So Inn Love Read online

  “How about you?” I asked, turning the question back on Hayden.

  “I don’t have any boyfriends at home, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.

  “I wasn’t.” Though I guess I could have, if I didn’t know about him and Zoe.

  “No girlfriends, either.” He tossed the napkin into the trashcan.

  Okay, so we’d established that we both were available. Now what? Some people weren’t seeing anyone, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were available. Hayden could have sworn off dating, or he could be waiting for the perfect girl, or waiting until he got to college to have another girlfriend, or something like that. Because why start something now, when it was bound to implode in September? Then again, why not start something now—knowing it would be short-term?

  Wow. There were two ways to approach this thing with Hayden. If it was a thing. If it had potential, the way I thought it did. The way he looked at me sometimes, I was pretty sure he felt the same way, that this could turn into something if we decided to go for it.

  Lighten up, Liza, I thought to myself as I heard the train approaching from a distance. The guy bought you an ice cream cone. Nobody’s saying this is destiny. It’s about pens. I sort of wanted to ask him if he wanted to go to the beach later, when we got back to the Inn, but I thought it would be smartest to wait awhile and see where I stood with him before I got in any deeper.

  That love undertow could pull you in and drag you out to sea if you weren’t careful.

  “If you could take the train anywhere, where would you go?” Hayden asked as we both walked up toward the opening doors, looking for the shuttle passengers. Hayden pulled a TIDES INN sign out of his back pocket and held it up, smiling at everyone who was disembarking.

  “The train. Does that mean London’s out?” I asked.

  “Most definitely. Think a little closer to home.” Hayden waved to one of the conductors. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Then somewhere west. How about Montana?” I said.

  “You guys go to Montana?” Hayden called to the conductor.

  Chapter Eight

  “Would you like that toasted?”

  “Yes, with a smidgen of butter, and do you have any jam?”

  “Packets right there, ma’am.” I smiled as I dropped an English muffin into the toaster.

  Miss Crossley hadn’t even bothered to page me. She’d personally walked over to the dorm, pounded on my door to wake me up, then told me to be at the Inn by seven A.M. to work in the restaurant minicafé—more like a kiosk—for breakfast, because Julia had called in sick.

  Never mind that I didn’t know how to make decent coffee—Zoe was doing that. No, I was in charge of serving up muffins, bagels, and Danishes, and manning the cash register. Considering how much the guests paid to stay at the Inn, I would have thought all their food was on the house, but apparently not. They were all too willing to fork over five dollars for a muffin and a cup of coffee. Then again, if they had enough money to stay at the Inn? Money probably wasn’t an issue for them. And five dollars wasn’t going to break them, the way it might break me, in the last few days before our first paychecks.

  The little café was located on the left-hand side of the Inn, the opposite end from the restaurant. It was sort of out of the way, but I kept looking around, wondering if I’d catch a glimpse of Claire, who said she’d come visit me—before she rolled over and went back to sleep, that is—or Josh, or maybe Hayden.

  Then again, if Hayden knew Zoe worked here, would he come by? Were they at the stage of avoiding each other, or was that long past?

  “Do you usually work here?” I asked Zoe between customers. “I thought you worked in the restaurant.”

  “I do both,” she said. “Three days a week I’m there, three days I’m here. Usually. Sometimes it’s more time here and less there, or whatever.”

  “You don’t make as much here, right? No tips,” I commented.

  “That’s true, but you get a higher hourly wage, so it works out,” she said.

  “Oh, right, of course,” I said as if I knew that already. But I hadn’t thought about it. That made me wonder: What would my hourly wage be, since I worked at a different job nearly every hour? Did I get paid for doing things like running out on emergency pen errands? Or was that just considered fun?

  I didn’t need to be paid to hang out with Hayden, I could tell Miss Crossley. But if she wanted to do that, then fine by me. Depending on how I looked at it, either the money, or Hayden, was a bonus.

  I thought about the way he’d looked at me a couple of times the night before, like when we were stopped in traffic, and how he was waiting for me outside the store, ice cream cone in hand.

  “Excuse me, Miss.”

  I came back to the present and noticed a man was waving his hand in front of my face.

  “Oh. Sorry, sir. What can we get you?” I asked him with a friendly smile.

  He ordered a coffee and a bagel, which I got right to toasting.

  “Space much?” Zoe asked me as she started preparing his café latte. “Were you out late last night?”

  “No,” I said, but I felt an embarrassed blush on my cheeks. Being caught daydreaming about someone’s ex-boyfriend, while she’s standing right there…that’s a little tacky, no?

  “Well, I was,” Zoe said under her breath. “Great party, over at a friend of Brandon’s beach house.”

  “No kidding? Hey, how long have you guys been together?” I asked. If I could find that out, maybe I’d learn how long she and Hayden had been apart. I didn’t know how that would help me, so maybe I was just being nosy.

  “Oh, uh, since the end of last summer, I guess. And then sort of off and on, you know, because he lives here, and I don’t. I was gone during the school year.”

  “Hey, guys.” Josh walked up to the kiosk and leaned on the counter. “Some guy just called room service and ordered a quintuple iced espresso. Could you make that for me?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Zoe said. “No problem.”

  “I’ve never even heard of that many espresso shots. He wants me to bring fresh lemon wedges, too. And he wants it delivered to his room as soon as possible, as if that’s new, I mean, who doesn’t want things right away when they call room service. And he was completely grumpy about it, like I should know what he wanted before he even said it, and I should know who he is without him telling me.”

  I smiled. “I think I know who that is.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Room three-oh-one.” Zoe took the order from Josh and started to make the drink. “He ordered the same thing yesterday.”

  “C. Q. Wallace,” I said. “The writer.”

  Josh didn’t look enthused.

  “I hear he tips really well,” Zoe added.

  “And he’s a writer?” Josh asked, sounding skeptical.

  “A best-selling one, according to Caroline,” I said. “She’s supposedly read all his books.” I caught myself before I said anything really nasty about Caroline; after all, I was working with her roommate today. “Anyway, he mentioned yesterday that he’s having trouble with his newest book. Writer’s block or something like that.”

  “Tell him I hope this works,” Zoe said as she placed the iced drink on Josh’s tray.

  We were busy for the next five minutes, and then Josh reappeared.

  “You won’t believe this. He asked if I knew who someone named Eliza was,” Josh said. “I told him this wasn’t My Fair Lady, and your name wasn’t Eliza, it was Liza, and yeah, I knew you.” He took an envelope off his tray and handed it to me.

  I unsealed the envelope, which was Tides Inn stationery, and pulled out a folded beige sheet of paper. When I opened it, a twenty-dollar bill fell out.

  “You know, I’m the one who made his coffee,” Zoe joked.

  Thanks for the pens.

  Now what am I going to use them for?

  Well, there’s always the crossword.

  Uninspiringly and gratefully yours,

  C.Q
.W.

  “Twenty bucks. Cool.” I explained about the errand I’d gone on the evening before.

  Zoe had been reading the note over my shoulder. “Just for buying some pens?”

  “They weren’t just pens. They’re very special pens.”

  “What did you do, drive to Providence for him?” Zoe asked.

  “No, I—” But I didn’t get a chance to tell her, because suddenly there was a line. It was probably just as well, I decided as I reached into the pastry case. No point telling her about me and Hayden—since there was no “me and Hayden.” Not yet, anyway.

  “Hayden! You’re not going to believe this.” I started to climb up the lifeguard tower, but halfway up, I stopped.

  Hayden was looking at me as if he didn’t recognize me, so I paused for a second. Were his sunglasses too dark or something? Was he watching swimmers?

  “Hayden?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said in a monotone. He seemed embarrassed to be seen talking to me. He kept looking over my shoulder at something, or someone.

  I looked down at my outfit and laughed. “Okay, so probably I could take off the apron now. I had to play coffee-shop girl this morning. Well, not coffee shop exactly, more like coffee kiosk.”

  “Right.” Hayden didn’t find me all that amusing, apparently. Was he in a bad mood, or what?

  “Hey, is everything okay?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He shrugged.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t exactly believe him, but I didn’t want to press the issue, either. If he wanted to talk, he would. “Okay, well, you’re still not going to believe this. We’ve been rewarded.” I held up the twenty-dollar bill. “And all for a dozen pens. I thought maybe we could split the reward and go for coffee at Sally’s later. I owe you.”

  “What? No, you don’t,” he said.

  “Yes, for the ice cream, remember?”

  He might be remembering it, but he wasn’t admitting it. “I can’t really talk right now. I’ve got to watch the water.”

  “Right. Okay, I’ll see you later.”

  That was weird. He hadn’t asked where I was working that afternoon or whether I’d be coming to the beach. He hadn’t actually seemed to care whether I even existed.

  I didn’t expect him to do cartwheels over a twenty-dollar tip, but as far as I was concerned, it was pretty cool. I thought we sort of bonded the night before—at least as friends, if nothing else. Now he was acting about as warm as, say, the ocean in February.

  I threw my blue apron over my shoulder and headed down the beach on a walk. Sometimes you just couldn’t figure out guys no matter how hard you tried.

  “I can’t believe you get to do this every day,” I said. I gazed around the harbor at the various sailboats that were moored and a few bigger boats that were heading out to sea. There was a large saltwater pond, where Claire and I were sailing in one of the small Sunfish-type boats the Inn used with the kids.

  “Sure, but it’s not always fun,” Claire said. “Remember that. I usually have a boat full of eight-year-olds who don’t really know what they’re doing, but they insist on doing everything.”

  “How many times have you tipped over?”

  “None, so far. But that’s only because I watch them so carefully. If I ever lose my concentration, forget about it. We’ll be swimming. So what did you do this morning?”

  I told her about working at the breakfast place, the tip from C. Q., and the conversation I’d had—or hadn’t had—with Hayden earlier.

  “The guy thinks he owns the Inn. Forget him,” Claire said. “I mean, if you want to ruin your summer, then okay, go after him.”

  “I wasn’t going after him,” I said. “Really. I just—I don’t get it when people act one way in public and another in private.”

  “It’s called being two-faced. Come on. He can’t be the first person you’ve met like that,” she said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he is,” I said.

  “You’re lucky then. I can think of a dozen people in my homeroom like that.”

  I laughed. “Seriously?”

  “Oh yeah. They’d be really sweet to you, if they needed something. If not…well, forget it.”

  “Yeah, I guess I know people like that.”

  “So then the question is, what does Hayden need from you?”

  “Other than my hot body and sparkling wit?” I joked. “Hm, let’s think.”

  “I think he has to make out with all the new girls,” Claire said.

  “What?” I laughed for a second, but then stopped. It seemed kind of horribly possible. “Has he made a move on you?” I asked Claire.

  “No, he’s obviously starting with the easy conquests, like you, then working up to the more difficult ones, like me—”

  “You are so about to go over for the first time,” I threatened, laughing.

  “You don’t even know how to sail—”

  “No, but I do know you need this!” I was about to take out the centerboard when my phone rang. I pulled my phone out of my shorts pocket, thinking that I probably shouldn’t have brought my phone out on the sailboat. If we tipped over, good-bye phone.

  “If that’s Miss Crossley, tell her you’re horribly busy,” Claire said. “Tell her you’re drowning.”

  “No, it’s not her—she always uses the pager. I don’t know who it is,” I said, flipping open my phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Lize. Where are you?”

  “Josh? No. Hayden?” I said. “That you?” It’s always weird when someone calls you for the first time and you don’t recognize their phone voice.

  Claire looked up from the rudder she’d been adjusting.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Hayden said.

  “How did you get this number?” I asked.

  “What, is it off-limits? I got it from the employee list. Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could meet up and go for a bike ride later,” Hayden said.

  “A bike ride. On the handlebars again?” I smiled at the memory of Hayden and I tottering along the oceanside road, hurrying back to the Inn.

  “Well, yeah, that’d be fun. But I don’t know if we could go more than a mile without crashing,” Hayden said.

  “True,” I agreed. “Good point.”

  “No, I have a bike for you, from the shed.”

  “So a bike ride.” I glanced over at Claire and mouthed, What should I do?

  She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. I knew what she was thinking: Go slowly. Be careful. Don’t do something stupid.

  “Well, I’m kind of busy. Right now. Actually,” I said, “Claire and I are sailing. More like she’s sailing, and I’m learning.”

  “I was talking about later this afternoon,” he said. “Maybe after dinner—that’d be cool, right? We’d have more time, we could take off for a while.”

  “Oh. Well, I think I’m going to be busy then, too,” I said.

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. You won’t believe what Miss Crossley has me doing.” Think fast, Liza. Think of some outlandish errand you’re going to be on.

  “What?”

  “It’s for that writer. I have to, uh, do a bunch of errands for him. He wants to experience the authentic coastal…experience, so I’m actually driving him around the area, showing him the local hot spots. I guess he wants to experience the ultimate local seafood takeout or something.”

  “So where are you taking him?” Hayden asked.

  “Uh, I’m not sure yet. But we’re leaving around six. Maybe tomorrow—oops—sorry, the boat is tipping—whoa! Gotta go!” I hung up the phone after knocking it against the deck a few times, for maximum effect.

  Claire was smiling at me when I looked at her. “Wow. That was some good improv. Your story kind of sucked, but I doubt he’ll figure it out. Unless he checks the parking lot for your car…”

  “So you and I will go for takeout,” I said. “Big deal.”

  “Hey, great idea! No more scullery meal
s for us.”

  It felt kind of good, actually. If Hayden could blow me off, like he did earlier, then I could return the favor.

  Maybe it only meant I was playing games with him, that I was playing hard to get.

  But shouldn’t I be hard to get?

  Shouldn’t everybody?

  Chapter Nine

  Be careful what you wish for. It just might come true.

  Those words kept echoing in my head. The night before, I’d tried to come up with some ridiculous task for Miss Crossley to send me on, and I’d invented a story.

  Then she came up with something more heinous and involved than I ever could have imagined. I was stuck in her office, catching up on months of filing.

  Filing. On one of the nicest days of the entire summer.

  I’d started the night before and so far, had been working all morning on it. I couldn’t imagine Miss Crossley, as organized as she was, getting this far behind on anything in her life. She tried to tell me it wasn’t her fault, that the files actually belonged to the Talbots, but I wasn’t sure I believed her. She could be one of those people who seems really put together…and then you ride in their car, and there’s junk everywhere, like change on the floor, and old fast-food bags, and random notebook pages, and dried-up shriveled French fries.

  Anyway, let’s just say that someone hadn’t kept up with the files over the winter. Or the summer before that. Or the entire decade before that.

  I’d been crouched on the floor for a long time, so I stood up to stretch my arms over my head. Then I went to the window behind Miss Crossley’s desk and looked out at the ocean.

  There must have been a storm out at sea the night before—it had rained buckets here onshore—because the waves rolling in looked bigger than usual. I wondered if the swimming was dangerous—or just fun. I loved bodysurfing on days with big surf. Maybe Hayden had his hands full today. But I didn’t want to think about him, necessarily. If I started to think of him that way, as someone I was interested in, I would end up ruining my summer. He obviously had some kind of issue, or at least he did yesterday at the beach. Maybe he was only moody, I thought. Of all the times he’d talked with me, he’d only been rude that one time. So maybe he deserved the chance to explain himself before I wrote him off completely.