“Kind of slow at the front desk this morning?” I asked Caroline once I made it up to the Inn on my lunch break. Brittany had come down to the beach to relieve first Chelsea, then me.
Caroline looked up from the women’s magazine she’d been reading at her desk. “What’s that?” She was wearing the Inn uniform all of us had—polo shirt, khaki shorts—but she had a fancy silk scarf tied around her neck, to dress it up, I guess.
“Oh, I just thought I saw you on the beach a while ago,” I said. “Which was sort of odd, considering that your job is in here.”
She flipped a page of the magazine with her nicely manicured nails. “I was checking the tide. People kept asking me what the surf was like, if there were any good waves.”
“Huh. Really,” I commented.
“Yes,” she said. “The phone was ringing off the hook with people asking.”
“Really,” I said again.
“You know, you should be wearing shorts and a T-shirt,” she said. “Inn policy. No one’s allowed in the lobby looking like that, least of all staff.”
“It’s a bikini top and a skirt. I’ll get dressed in a sec,” I promised, adjusting the big white beach towel tied around my waist, which at least covered my frowned-upon belly button ring. “This is an Inn towel, so doesn’t that count for something?”
“You’re in a bikini, so no, and it’s not a skirt,” she said. “In fact, if you wouldn’t mind stepping away from the desk? I don’t want a guest walking in to be offended.”
I stared at her. “There’s something offensive about me now?”
“No! Of course not. I just meant—you know, not everyone’s comfortable around people who aren’t dressed. That’s all,” she said.
“Uh huh.” I wasn’t buying it. I believe in being the tiniest bit blunt, when someone won’t ’fess up. “Caroline, what gives?” I asked her.
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you have against me?” I asked.
“What? Nothing.” She kept flipping through her magazine, not making eye contact with me.
“I mean, I haven’t seen you in a long time. Did I do something to offend you, the last time we hung out? I hope you’re not holding a grudge over something I did way back when,” I said.
“Of course I’m not,” she said. “I wouldn’t be that petty.”
I raised my eyebrows. Really, I thought. Are you sure?
She laughed. “Look, is this because I took the front-desk job away from you?”
“That’s a whole separate issue, actually,” I said. “But no. I’m glad I have my job, even if I don’t know what it’s going to be from day to day.”
“I’d hate that,” Caroline said.
Of course you would, I thought. You’re too inflexible to move around from place to place.
Caroline also struck me as the kind of person who couldn’t stand to get her hands dirty. She’d never want to build sand castles and jump over waves with the little kids. And she’d for sure never want to have to clean someone else’s room.
Not that I wanted to do that, either.
“So why were you out on the beach a while ago as if you were spying on me? And why did Miss Crossley—who, from what I can tell, practically never leaves the building—come running out as soon as you went back inside?” I asked. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. She was on her way out when I was on my way in,” Caroline said.
I thought about that for a second. It could be true, I supposed, but it was quite a coincidence. I decided I’d wasted enough of my lunch hour on this, and I was about to step away from the desk when she said, “Liza? It’s just—you should know. Hayden and Zoe? They dated last summer. Like, very seriously.”
“Oh.” This was kind of big news to me, but kind of not. I’d seen the way Hayden and Zoe acted around each other, sort of awkward and maybe a little annoyed. Which I could see was the way exes acted, now that I knew about it. I briefly wondered who broke up with whom, and when. No doubt Caroline was dying to tell me, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking. Anyway, I could get the information straight from Hayden, if I really wanted to know. And I wasn’t sure I did.
Caroline was watching me for some sort of stunned, or pained, reaction.
Instead I just shrugged. “Well, okay. What about that? I mean, why tell me?”
“I just thought you’d want to know. They were really close.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Really close,” she repeated.
I figured she was trying to say, in her Caroline way, that they’d slept together. “I don’t see how it really matters, but okay, now I know.” I shrugged. “What other news you got?”
“What do you mean?” Caroline asked.
I leaned forward on the desk. “Tell me about Miss Crossley. Who did she date last summer?”
Caroline glared at me. “Ha ha. You think you’re so funny.”
“Come on, if you’re spilling gossip, tell me everything. In fact, who did you date last summer? If I don’t have the background on every single person here, I won’t feel comfortable,” I said. “I mean, this is the kind of stuff I was looking for that night at the bonfire. The dirt on everyone. But no one said anything.”
The phone rang and Caroline grabbed it on the first ring, no doubt to avoid my question. “Thank you for calling the Tides Inn, my name is Caroline, how may I assist you?” she said in a sugary-sweet tone.
She had the perfect phony voice to be answering the phone. I would never have been able to match that, so she probably did deserve the front-desk job over me.
What was Caroline so worried about? Zoe was seeing Brandon-with-a-motorcycle now, so it wasn’t as if Caroline had to look out for her best friend’s interests.
Does Caroline have a crush on Hayden? I wondered. Is that why she’s being so rude to me, and why she wants me to stay away from him? Is that why she’s spying on us?
If that were true, maybe she felt like she deserved him, since she’d known him longer.
Still, I couldn’t picture her and Hayden together. He seemed too loud and adventurous and fun, and she seemed too rigid and, well, unfun.
But if she truly liked him, I could let her have him. I could wait until she got off the phone, and tell her not to worry, that Hayden was all hers and I’d keep my distance.
Except I didn’t want to do that. So I walked out of the lobby onto the back porch, stretched my arms over my head, and took a deep, satisfying breath of the fresh salty air. I couldn’t wait to get back onto the beach.
“Do you have to look so happy?”
I turned and saw a man sitting in one of the wicker chairs, near the edge of the porch. He had his feet up on the railing and a computer on his lap. He looked like he was in his forties, with slightly graying black hair, longish sideburns, and wore a loose linen shirt and jeans.
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“You look too unbearably happy. And must you breathe so loudly? You even breathe happily,” he commented.
“I just really enjoy the way the air smells here.” Or, at least I did, I thought as I fanned the cigarette smoke away from my face. “What are those, clove cigarettes?” I asked.
“No, they’re Turkish.”
“Mm.” Cool-sounding, but still cancer-causing, I was guessing.
I remembered Miss Crossley’s instructions on our first day. You don’t have to smoke with the guests, but you do have to offer them a light. Fortunately, this guy didn’t need one.
“It’s impossible to concentrate around here, with so much coming and going,” he said. “And nobody told me this place would be full of children.”
I was going to point out that he shouldn’t sit on the entrance facing the beach, where everyone had to walk past, if he wanted privacy. But that seemed obvious—not to mention a little obnoxious. “I don’t know, it’s still kind of early in the season. I don’t think there are that many kids. What are you trying to concentrate on?” I asked.
“Writing,” he said.
“Oh. Oh!” I hadn’t recognized him at first, but of course—it was the writer Caroline had mentioned at breakfast.
“And it’s only June, and this is the sixth place I’ve stayed already this summer, and I haven’t been able to write a word at any of them. Though that’s not your fault. I mean, it is, but it isn’t.”
I laughed. “How is it my fault—like, at all?”
“It isn’t. I was just grasping at straws. Speaking of straws, here we are now.” He nodded at Daunte, who was carrying a tray toward us.
Daunte smiled at me on his way past, then set a tall glass on the table and had the guest sign the bill before heading back inside.
He grimaced as he drank it. “Horrible, awful stuff.”
“What is it exactly?” I asked.
“Quintuple espresso, on ice, with a splash of grenadine and a lemon wedge.”
The description alone was enough to turn my stomach. “And it’s bad?” I asked. “Should I get you another one? Here—let me do that. I’ll run to the kitchen,” I offered.
“No, it’s not the way it’s made. I mean, it’s supposed to taste ghastly. And it does, so I can’t complain to the bartender.”
“Barista,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “As long as it works, I don’t care.” He took another gulp and made a face. “Something has to work. Or else I’ll have to pack, again, and move to yet another hotel for inspiration.”
“How would moving help? I mean, how do you know this isn’t the right place to write your next book? It could be the perfect spot, if you just give it a chance.”
“Your optimism is tedious. But I’ll take it.” He looked over at me. “What’s your name?”
“Liza.”
He reached over to shake my hand. “C. Q. Wallace.”
I wanted to ask what the C. Q. stood for, but I decided that would be rude. If a person chose to go by his initials, there must be a reason—probably that he didn’t like his name. Anyway, I could get the information out of Caroline later. If she was still speaking to me.
“You work here?” he asked.
“No, I just offered to run to the kitchen for you because I’m such an optimist,” I said.
He laughed and lifted his coffee cup. “Touché.”