Chapter 4
chapter
four
Hope
The watch spends the night on its charger, and in the morning I stand at the counter and look at it for a good, long minute before I put it back on.
I could just… not. That's the thought I’ve had every single morning since the first time it summoned the sheriff. I could leave it sitting right there and be a woman whose wrist minds its own business. Nobody would ever know.
Except me. And the doctor. And, if I'm being honest, which I can manage before coffee, when I'm too tired to lie to myself—my own heart, which every now and again does a little flutter-skip thing.
Dramatic organ. It's nothing. It's a keep an eye on it nothing.
It is the least interesting fact about me and I intend to keep it that way.
So I put on the watch. Same as every morning. Because independent doesn't mean stupid, and I know the difference, even on the days I resent it.
Then I make coffee. I am a grown woman and I am allowed, even if the doctor said to go easy on the caffeine. I won’t obsess about that warning, and I definitely won’t obsess about a certain grouchy sheriff. I'm zero for two before the pot even finishes brewing.
Me: He took the cookies.
Jules: WHO took the cookies?
Me: You know who.
Cora: THE SHERIFF???
Jules: You summoned him again?
Me: My watch summoned him. He had good timing too because I was on the verge of being squished by a piece of furniture.
Cora: OMG! Would you stop doing things on your own? I can send Oliver or one of his brothers over to help you unload furniture.
Me: Absolutely not. You are eight months pregnant and have more important things to do than babysit me. Like grow an actual human.
Me: I've got it. I always have it. That's kind of my whole thing.
Jules: Nobody said you didn't, babe.
Me: I know. I know. Ignore me.
Cora: Never.
Jules: But she has her sheriff at her beck and call.
Beck and call. I set the phone down for a second.
Here's what they don't get—what I can't figure out how to say without sounding like I need a therapist I can't afford. It isn't the him part that bothers me. It's the being-rescued part.
Me: Soooo… today he carried a forty-dollar armoire up my porch steps like it was a loaf of bread.
Me: But then he took a whole bag of snickerdoodles and said, and I quote, “they’re for my deputies”
Jules: They were not for his deputies.
Me: Exactly. He said it like a hostage reading a statement.
Cora: Is this what they call a situationship?
Jules: I think a situationship includes more orgasms.
Me: It is not a situationship. He is doing his job. Repeatedly. Because my watch is possessed.
Me: He doesn’t even like me. He asked me if I had any friends.
Jules: How many times has your sheriff been out there now?
Me: He’s not MY sheriff.
Jules: How many times, Hope?
Me: It’s only been the two times I’ve told you about.
Three days later and he’s been out to my house a total of four times now.
Four times a man has driven all the way out here because something told him I couldn't manage my own life.
And the worst part, the part I would genuinely rather die in that yard than admit to Jules, is that some small, tired, traitor corner of me liked it.
Liked being checked on. Liked that someone came.
I have worked so hard, for so long, to not be a person who likes that.
I pick the phone back up before let’s be honest, this is probably the first time in our nearly two-decades-long friendship that I’ve had this much personal drama to report. Normally it’s Jules and then most recently Cora when her one-night stand became her forever.
Me: Okay, he’s been here two more times now.
Jules: That’s a total of four, right?
Me: The watch is broken!! It thinks sanding is dying! Granted,my arms did feel like they were dying.
Jules: What the hell were you sanding?
Me: My cabinet doors. Have to sand them before I paint them.
Cora: Sorry. I’m here. Had to pee. Again.
Cora: So what was the other reason it called him?
Me: A documentary scared me. Seriously, this is truly mortifying!
Jules: Girl, your body is literally paging the man. Your own heart rate ratted you out. That’s the most honest your body’s been in years, listen to it.
Me: I hate you.
Cora: Did he stay? When your heart rate spiked?
Me: …for a minute.
Me: He stood in the doorway and made sure I was okay. I offered him fresh banana bread and he took it. He did this thing where he almost smiled.
Me: Like the muscles considered it, but decided not to.
Jules: She’s waxing poetic about his FACE again.
Cora: Hope, sweetie. You’re baking for him now, aren’t you?
Me: I don’t know what you mean. I bake all the time. It’s a stress thing. You know that.
Jules: I gained ten pounds when you were filing that grade appeal in college.
Cora: You made banana bread. On a Friday night. Who was that for?
Me: It was for ME. I like banana bread.
Jules: Then why’d you have a to-go portion ready?
Me: GOODNIGHT
Jules: She keeps a to-go portion ready for your sheriff. Write that on the wedding invitation.
Me: GOODNIGHT FOREVER.
I put the phone down.
I look at the counter, where there is, in fact, a second loaf already wrapped in foil. For no one. For me. Because I like banana bread and it is completely normal to make two loaves and wrap one up neat and set it by the door where a person could grab it easily on their way out.
I don’t have a crush on the sheriff.
I have a watch problem.
The two things are entirely separate, and I keep them that way, right up until nine-fifteen the next morning when I catch myself putting on mascara before I’ve even had coffee, in a house where the only living thing that’s going to see me is the neighbor’s cat—and I have to sit down on the edge of the bathtub and admit, to the tile, to the grout, to God, that I might be in a little bit of trouble.