
They could surely agree that the weather was nice and the 5 was a nightmare—boom, common ground.
Okay. Three phases. Clean. Measurable. Like a rehab protocol, except the patient was her behavior around one devastatingly beautiful blonde.
The toothbrush paused halfway through her molars. Aspen met her own eyes in the bathroom mirror. Yeah, she had this.
The mirror did not look convinced.
* * *
Aspen had texted Maddy three hours ago. Picking you up at noon. Like every text she’d received from Maddy, the three dots had started, stopped, started again, stopped, and finally resolved into the single syllable that was the entire emotional landscape of Maddy Sterling in a word.
Maddy: Fine.
Aspen had come to learn over the past week that "fine" was not one word.
It was at least four, and counting. There was the fine that meant you saved my ass, but I will under no circumstances say thank you.
The fine that meant drop the subject before I drop you.
The fine that meant I am overwhelmed and not okay and would rather walk into traffic than say that out loud.
And the fine that meant I want to say yes, but I do not want anyone, myself included, to know that, so I am going to downplay the whole thing.
Aspen suspected this morning’s fine fell somewhere in the neighborhood of the fourth.
Also, it was something of a minor miracle Maddy had agreed to the ride at all.
Aspen had drafted the text four times before sending it and had spent the sixty seconds between picking you up and fine imagining the full range of clipped rejections she expected to receive in return.
And yet. Fine.
Phase one: activated. Proceed to pickup site. Maintain emotional detachment. Keep eyes safely above the neckline.
She pulled into the Sterling driveway at 12 p.m. on the dot.
The front door opened before she’d put the car in park. Maddy came down the steps carrying a reusable tote. She looked, for one disorienting half-second, like the girl from debate.
It was the blazer. A white blazer over denim shorts—formal on top, casual on the bottom.
Hair down. Aspen had watched that exact silhouette walking across the quad for four years.
Her mind was already halfway through a high school highlight reel of Maddy’s various blazer looks before she could shut it down—Maddy at the podium with her charcoal blazer unbuttoned and a crease between her brows, Maddy at state championships in a navy blazer with the Coronado High crest over her left breast and a fistful of index cards, Maddy at prom in a black blazer two sizes too big that had to have been Jake’s.
Aspen shook her head. The plan. Remember the plan.
Maddy pulled the passenger door open and set the tote down on the floor.
“Hi!” It came out way too chipper and she cringed at herself.
“Hi.” Maddy’s voice was decidedly less chipper as she slid in and closed the door.
Aspen picked up one of the takeaway coffee cups from the holder and extended it across the console. “I got this for you.”
Maddy looked at it like it might bite her, then reached for it slowly from the top like she had done with Aspen’s phone a few days ago.
Aspen wrapped her hands around her own cup. “I didn’t know if you still liked coconut milk lattes with a sprinkle of cinnamon, but I figured it was a safe bet.”
She had learned Maddy’s coffee order at a debate tournament in St. Louis sophomore year.
Maddy was just ahead of her in line at Starbucks, and when it was Aspen’s turn to order, she’d simply told the cashier that she’d have the same thing as the girl before her.
She didn’t exactly have a plan, but she’d thought the information would come in handy at some point in her efforts to impress Maddy.
She had been surprised by how delicious the combination of steamed coconut milk and cinnamon was, and had continued to order the same drink for herself for the past seventeen years.
Maddy studied the cup in her hands. “That’s—” Her brow furrowed. The adorable crease forming—no, Aspen corrected herself. Not adorable. Just a crease.
Maddy lightly cleared her throat. “Fine. Thank you.” She took a small sip and turned her face to the passenger window.
Aspen was probably giving Maddy whiplash with her mood swings. Maybe she’d better dial it back a smidge. Calm. Neutral.
Aspen put the SUV into gear. She dug into the mental archive of safe topics she established this morning. Work. That was one of them. “So. How’s Bunny’s pain level been this weekend?” Shit. Parents were forbidden territory.
“Better, I think. She said the exercises are helping.” Maddy seemed unbothered, thumb tracing the seam of the coffee cup.
“She’s actually doing them between sessions?” Aspen snuck a quick glance over.
There was a faint twitch at the corner of Maddy’s mouth. “Three out of four.”
“A seventy-five percent compliance rate. That’s better than my average.” Playful but professional. Not flirty. This was good.
Maddy glanced over at her. “She still doesn’t like the pelvic tilt.”
“I can’t say a woman’s ever complained about my pelvic tilts before.” God damnit, bad Aspen.
Maddy’s hand went still on her coffee cup for a moment, then she turned her head away and looked out the passenger window. She took a sip and said nothing.
Aspen cleared her throat. She kept her eyes on the bumper of the minivan three cars ahead. She could still salvage this. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful week. Sunshine every day.”
“In San Diego? Shocking.” Maddy deadpanned.
Fuck. This was not going as well as she had hoped.
Three minutes into a ten-minute drive and she had already brought up Bunny, made a sexual innuendo, AND burned her safest off-ramp topic.
She could’ve at least brought up something interesting about the weather rather than stating the fucking obvious.
Like the hurricane warning they’d had a few months ago, or the fact that June Gloom was ending earlier and earlier each year, or literally any of the seven conversations she’d had with Michelle about barometric pressure and hip inflammation.
Now weather was off the table for the rest of the day. Great.
Maybe less talking until the storage unit.