Chapter 4: Nova

I WATCH CHARLIE from the other side of the reception. He’s been talking to Stella and Luka since we left the dance floor, an easy smile on his face. He certainly doesn’t look like a man who just rejected my clumsy attempt at a one-night stand.

It was impulsive. I felt his hand against the small of my back, saw the way his eyes kept drifting to my mouth, felt the thrill of tension between us, and just…asked.

And he laughed at me.

Then he told me to ask him again. Probably so he could laugh some more.

It’s not going to happen. I am not going to ask him again. I don’t think I’m ever going to look at him again. He reacted like the possibility never even crossed his mind. Like he hasn’t been flirting with me for the last two years and counting. I’m going to be haunted by that look. I’m going to think about it in between the edges of sleep and awake and sink into a horrific state of recollection.

Why the hell did he say no?

I’m embarrassed. And immensely, incredibly grateful that Charlie lives four hours and twenty-three minutes up the coast. The next time I see him, I’ll just pretend this never happened. It’ll be fine.

I’ll overthink it to death and cringe on the inside, but it’ll be fine. I’ve endured worse. And I have plenty of other things to focus on that have nothing to do with men over six-feet tall with laugh lines by their eyes.

“What are you doing?”

I jump and almost flip the table where only a couple slices of wedding cake remain. My sister Vanessa emerges from between two trees like a movie villain, face cloaked half in shadow.

“What am I doing? What are you doing?” I press my hand to my chest. “Why are you impersonating Michael Myers? How long have you been there?”

“Either three minutes or thirty. It’s unclear.” Vanessa frowns and leans precariously to one side. Like me, she’s also missing her shoes, but I have a feeling that she parted with hers unintentionally. She squints in the glow of the twinkle lights, confused. “Michael Myers. The guy who plays Austin Powers?”

I sigh. She somehow managed to make that sentence one big slur. I eyeball the bottle of wine in her hand, then grab her elbow and help her stand straight. “No. The guy from those slasher movies.”

She leans into my grip and buries her face in my neck. “Oh.”

I stumble beneath our combined weight and wrap both of my arms around her, trying to hold her steady. “Nessa?”

“Hmm?”

“Were you drinking from the bottle the firemen were handing around?”

She nods. “It was delicious. It tasted like schn-schna-schna—”

I raise both eyebrows. “Schnapps?”

“No. I was gonna say schnozzberries. You know.” She tilts back up and grins at me. “These schnozzberries taste like schnozzberries.”

She collapses in a fit of giggles. Giggles that slowly turn into quiet hiccupping sobs.

Oh boy. The last time I saw Nessa like this was when she sprained her ankle and had to stop dancing for four to six weeks. I smooth my palms over her arms. “Ness. What’s going on?”

She rarely drinks. Usually at events like this, she’s spinning around and around the dance floor, making the rest of us look bad. She comes alive under the music, her joy contagious. Beckett usually has to drag her off the floor at the end of the night.

But she’s hiding in the trees with a bottle of wine and some questionable moonshine.

Her bottom lip trembles. “Nathan broke up with me.”

“Who?”

“My dance partner.”

My sister is a professional ballroom dancer. She and her partner Nathan have been paired together for almost six years. I didn’t know they were dating too.

I rub some of her tears away with my thumb. “When did you two start dating?”

“Who is dating?” She laughs, garbled and thick. “No, we’re not—we’re not dating. We are not ever dating. He wanted to, but I said no, thank you. No, sir. No, no, no thank you. I was very polite about it.”

She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand. The one still clutching the wine bottle. Some pinot noir goes dribbling down her chest. “He said he couldn’t be around me anymore. He said his heart couldn’t take it and that I—I owed him. That asshole. He said I owed him, but that’s not how love works, and now he’s ruined everything. I’ve worked too hard in my career for that wiry little—that wiry little, tight stealing—oh, oops.”

She drops the bottle and it rolls beneath the cake table. I stop her with a hand on her shoulder when she tries to crawl after it. She blinks up at me with big watery eyes.

“Maybe I need to be more like you,” she says.

I smooth her hair away from her forehead. When we were kids, she used to do the same for me when I’d get migraines. I’d hear the pad of her feet on the floor between our beds before her slight weight curled behind me. She’d pull my comforter over both of us and drag her fingers through my hair until the pain stopped.

“What’s that?”

“I think I need to get claws,” she grumbles. She leans her head into my touch. “Not let—not let myself be bullied. I think my heart needs to be tougher.”

My hand stills in her hair.

“What?”

Nessa raps her knuckles against my breastbone. “Need to bundle up my heart some more,” she slurs. “Bubble wrap it like baby sis.”

She says it like it’s something I should be proud of, but all I feel is a hollow ache, right in the place she’s tapping out an uneven beat. Is that what everyone thinks? That I’ve sharpened the edges of myself to hold people at arm’s length?

Beckett’s concern. Harper’s sad, knowing eyes. Charlie’s surprise.

The ache grows sharper. A thumb pressed to a bruise.

Nessa rocks her head against my shoulder, and I tuck away the hurt to consider later. I resume running my fingers through her hair and blow out a deep breath. “I like your heart just the way it is.”

“Jell-O heart,” she mumbles. “Wiggly and wobbly.”

“Yes, I love your wiggly, wobbly Jell-O heart.” I look over her shoulder and through the cluster of trees to the reception. The party is still in full swing, the dance floor crowded and music thumping. My parents are at the edge of a burgundy rug, my mom draped across my dad’s lap in his wheelchair, her arms around his neck as they sway to the half beat. Beckett and Evie stand together in front of one of the low-burning fires, heads tipped together. Charlie is nowhere to be found, but I don’t let myself look too hard for him.

Vanessa can’t go back out there. Not like this.

I eyeball the distance between us and the shuttle in the parking lot, waiting with its lights dimmed to ferry people back to the town square.

“How’s your stability right now, Ness?”

She looks down at her feet as she considers it, leaning out of my grip to stand straight. She gives me a very serious look, which is hard to take seriously at all when her hair is a mess and she has makeup on her cheeks. She looks like she got in a fight with a rabid animal.

“I can probably jazz square somewhere,” she slurs. “If you ask very nicely.”

“Nessa.” It’s a battle to keep myself from laughing at her. “Can you please jazz square your way to the shuttle bus?”

She tips to the side and straightens one leg in front of her, toe perfectly pointed. She then executes a series of movements that are shockingly lucid and controlled. I guess her muscle memory has remained untouched by the pinot noir.

All right. Unexpected, but I can work with it.”

We begin a slow, shuffling walk-dance to the shuttle. My phone, purse, and shoes are back at the reception, but that’s fine. I’m sure Beckett will grab everything before he leaves for the night. Or I can swing by the farm tomorrow and collect them.

Vanessa mutters the step count beneath her breath. I watch her feet to make sure she’s not about to chassé her way over a tree root. I link my arm with hers.

“Hard heart,” I mutter. Would someone with a hard heart make sure their drunk sister didn’t embarrass herself in front of the whole town? I don’t think so.

“What did you say?” Nessa shouts into the darkness.

“Nothing,” I sigh. “Don’t worry about it.”

***

VANESSA IS PRACTICALLY asleep on her feet by the time we make it home.

I rouse her enough to make her drink an entire glass of water and take two ibuprofen before tucking her in on the couch with the quilt my mom made when I was six years old. All the tassels on the ends are faded and losing strings, but the colors make me happy.

Satisfied she’s not going to tumble off the deep cushions to her death on the refurbished wood floors, I shuffle my way into my bedroom. I slip out of my dress and drape it over the back of an overstuffed armchair, pulling on an old crew neck before slipping beneath my collection of blankets and comforters. I left one of my windows cracked before I left tonight, and my room smells like wet leaves and smoke from the fireplace next door. Fresh night air and the hydrangeas I planted right below my window. I close my eyes and will myself to settle, but I feel untethered, unmoored, slipping and sliding my way over my thoughts.

The things I have to do at the tattoo shop before I open. The stack of papers I left on the top left corner of my desk. The chairs I still haven’t put together and the floorboards that need painting in the front.

Vanessa and her tear-stained cheeks shining in the moonlight. Her knuckles rapping against my chest and her words, muted but honest.

A bubble-wrapped heart.

I know I’m not soft. I know I’m not gentle. I can be abrupt and to the point. But I don’t think I’m unapproachable. I don’t think I’m cold.

I lift my arm and twist it beneath the faded yellow light that filters in from the streetlamp on the corner, finding the ink that decorates my skin. One tattoo in particular.

Five strands of ribbon, twisted and braided. Each slightly different than the others, but together something strong and unbreakable.

I rub my thumb over it and frown, hating the unsettled press right beneath my ribs. When sleep finally does claim me, I tumble into restless dreams where I’m dancing through a field of trees beneath an open moonlit sky, a warm hand at the small of my back holding me steady.

***

I WAKE UP annoyed.

At the universe, mostly, but also at the blankets I’m tangled in, the birds squawking through the crack in my window, and the rumble of a car passing in the distance.

Charlie, for getting in my head.

At myself, for allowing him space there.

I probably wouldn’t be this twisted up if he just came home with me like I asked.

I fumble my way out of bed and dig my shoes out from the closet, slipping on an old pair of sweats I stole from Beckett in high school. I tiptoe down the stairs and through the front door, my body still not fully awake, but my head and heart needing the steady thrum of movement and breath to sort myself out.

I run until the ghosts of last night’s embarrassments are no longer clinging to my heels. Until I’m not thinking about anything at all.

By the time I circle back to the house, my legs are wobbly and my lungs are burning with the brisk morning air. But my head is clear and everything feels slotted back into place. As much as it can be, anyway.

Nessa is sitting up on the couch when I wander in, my blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders. She frowns at me and digs her knuckles into her left eye.

“Morning.” I stretch both arms over my head and collapse forward with a groan, trying to stretch out my back. “How are you feeling?”

She squints at me and mutters something that would definitely make our mother blush. I toe off my shoes and toss my keys on the kitchen table with a clatter.

“Nova,” she whines. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I think you took that upon yourself last night when you drank enough moonshine to serenade my garden gnomes upon our return.”

She sat in my front yard and plucked all of my garden fixtures out of the mulch bed, lined them up in a neat row, and sang song after song until Mr. Hale from across the street came out on his front porch and threatened to call the cops. Too bad the only cop on duty last night was Sheriff Dane Jones, and the last I saw of him, he was swinging his husband around the dance floor.

Nessa slumps dramatically over the arm of my couch. “Were you running? What’s wrong with you?”

What’s wrong with me is I embarrassed myself in front of Charlie Milford last night. I was rejected in front of a spruce tree, and then I had to cart my drunk sister home without our parents seeing.

I feel like I am somehow reliving my high school days, with an extra dose of rejection.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” I mutter.

“Then why are you making that face?”

Because I have no idea what Charlie is thinking. Because I tipped the scales of our relationship and asked for something purely physical, and I’ve unlocked a part of my brain that can’t stop thinking about it. Charlie told me last night that I broke him, but I think I broke myself.

I glance at Vanessa. I can only see her eyes overtop the couch, like a grumpy little crocodile sitting in still water.

“I don’t know, Ness. Life?”

She nods sagely. “I get it.”

I shuffle to the fridge and pull out a bowl of cut strawberries for myself, the egg carton and some bacon for my sister. I’m eager for a subject change. “What’s going on with you and Nathan?”

Her eyes narrow to slits. “Nathan,” she seethes.

“Yes, him.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“So you’ve said.” Almost eighty-two times, set to the tune of various early nineties sitcom theme songs. “He wants to date you?”

She heaves her body off the couch, graceful as a dancer even in her debauched state. In the early afternoon light, the wine stains on her dress are more noticeable. My blanket drags behind her on the floor. I’m pretty sure there’s a drool stain on my upholstery.

She limps her way to the kitchen and slides onto a wooden stool I stole from Beckett’s greenhouse. She plucks a strawberry out of the carton and takes a bite. “He told me he loved me.”

“I’m guessing you don’t return those feelings.”

She sighs. “I don’t. I’m not convinced he has those feelings. I think he’s mistaken proximity for intimacy all these years. He told me we pair well together and that’s fine with dancing, but—I don’t know. I told him I didn’t feel the same, and he said—” She rubs two fingers across her forehead and sighs. “He said some shitty things.”

“What sort of shitty things?” My hand clenches on the handle of the cast-iron pan I’m using to fry up some bacon. I may be the youngest of four, but I am just as fiercely protective of my siblings as they are of me.

She waves her hand, but I don’t miss the wince. “It doesn’t matter now.”

It matters to me. “Do you want me to key his car?”

Her mouth twitches with a suppressed grin. “No, I don’t want you to key his car.” She reaches for another strawberry. “But I reserve the right to change my mind.”

“Fair.” I flip the bacon. Beckett will help me key his car. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Well”—she sighs—“not much to be done. He’s not my partner anymore. No coming back from that one. And I don’t want to compete solo. Maybe it’s time to hang up my dance shoes.”

My hands freeze over the pan. Vanessa has been dancing her whole life. My mom likes to joke that she did a samba right out of the womb. I can’t imagine her giving it up.

She sneaks a piece of crispy, burnt-edge bacon. “Don’t look at me like that. There are plenty of ways to dance without competing. I’ll figure it out.”

“And I’ll key his car.”

“Deal.”

We settle into the routine of coffee and breakfast with minimal pained groans from Vanessa at the counter. I crack open the window above the sink to let in the crisp autumn air, and she turns on the radio to something that bursts with static. It used to sit in my dad’s workshop, and I like keeping it here for company, a thumbprint smudged in paint over the volume dial that I like to fit mine to. Some of the weightless, ambling feeling making my lungs feel tight fades as Nessa chatters away on the other side of the countertop, nimbly chopping fruit and refilling my cup with fresh coffee.

I watch the trees outside my window wave back and forth in a meandering breeze, their leaves just starting to turn a brilliant, sunburnt red.

I wonder what Charlie is up to this morning. If he’s on his way back to New York or if he’s staying for the pumpkin-cinnamon streusel waffles they serve at the diner during the fall. How late he stayed at the wedding and if he ever figured out he had pine needles stuck in his hair.

I think about his palm against my back. The way his cheerful face settled into something heated the longer we danced together. A heavy considering twist to his lips. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so serious. I wonder if that’s how he’d look above me. Below me. If he’d be just as demanding with his touch.

I catch myself and scowl.

I should not be thinking anything about Charlie.

“Saw you dancing with Milford last night,” Nessa says around a gulp of jet-black coffee. I almost fling my English muffin across the room.

She raises both eyebrows. “I wasn’t that drunk,” she defends, mistaking the intent of my breakfast projectile.

“You sang ‘Greased Lightnin’ ’ to my bird bath.”

“Okay, point taken.” She drops her chin in her hand. “I do remember you dancing with Charlie though. One of my last coherent memories. What’s that about?”

“I’m not allowed to dance with my friends?”

She gives me an assessing look across the counter. “Since when have you been friends with Charlie?”

I frown. “I’ve always been friends with Charlie.”

Nessa tips her chin down. “Hmm.”

“What does that mean? That hmm.”

She shrugs. “It’s just a hmm. I didn’t realize you were friends who danced. When was the last time you willingly danced, by the way? You screeched at me when I tried to get you to dance at the solstice festival.”

“I didn’t screech.”

“You screeched.”

“There’s a difference between dancing at a wedding and dancing in the middle of the town square at two p.m.”

“Not much, but okay.”

I sigh and press the palm of my hand against the back of my neck. Everything feels too tight from the base of my skill to the spread of my shoulders. Whatever good my run did me this morning has already evaporated. If I’m not careful, I’ll tip myself right into a migraine, and I don’t have the time.

Vanessa watches me carefully. “Headache starting?”

I shake my head. “Just stressed. The shop opens in about a month. There’s a lot to do.”

“You need to take care of yourself.”

I squeeze the back of my neck and release. Squeeze and release. My family means well, but there’s nothing on my to-do list that can simply be dropped. I know what my triggers are. I know when I’m pushing myself too hard. I know my limits and know my body.

“And you need a shower,” I counter. “You look like you rolled around in my front yard last night.”

“I did roll around in your front yard last night.”

“Exactly.” I nod toward the stairs. “There’s a bunch of stuff in the guest bathroom. Help yourself.”

She slips from her stool with her mug of coffee curled in her hands, shoulders hunched to keep my blanket wrapped tight around her. “Oh, hey,” I call before she disappears. “Can I borrow your phone?”

“It’s probably dead, but sure.”

I find it wedged beneath a pillow and swipe open the lock screen. I scroll to Beckett’s name and tap out a message.

NOVA: Please rescue my phone from your tree field.

NOVA: This is Nova, by the way.

It takes him a second, but three dots appear.

BECKETT: Next time tell me when you’re leaving. Dad wanted to send out a search party.

I snort. If anyone wanted to send out a search party, it was likely Beckett.

NOVA: No search party necessary. Vanessa stayed with me last night.

BECKETT: Figured. Alex said he saw the two of you get on the shuttle.

I’ll have to thank Alex, then.

A picture of Beckett’s cats appears on my phone in response, Comet and Prancer curled in tiny little balls of fluff on the edge of his couch. Beckett has adopted a fleet of animals in the past couple of years. It started with a family of cats he found in one of the barns. He quickly added two ducklings and a cow. He tried to adopt a raccoon, but Evie put her foot down.

I bring the phone to my nose. It looks like the cats are using my clutch as some sort of sleeping bag.

NOVA: That is criminally adorable. I don’t even want my purse back. They need it more than I do.

BECKETT: I was hoping it would soften you up.

I frown.

NOVA: For what?

NOVA: Is my phone fertilizer?

BECKETT: Nah. It’s with Charlie.

I throw my head back and groan at the ceiling. I’d splay face down on the floor if I had any confidence I could get back up again. Of course Charlie found it.

NOVA: Can he give it to you?

Immature? Maybe. But I have no intention of seeing Charlie for the next decade.

BECKETT: He said he’d drop it at Layla’s. She’ll be open tomorrow.

BECKETT: Or he says he can come drop it off for you if you need it today.

Over my dead body is Charlie Milford coming over to my house and standing on my front porch. No, thank you. I would rather pick it up from Layla’s bakehouse once he’s well on his way to New York. I can do without my phone for one day.

Sighing, I roll my neck.

NOVA: Bakehouse, please. And send me a picture of the ducks.

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