FULL NOVELXO : Chapter 10
MILES AND I pass the next week without so much as brushing shoulders in the kitchen.
I don’t think either of us is actively avoiding the other—it’s more like, we both suddenly remember we don’t know each other and have nothing in common beyond our hilariously bad breakups. We’re back in the territory of polite nods, separate dinners, and conversation made via monosyllable.
When we got home, he made a big show of scribbling WANING BAY TOURISM on the calendar, drawing an arrow down the Sunday column, but since then, he hasn’t added anything else.
By the time my Saturday morning shift rolls around, I’m convinced that his adamancy about showing me around was a by-product of the joint we shared.
I’m out the door before he’s even up, the sun and birds out full force, though the air remains crisp. I’m early, as usual, so I decide to walk to work and even stop in at a whitewashed coffee shop overflowing with hanging plants to grab a hot chai.
It’s strange; I’ve driven this way dozens of times, but on foot, I notice new things:
A Tudor house with a lush flower garden and a wooden sign advertising it as a Montessori school. A hobby shop called High Flyers, whose theme seems to be a mix of kites and THC. Then I turn down a residential street, reading the yard signs as I go: one about Bigfoot, another promoting an upcoming arts fair, then a crooked For Sale sign in the shaggy, overgrown lawn of a taffy-green bungalow.
Its white picket fence is in disrepair, some slats entirely missing, and its diamond-paned windows are crawling with ivy. It looks like something from a storybook: magical and cozy, yet somehow wild, mysterious in that irresistible way of fairy-tale houses.
At work, I help Harvey swap out the programming corkboard for the week. Waning Bay Public Library is a small enough operation that it’s usually all hands on deck. You do whatever needs doing, regardless of job title.
While pinning a flyer for Build Your Own Terrarium Night, Harvey says, “You’ve been in brighter spirits this week.”
He bears more than a passing resemblance to Morgan Freeman, and his voice, although raspier and not quite so low, has the same kind of gravitas. It’s a voice that makes you want to do him proud.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I’ll be better. About not bringing all of that into work.”
Harvey harrumphs, pushes his gold wire-frame glasses up his nose. “It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?”
At his kindness, I feel a sting of guilt about my job search. About knowing there’s a technical services librarian position open in Oklahoma, a place I know nothing about that can’t be learned from the musical Oklahoma!
“We’re lucky to have you,” Harvey goes on, hanging the sign-up sheet for Friday’s Dungeons & Dragons tournament. “Just keep bringing your whole heart in for those kids. That’s all.”
The sting redoubles.
Harvey pats the wall, then ambles back to the office, while I move on to dismantling the origami Dinosaur Day display to make room for the Pride Month display. Afterward, I help Ashleigh finish the Juneteenth and Loving Day displays, while she fills me in on her first real date with Craig, delivering each startling tidbit of information in a perfect monotone while I try not to pee myself from laughing.
(When they got to his house after dinner, he made her sit with him in the car for twenty unspeaking minutes while the Phish album he’d put on finished playing, then did the exact same thing after he drove her home.)
“I’m glad someone’s enjoying this,” she says, but I can tell she’s enjoying telling it too. It’s fun and a little thrilling, feeling like we’re kind of, sort of real friends now.
When I get back to my desk, I field a few calls, after which I teach roughly five hundred kids how to sign in to an online game for the five hundredth time.
By then it’s the peak of my workweek: Saturday Story Hour.
Bonus: it’s a warm, cloudless day, so we can take this activity outside.
When we’re settled in a ring in the grass out front, I ask, “Who’s ready to hear a story?”
Hands go up around the circle. Shameless excitement. Open expressions of feelings.
It’s funny: As a kid, I had no idea how to interact with other kids. I felt most at home with Mom and her friends. But as an adult, I find kids so much easier to understand.
They say how they feel, and they show it too. There are fewer ulterior motives and unwritten rules. Silences aren’t unbearably awkward, and abrupt segues to different subjects are the norm. If you want to be friends with someone, you just ask, and if they don’t want to, they’ll probably just tell you.
I clear my throat and open Snappsy the Alligator to get us started, scanning my rapt audience as I begin to read.
Arham, of course, wears his trademark Spider-Man costume. A three-year-old, Lyla, has spaghetti sauce all over her face and dungarees. She’s also sucking on a lemon wedge like it’s a pacifier.
Basically, all is right with the world.
Halfway through our second story, I notice someone approaching from the parking lot, seemingly carried on a burst of summer air and sunshine. He’s gazing at the covered breezeway to the front doors like he’s never seen anything like it, possibly never seen a library, period.
His eyes slice sideways toward us, and I lose my place in the sentence. Miles’s face lights with a grin. He lifts his chin in greeting and draws to a stop just beyond our little ring.
I clear my throat and glance down at the picture book in my hand, finding my place in the sentence to begin reading aloud again.
When I next look up, he’s still there, looking enraptured.
By this story. About anthropomorphic mice. Learning to do gymnastics.
I wish I hadn’t been quite so committed to doing voices for all of the characters before he showed up, because now I’m obliged to keep at it.
So I use my high-pitched squeak for the littlest mouse’s dialogue, and my low grumble for the portly older mouse with the distinguished mustache. Every time I scan the crowd, Miles’s smile is a little bigger, goofier. He keeps looking around at the kids, parents, and nannies, like, Can you believe this shit? Wild!
When I reach The End, the toddlers’ caregivers give the mild applause appropriate for a late-afternoon library trip, whereas Miles sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, which somehow instantly turns all fifteen kids from sleepy angels into rowdy buccaneers, drunk on distilled-belowdecks rum. A couple of moms eye my scrubby, wolfish roommate curiously.
He is blissfully unaware, ambling toward me through the crowd as the other patrons gather their diaper bags and sticky-handed children to pull them toward the parking lot.
“I had no idea you could do that,” he says.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, starting back toward the front doors. They whoosh open and we enter the cool, musty quiet. “I’ve been reading since I was six. I’m getting pretty good.”
“I mean the voices,” he clarifies. “You were such a convincing elderly magician mouse.”
“If that impressed you, you should see me do the old woman who lives in a shoe,” I say.
“I’ll clear my Saturdays,” he says.
“I was kidding,” I say.
He grins. “Not me.”
I gesture toward the stacks. “Can I help you find something?”
“I was hoping you could spell out every word of a love poem to me,” he deadpans.
“That guy already called today,” Ashleigh pipes up from the reference desk.
“Yeah, I’ve hit my limit on daily X-rated flower metaphors, so that’s the one thing I can’t help you with,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “I’ll try again on Monday. Actually, I was on my way in to Cherry Hill and I just wanted to double-check we’re still on for tomorrow. Would’ve texted, but I forgot my phone at home.”
“Tomorrow?” Ashleigh looks up from the gel manicure she’s giving herself, complete with a little light-up device plugged in between her computer and the printer. Harvey left already for his daughter’s fortieth birthday and the front desk quickly descended into lawlessness. “What’s tomorrow?”
“I wasn’t planning to hold you to that,” I tell Miles.
He scoffs. “It’s on the calendar. It might as well be etched into the annals of history.”
“It’s pronounced anals,” Ashleigh says.
Miles looks to me, brow lifting.
I shake my head. “It’s definitely not. And you really don’t have to ferry me around. I can just, like, buy a map.”
He rolls his eyes, slumps forward on his forearms at the desk. “Just be ready at one p.m., okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
He looks between me and Ashleigh. “Should I expect you at Cherry Hill tonight?”
“I’ve got Read-a-thon stuff I need to work on,” I say.
“And my kid’s having friends over to play video games,” Ashleigh says. “So I’ll be shoveling pizza rolls in and out of the oven until dawn. But he’s at his dad’s again next Sunday night, if you guys want to do something then.”
“Should we expect Craig too,” Miles teases, leaning across the desk, vaguely flirtatiously.
Ashleigh shudders. “No, no, we should not. Daphne can fill you in on that. I can’t bring myself to utter it aloud again.”
“He had too much Phish,” I explain.
“Like an aquarium?” Miles says.
“Like posters upon posters of Phish. The band,” I say.
“What’s wrong with Phish?” he wants to know.
“Nothing, in moderation,” Ashleigh volunteers.
“But he also had commemorative mugs and action figures and cardboard cutouts. And . . . I want to say sheets?”
“Hand towels,” she corrects me. “I don’t begrudge a man a hobby, but if you’re forty and your apartment has a theme, I just don’t see it working out for us.”
“Well, shit,” Miles says. “That rules out pretty much everyone I know.”
“I’ve seen your place,” Ashleigh says. “I didn’t see a cohesive theme. Unless it was major depressive episode.”
“When did you see my room?” Miles asks.
“I picked Daphne up there,” she says, apparently happy to admit to her snooping.
“Actually, the theme is, you’re never invited over again,” I tell Ashleigh. Then, to Miles: “What time do you need to get into work?”
“Shit!” He pitches himself forward over the desk to check the time on my computer. His eyes flash back to mine, and he points for good measure, which really accentuates the Popeye-style anchor tattoo on his bicep. “Tomorrow. One o’clock. Don’t be late.”
“I never am,” I say.
I tell him this when he enters the apartment.
“I know,” he says. “Sorry. I went to get coffee, and the line was really long.” He holds out a paper cup to me. I recognize the stamp on it as being from Fika, the shop I stopped in to on my way to work yesterday.
“Thank you,” I say.
He doesn’t answer, just waits expectantly for me to take a sip, I guess.
“I don’t really drink coffee,” I say. “Unless I’m super tired, it makes me too jittery.”
His brow furrows, his lips knitting together. “You had one of their cups on your desk yesterday, so I assumed . . .”
“Chai,” I say.
He taps his temple, like he’s nailing the information to his head.
“Should we go?” I ask.
Outside our building, the sudden daylight briefly scalds my retinas. I lose all sense of direction, somehow running directly into Miles when he was just beside me.
He catches my upper arms and turns me toward his truck, half a block up the street.
“So where are we going,” I ask.
“Shopping.”
“Really?” I turn toward him, the wind whipping my hair across my face. I catch a fistful and push it out of my eyes, pinning it to my forehead. “Are we doing a makeover montage?”
He looks down at himself. “Are you trying to tell me something here?”
“I mean, when you showed up at Story Hour yesterday, I caught Mrs. Dekuyper looking between you and a Big Bad Wolf picture book, like she was trying to spot the difference.”
“Yeah, right,” he says, “she thought I was hot.”
“You don’t even know which one Mrs. Dekuyper was,” I point out.
“They all thought I was hot,” he says. “Women of a certain age love me.”
“You must remind them of when they were young,” I say, “and Abraham Lincoln was People’s Sexiest Man Alive.”
He unlocks the passenger door of his truck and hauls it open with one hand, while he scratches his bearded jaw with the other. “You think I should shave it?”
“I think you should do whatever you want.” I climb onto the ripped seat.
“But you think the beard is bad.” He closes the door, the window rolled down between us.
“I think the beard is sheer chaos,” I say. “But not inherently bad. It’s your face, Miles. All that matters is how you feel about it.”
He sets his forearms atop the door. “Well, Daphne, I’m less sure how I feel about it since that snarky Big Bad Wolf comment.”
“Don’t take my opinion too seriously,” I say. “You already know I have terrible taste in men.” And honestly, the beard’s growing on me. Chaos suits him. “Where are we going shopping? Family Fare?”
“Better.” He pushes the lock down, then rounds the truck and gets in.
“Tom’s Food Market?” I say.
“Better,” he repeats.
“Oh, I know!” I cry. “Meijer.”
He looks over, the engine starting with a sputtering cough. “Do me a favor,” he says lightly, “and unlock your door.”
“Why?”
“So I can push you out as I peel out of this parking lot,” he says.
“You would never,” I say.
“I would never,” he admits, and pulls onto the road. He turns us away from town and the water, toward the countryside.
His heartbreak playlist is still in full effect.
Or maybe he’s just put it back on to amuse me, because he does seem a little more smirky than usual.
The traffic thins as we drive inland, away from the quaint downtown and the cotton-candy-colored Victorian- and Colonial Revival–style resorts that line the beach.
It’s easy to forget how secluded Waning Bay really is, when you’re inside of it, but within minutes, we’re winding into gloriously sunlit farmland.
Then, out of nowhere, we’re pulling to the side of the road. Through the dusty windshield, I spot a green-painted farm stand on the shoulder, behind which two older ladies in work pants, floral tank tops, and matching visors are hawking asparagus.
“So to be clear,” I say, “when you said shopping, you meant for asparagus.”
Miles gives me a mildly offended look. “This,” he says, “is just phase one.”
I hop out, dirt kicking up under my sandals, and follow him to the stand.
“Well, hello there!” one of the ladies calls. “Back already?”
“Of course,” Miles says. “Barb, Lenore, this is my friend Daphne Vincent. Daphne, this is Barb Satō and Lenore Pappas.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
“Daphne’s newish to town,” Miles goes on, “and she’s never had your asparagus before.”
“Is that so?” The smaller of the two women, Barb, perks up. She starts rustling through the crates. “Let me find you the best of the best.”
“I’m sure there’s no bad stalk to be had,” I say.
“No, no, of course not,” the other woman, a head taller than the first, says, “but Barb does have a knack for picking the best, and we want our first-timers to come back, so let her work her magic.”
“I appreciate it,” I say.
Lenore leans across the table. “How’ve you been holding up, honey?”
“Good,” Miles says. “I’m good.”
She squeezes his forearm. “You’re a good boy, and you deserve to be happy. Don’t you forget that.”
“These are the ones for you.” Barb lifts a bundle of asparagus that must contain at least twenty-seven stalks.
“Oh, yeah, those look good,” Miles agrees, holding open the tote bag he brought from the truck. She drops the asparagus in, and he slides his wallet from his pocket.
“No, no, no,” Barb says. “Your money’s no good here.”
He shoves the ten in his hand into their tip jar to much protestation. “It would be a crime not to pay for this.”
“Theft, technically,” I put in.
“You take care of our boy,” Lenore tells me sternly, but with a wink. “He’s one of the good ones.”
“I’ve been picking up on that,” I say.
They coo and fawn over him as we wave our farewells and trek back to the dirt-smeared truck, my cheeks aching from subconsciously matching their sunny smiles. As soon as we’re in the car, and out of earshot, I drop my voice to a murmur. “You weren’t kidding about that beard’s effect on our honored elders.”
He laughs. “No, they hate the beard. They just like me because I spend a fuck-ton on their asparagus. And their corn, later in the season.”
A guffaw rises out of me as we glide back onto the road. “Miles, I’m pretty sure they would’ve given you their entire surplus, and everything in the tip jar. How much corn can one man possibly eat to earn that kind of adoration?”
“It’s not one man,” he says.
“Damn,” I say. “A modern Walt Whitman.”
“No, I mean, we source from them.”
“We?” I ask.
“Cherry Hill,” he says. At my blank response, his eyes dart to the road, then to my face and back a couple more times. “I’m their buyer.”
“What does that mean,” I say.
“It means our chef, Martín, makes a few different menus every season, and I get the best stuff I can find for him. So I go to the butcher, and the farm stands, and the olive oil store, and the cheesemonger—”
“Cheesemonger!” I say. “You have a cheesemonger on speed dial?”
“Since it’s not 1998,” he says, “no, I don’t have her on speed dial. But we text whenever she’s got something special in.”
“Wow,” I say. “Who knew I was moving in with the most well-connected man this side of Lake Michigan?”
“Probably everyone that I’m connected to,” he replies. “So, like, half of Waning Bay?”
“So if I was in need of, like . . . strawberry preserves.”
“Reddy Family Farm,” he says. “But if they are low, Drake is good too.”
“And if I wanted butternut squash,” I say.
“Faith Hill Sustainable Farms,” he says. I open my mouth and he adds, “No connection to the country singer, sadly.”
I frown. “Too bad.”
“I know,” he says.
“What about if I needed green beans?” I ask.
“Ted Ganges Green Bean Farm,” he says.
“And if I needed to take out a hit on someone,” I say.
“Gill from MEATLOCKER,” he answers, not missing a beat.
At the look on my face, a laugh rockets out of him. “It’s a joke, Daphne. But Gill did mention he was looking for homes for a litter of kittens.”
“I’m not sure the Cherry Hill clientele is quite that culinarily adventurous,” I say.
“And lucky for them, Chef Martín isn’t either. I have been thinking about getting a cat, though,” he says.
“One more reason I should move to Maryland,” I say. “I’m allergic.”
“The cat’s out,” he says.
“Don’t give up your hypothetical cat for me, Miles,” I say. “Barb and Lenore will actually kill me if I rob you of that joy.”
“The cat was just a pipe dream,” he says. “After an infancy with Gill, there’s no way I’ll be able to give one of those kittens the life it’s accustomed to.”
“True. You don’t own enough leather or have a motorcycle with a tiny sidecar and helmet.”
“Oh my god, that would be so fucking cute,” he says, delight lighting up his deep brown eyes.
He puts on his blinker as we approach a cherry stand.
It’s essentially a repeat of our stop at the asparagus stand, except that Barb and Lenore are replaced by Robert Sr., a portly guy in his forties, and Rob Jr., a gangly kid who’s anywhere between eleven and twenty-two. This time, I insist on paying for the two bags of cherries, and when we climb back into the cab of the truck, Miles looks at me expectantly, his seat belt still undone and the engine off.
“Aren’t you going to try one?”
“Is this some kind of kink for you?” I say.
A blush hits the tops of his cheekbones, the only part not hidden by his werewolf beard. “I just want to know if you think they’re as good as I do.”
“Okay, okay.” I dig around for two plump, long-stemmed cherries and hand him one. As if there’s some invisible countdown, we hold eye contact and pop the cherries in our mouths at the same second.
It’s sweet without being overpowering. Tart without giving that biting-down-on-metal sensation. And juicy. Juicier than any cherry I’ve ever bought in a store. So juicy that when I bite into it, sticky pink sluices out between my lips and drips down my chin.
And even though not two seconds ago I had been determined not to make a sound, an enthusiastic mm-mm rolls through me, followed by a “wow.”
Grinning, Miles grabs a Big Louie’s–branded napkin from the center console and mops up my chin before I can get cherry juice everywhere. He crumples the napkin into an empty paper cup in the cupholder, then spits out the pit from his cherry and holds the cup up for me to do the same, a strangely intimate gesture that makes my insides feel like they’ve been baking in the sun just a few minutes too long and will char if they’re not turned over soon.
“Best cherry you’ve ever had,” Miles guesses.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know I liked cherries until right now,” I say.
He says, “They weren’t my thing either until I moved here.”
“Where are you from again?” I ask. “Sorry, I forget.”
His eyes flash away from mine. “No, that’s okay.” He starts the car. “I’m from Illinois.”
“And how’d you end up out here?” I ask.
He looks over his shoulder before merging onto the road. “Followed a girl.”
“Petra?” I say.
He shakes his head.
“Ooooh, the other girlfriend,” I say.
“Number one, of two,” he confirms. “Dani. She’s actually Chef Martín’s cousin. He and his husband started Cherry Hill, and he offered Dani a job in the tasting room. So she got me one too, and we moved from Chicago. Broke up a few months later. By then, I didn’t want to leave, and she did, so she moved back to the city.”
“So that’s why you don’t think I should leave?” I guess. “Because of the one percent chance that Petra and Peter will decide to go first?”
“I told you,” he says. “I don’t think you should leave because I don’t want you to leave. And my happiness is very important. You heard Barb and Lenore.”
“I did,” I say. “I remember that lyric from the second stanza of the ballad they sang about you.”
“That was nothing,” he says. “Wait until you meet Clarence from the lavender farm.”
“You are either the friendliest man on the planet,” I say, “or a world-class serial killer.”
“Why not both?”
They sell lavender everything.
Lavender room spray and lemon-lavender bars of hand soap. Tea towels with dainty lavender print on them, made by a local artisan, and a plush robe with lavender embroidered on its pockets, made by a different local artisan.
But the real reason, I suspect, Miles brought me here is for the lavender shortbread and blueberry-lavender lemonade. Miles buys one cookie for each of us; Clarence deposits six into the bag.
“Maybe I should get something for Ashleigh,” I say. “Wait, maybe I should get everything for her, so she’s forced to have a lavender-themed home.”
“I don’t know why she was so freaked out by Craig’s Phish love,” he says, grabbing the pastry bag and his cup of lemonade and leading the way out to the patio overlooking the lavender fields. “The man clearly knows how to commit. That’s a good thing.” He stops and pulls a piece of shortbread out for me, then takes one for himself.
He looks away as I bite into the shortbread, and I wonder if I actually managed to embarrass him with the kink comment. A week ago, I would’ve thought him unembarrassable.
“Heavenly,” I say. He is so obviously pleased that I can’t help but feel a crush of affection for him.
It’s quickly snuffed out by a much bigger crushing sensation. Because, in the parking lot, a tall and lithely muscled man is emerging from a familiar BMW, the sun catching his neatly coiffed golden hair and sparkling emerald eyes.
They wander right past us to the shop as he trudges toward it, then backtrack abruptly right to me.
Our gazes latch.
The fluttery warmth in my stomach curdles.
Peter misses a step. For a second, it looks like he’s going to trip and skid across the sun-bleached gravel, face-first.
But he’s Peter. Nothing so ordinary as gravity could take him down.
Miles tracks my gaze, right as Peter starts across the lot again.
Under his breath, Miles says, “Shit.”
It’s bad enough that I’m running into Peter so soon, but to run into him here, in this place he never told me about, let alone brought me to, just feels like a weirdly specific slap in the face.
Like a reminder that he was never that invested in whether I was happy here, whether I fell in love with this place. Like I should have been content with him and him alone, though I could never be enough for him.
He’s peeling off from the path now. Striding purposefully toward us instead.
Shit, indeed.