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.
OceanofPDF.com
11
SUNDAY, JUNE 2ND
76 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
When Peter reaches us, there are two full seconds of silence, as if all three of us expect someone else to speak first.
“Hi,” Peter says finally.
“Hello,” I say.
Miles stays silent. Probably for the best. I think he’s too innately friendly to give Peter the chilly reception he deserves.
After a beat, Peter glances toward the propped-open shop doors, like he’s hoping someone might call out for him, or the building might spontaneously burst into flames and give him something other than the weather to remark on.
We so easily could’ve avoided each other, and it irritates me that he instead decided to march up to us.
But of course he wouldn’t want to seem rude.
“Good day for picking some lavender,” he offers.
Miles pipes up with: “Yeah.”
Peter ignores him. “I was wondering if we could talk for a second, Daphne.”
Miles leans into me protectively, a reminder that I don’t have to say yes; we can just book it to the truck and pretend this never happened. Go back to our apartment and weep-drink to some Celine Dion.
“I’ll meet you at the car?” I murmur to him.
Miles holds my gaze for a moment before nodding. He doesn’t say anything else to Peter, just saunters back to the truck.
Another awkward beat of silence. I pinch the inside of my palm to keep myself from breaking it.
“So,” Peter says. “How are you?”
I wonder if my jaw is hanging to my collarbones. “Seriously?”
Peter sniffs, glances over his shoulder toward the rusty truck and the man leaned against it. “Look,” he says, voice gentling as he faces me. “I know how badly I hurt you. I know what I did was terrible—”
A laugh jumps out of me. “Wow, what an immense comfort to me.”
I expect him to go haughty, superior, like he did during the breakup. To his credit, he doesn’t.
His brow creases, the corners of his full lips twisting downward. “I deserve that, and whatever else you’re not saying. I get that. But it doesn’t change the fact that I care about you.”
I wish I could laugh again, but it feels like a sheet of ice is spreading over my organs, making any movement impossible.
“And I know how much this all must suck for you,” he says. “Being here, alone.”
“I’m not alone,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “That’s what I’m saying. It might seem easier to just . . . be with someone. But you deserve better than that.”
I’m back to gawping.
“Look, all I’m saying is, be careful,” he says. “That guy’s a mess, and I don’t want to see him drag you down.”
As if there’s so much lower for me to go.
“Do you know why he moved here?” he says. “Do you know his whole family doesn’t even talk to him? That guy is such a loser, Daphne. You can do way better.”
I’m caught off guard by that. A tiny bit of doubt sneaks in. Followed quickly by a wave of angry protectiveness.
Of course there’s a ton I don’t know about Miles. We’ve only been roommates for two months, friends for less than that. He doesn’t owe me his life story or unfiltered truth.
But Peter—Peter asked me to marry him.
Asked me to give up my whole life and glom on to his.
Asked me to accept his beautiful, straight, female best friend at face value because there was unequivocally nothing going on there, and I always said yes to everything he asked, because I trusted him. I decided to trust him. Promised to. A personal vow, taken long before our wedding.
And now he’s looking at me, in this tortured mix of worry and hope, like he’s thinking, I did it! I’ve gotten through to her! I’ve saved her from ruin!
“You know what, Peter,” I say, “thank you for pulling me aside today.”
His face brightens, relief flooding his features.
“It’s always nice to be reminded that your ex really was as big of an asshat as you remember him being.”
With that, I turn and power walk across the brilliantly sunlit parking lot to the guy slouched against the truck, the driver’s-side door hanging open, waiting for him.
“You okay?” Miles asks, right as I pitch myself into his arms, wrapping mine around his neck. His brows shoot up in amused surprise.
“Is he looking?” I whisper.
Miles nods.
“Can I kiss you?”
A half-amused, half-scandalized smile overtakes his face. “Okay.”
So I lean into him and lift my chin, and he ducks his forehead, and we have one of the top five worst kisses of my life, junior high included.
The problem is, I go in way too hot, whereas he’s aiming for a chaste teenage-actors-doing-a-high-school-play kind of thing, so basically I end up biting his entire mouth, which makes him laugh into mine, which in turn makes me laugh, only by then, he’s adjusted his approach to match mine, and the laugh dies in the back of my throat as he grips my hip in one hand, my jaw in the other, and kisses me for real.
