So Inn Love (7 page)

T
hat night I ran up to the shuttle van just as Hayden was pulling away from the Inn. The van was always parked right out front, on the circular drive, and I’d caught him just before he left. I was panting and out of breath as I knocked on the window to get his attention.

Hayden lowered the window and stared at me. “What are you doing here?”

I waved my pager in the air, because I was temporarily unable to speak.

He leaned out the window. “You need a new pager?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Town. Have to…go to…town.”

“Okay…Well, don’t die on me. Get in.”

I walked around and climbed up into the front seat of the van. Then I slicked my wet hair back from my face.

“Were you summoned out of the ocean?” Hayden asked.

I laughed. “Almost. I had just gotten out of the shower when Miss Crossley paged me.”

“And what did she want? Did she say I needed company? An assistant, maybe, to carry all the luggage? ’Cause that would be nice.”

“No!” I laughed. “I called and she said to come to her office, so I did and then she hands me this pen. And tells me I have to go to town with you and find more pens like this. And she tells me I have like thirty seconds before you leave for the train station. I tried to tell her I had a car here and I could drive, but she said this was official Inn business, so I should take the official Inn van—”

“No problem. There’s a small office supply store near the train station,” Hayden said.

“Oh. Okay,” I panted. “Then it doesn’t completely not make sense. You could have gone
there, though, couldn’t you? I mean, why didn’t she ask you to just run in and get the pens?” I asked.

“I see. Trying to get out of work already.” Hayden nodded. “You’ve only been a gofer for a couple days and you’re already trying
not
to go for stuff?”

“No!” I said. Then I laughed. I seemed to do that a lot around him. Was he that funny, or was I that nervous? “Well, maybe.”

“No, I know what it is. Miss C. probably didn’t want me to leave the van, in case the train comes and nobody’s there to meet the guests. Although that’s completely ridiculous, because the train is almost never early. In fact, it’s usually late by a few minutes.” He pulled out onto the main road into town. I was busy combing my hair and squeezing the ends to wring out some of the extra water.

“Do you need a towel?” Hayden asked.

“No, that’s okay. I can just dry my hair this way.” I opened the window and let the warm evening air rush over me. The day had been one of the warmest yet, which was why I’d needed
an extra swim, which was why I’d needed an extra shower. I’d even postponed dinner, preferring instead to spend the time in the water bodysurfing. Of course, now it was looking like I wouldn’t eat at all, given that it was about a half hour trip to the train station, and by the time we got back it would be close to nine. But I could always sneak into the Hull and grab a bowl of cereal, at least.

“So. Pens,” Hayden said. “Miss Crossley had a sudden urgent need for pens.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“Uh huh. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who ever runs out of things,” Hayden commented. “You know what I mean?”

What was he getting at? “What, you think I made this up? I didn’t!” I said. “If I wanted to go with you, I would have just asked.”

“Really.”

“Really,” I said. “Anyway, like I said, I have a car here. Last time I tried to start it, though, it wouldn’t start. But let’s say I did want to go to town. I’d drive that,” I said.

“If it started,” he said.

“Right.” It was difficult to be indignant when you drove an old, slightly dented, slightly-to-very-unreliable car. And your hair was wet, and your hair made the back of your shirt wet, and you had thrown on jeans that were clinging to you because the night was so hot. And they weren’t even your favorite jeans to begin with.

“So how many guests are we picking up?” I asked.

Hayden grabbed a slip of paper on the dashboard of the van. “Lyle, party of four.”

“How does this work? Do they pay you? Do they tip you?” I asked.

“Tips are welcome and appreciated,” Hayden said in a monotone voice.

I laughed.

“That’s what it says in every other shuttle van or bus I’ve ever been in, but not this one,” Hayden said. “But people seem to know, anyway. I carry their luggage, I tell them whatever they want to know about the Inn, the area, my college plans.”

“You’re like a tour guide,” I said.

“Kind of. I guess,” he said.

“You’re the first impression they get of the Inn.” I checked out his official Tides Inn polo shirt, khaki shorts, and Tides Inn ball cap. “You’re dressed for the part. Shoot. I probably should be, too.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just tell them you’re some random girl I picked up on the way,” Hayden said.

“Oh, thanks.” I laughed. “That’s how I dream of being known.”

“And you obviously got caught in the rain. Not that there’s been any rain,” he said.

“Tell them you saw me swimming to town—no, drowning in the ocean—and you pulled over to offer me a ride.”

“Good. That’s good.” He nodded. “Okay, so we’ve got our story straight.”

“I’m surprised Miss C. didn’t tell me I should be better dressed. She was a little frantic,” I said. “Like, really stressed about these pens.”

“Whenever she gets like that, it’s usually because of a guest. So maybe those pens aren’t for her, maybe they’re for someone staying at the Inn,” Hayden suggested.

I looked at the pen, twirling it back and forth in my palm. “You know what? You’re right. I bet these are for that famous writer, C. Q. Wallace. You know, the guy Caroline mentioned? I actually met him and talked to him this afternoon.”

“What’s he like?” Hayden asked.

“What’s that word that means someone’s kind of rude…but funny? You know, someone who sits around and complains about everything,” I said.

“What was he complaining about?”

“Writer’s block.”

“Wait a second. Didn’t he have some huge best-selling book? Isn’t that what Caroline said?”

“I guess. I don’t know. Is there a bookstore in town where we could check out his books?”

“There is, but I doubt we’ll have time tonight,” Hayden said. “What with the emergency pens and all. Maybe another expedition, another night.” He glanced over at me as he stopped at a red light.

What was he implying? Was he asking me
out—sort of? I wondered. “Sure,” I said slowly.

And then he just sat there and stared at me for a few seconds, without saying anything. As if there was something about my face he was trying to memorize, in case he had to describe me or pick me out of a police lineup. I could feel this heat on my face, and it had nothing to do with the warm evening.

“Um, I think you can go now,” I said, gesturing to the stoplight. “The light’s green.”

“Yeah, of course.” Hayden coughed and turned his attention back to driving.

“Told you the train would be late.”

I walked out of the small office supply store to find Hayden standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me, clutching an ice cream cone in each hand.

“Curmudgeon,” I said.

“What?” Hayden laughed. “What did you just call me?”

“Not you. The guy who needs these pens.” I held up the small brown bag that contained a dozen of the special pens. “I just thought of the word I was trying to think of before to
describe him,” I explained.

“Curmudgeon. Okay.” Hayden held out one of the ice cream cones to me. “You like chocolate? Everyone likes chocolate, right? Which is what I was thinking. See, I was going to get a vanilla and a chocolate, to give you a choice, but then, if you chose chocolate, I’d be stuck with vanilla, which would suck.”

“Always thinking of others, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Hey, I can eat both of them,” Hayden offered.

“What? No way.” I took the waffle cone from him. “I’m starving—thanks. How did you know I missed dinner?”

“I didn’t,” Hayden said. “Anyway, it’s not like you can’t have dinner and ice cream.”

“How much do I owe you?” I asked.

Hayden shook his head. “No problem.”

“No, seriously,” I said, taking a few dollars out of my pocket.

“Don’t even.” He pushed my hand away. “Save it for your next trip to the coffee shop.”

“Okay. It’s a deal. I’ll treat next time we
both happen to be there at the same time,” I offered.

“We could always go together. To make things easier,” Hayden pointed out.

He was doing that thing again, where it seemed like he might be asking me out, but I wasn’t sure.

“Hm. Yeah, I guess we could. If we ever get the same break schedule again.” That was seeming a little doubtful, since I wasn’t going to know my breaks ahead of time. Of course, I could ask Hayden for his cell number, so I could call him whenever I did have time to meet at the coffee shop, but that seemed a little aggressive.

But I did have some questions I wanted to ask him. Since we were hanging out on a bench at the train station, eating our ice cream, now seemed as good a time as any.

“So, you and Zoe,” I said. “You guys went out?”

“How’d you find out about that?” he asked.

“Caroline.”

“Ah. And she told you because…”

I shrugged. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask, if
that’s what you’re implying.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Okay, good. Well, she’s quite the gossip, then.”

“Yeah, and that’s exactly why I was pissed when she got that front-desk job instead of you.”

“You were?”

“She’ll try to keep tabs on everyone, and she’ll turn everything into a story that she just can’t wait to tell everyone else. She’s one of those…I don’t know. My mom would call her a busybody.”

“So. There’s no story?” I asked.

“Sure, there’s a story, but it’s pretty short. We dated,” Hayden said. “It was weird, because back home, we go to the same school—”

“The vaunted Maple Syrup Academy,” I interjected.

“Maple
ville
. And we never even talked much there. Anyway, we went out for a while here, then it started to kind of be not that much fun anymore.”

“Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

“It happened to you?” Hayden asked.

“Sure. Once or twice, anyway,” I said.

“So, are you—you know—seeing anyone right now? You have a boyfriend stashed at home?”

“Stashed? Like, where. Under the bed?” I joked. Then I realized that was kind of an unfortunate, misleading choice of words. “Not quite.” I could tell him about Mark, but I wasn’t sure I needed to, at least not yet. Anyway, we were on an official break, so Mark wasn’t technically my boyfriend right now. He was my boyfriend-in-limbo.

“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.

“W
ould 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.

“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 meals 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?