CHAPTER 10
“Shoot.” The keys to the shop fell from Jess’s hand as she tried to unlock the back door.
She was running her typical fifteen minutes late. This particular morning it was because she’d overslept thanks to a sheet-twisting night of tossing and turning.
The kiss that Ethan had planted on her the day before was still on her lips. She still felt his mouth against hers. The pressure, the texture, the softness, the firmness.
All of her life she’d known that the brain was a powerful tool. It could transport you places you weren’t. When she was seven, she’d gone to see a pain management specialist that taught her techniques for escaping into a different world when she was suffering. At the time, she’d been skeptical about its efficacy. So color her surprised when the tools she’d learned worked.
One time in particular she distinctly remembered that instead of being in the hospital bed undergoing a rather painful breathing treatment, she’d transported herself to a sandy beach. It was so real that her mind was tricked into believing she’d actually gone. She could smell the sunblock and feel her mom’s hands applying it to her shoulders. She could feel the sand that got stuck between her toes. She could hear the crashing of the ocean waves as they beat against the shore.
The thing was, she’d never been to a beach in the Caribbean. But if she closed her eyes, the memory was vivid and real.
Yesterday, she really had been kissed by Ethan, and her neuro-senses were stuck in that wrinkle in time. It was as if her life was a record with a scratch on it and her mind and body kept skipping back to that moment, over and over again.
Finally, she got it together long enough to unlock the door. When she walked through the breakroom into the salon, she flicked on the lights and was startled to see a figure standing at the front door. Her first appointment wasn’t for another half an hour, and she didn’t get a ton of drop-ins.
Her heels clicked on the tiled floor as she walked from the back of her shop to the front. Before she was close enough to make out the woman’s face she knew who it was. Daisy Steele. The zebra print slacks and cherry red blouse were a dead giveaway.
Jess’s heart sank because she was pretty sure she knew exactly what this impromptu visit was about. She couldn’t remember if Ethan’s grandmother had still been at the party when kiss-gate had happened, but even if she’d already left, Jess knew that word would’ve gotten back to her. It was a small town, after all.
When Jess agreed to be Ethan’s “girlfriend,” she really hadn’t thought about how she would handle situations like this.
Jess did her best to push down her anxiety as she unlocked and opened the front door. “Good morning, Mrs. Steele. Did we have an appointment?”
“Honey, I told you, it’s Daisy. And no, we didn’t. I was just wondering if you might be able to trim my bangs. They’re driving me crazy.”
“Of course.” Jess smiled as her nerves tap danced in her stomach.
While Daisy got situated in the chair at Jess’s station, she did busy work. She flipped the sign at the door to open and watered the plant that she’d never watered in a year and a half. She did several other opening tasks as well, not because they needed to be done, but because she was stalling. Amelia was due at any minute, and Jess was hoping that if there were a buffer, the interrogation would be less intense. Wishful thinking maybe, but at this point, she wasn’t sure what else she had.
Jess ran out of tasks and realized she was only postponing the inevitable. She prepared herself for an even more uncomfortable conversation than the one she’d had with her mom. She still wasn’t sure if her mom totally believed Jess’s story, but she seemed satisfied for now. After all, who would suspect a sham relationship?
Jess still couldn’t believe that they’d won the game last night. Ethan must be clairvoyant or something. How else could he have known when her first kiss was? If she had been fourteen or even fifteen, maybe she could fathom it as an honest guess. Nine was a little bit too young to just randomly estimate. She’d never even told Ali about that kiss. So how in the world…
“So, my dear,” Daisy began, and Jess knew her time was up.
She crossed the room to her station feeling much like she was walking the plank. She braced herself for what she was sure to be a series of rapid-fire questions shot in her direction. She was unprepared for Daisy’s opener.
“You and my grandson made quite a splash yesterday.”
Jess couldn’t help but smile as she lifted her arms and fanned out the smock. “I guess we did.”
“Ethan said you two were planning on keeping things low-key.”
“Yep.”
“That kiss didn’t look very low-key.”
Jess bit the inside of her mouth. That kiss wasn’t low-key. It was high-key. “Yeah, that was…unexpected.”
As she began brushing out Daisy’s hair, she could feel the woman’s stare through the reflection in the mirror.
“It was a shame that he got called into work.”
“Yeah.” Jess had actually been relieved. Ethan was a wildcard yesterday. She had no idea what he was going to do next and she’d had her fill of surprises for one day.
“Have you talked to him this morning? How did it go last night?”
Oops. If they really were a couple, he would’ve probably checked in with her at some point since yesterday.
“I’m not sure. I was running late this morning.”
Jess’s punctuality, or lack thereof, was common knowledge in Whisper Lake, so she figured Daisy wouldn’t bat an eye at her excuse.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Steele,” Amelia said as she emerged from the back of the building.
Thank God. Backup.
“Good morning, dear. And it’s Daisy,” Ethan’s grandma corrected.
She’d been on a kick since her eightieth birthday that everyone called her Daisy, not Mrs. Steele. It took a little getting used to.
“How’s Sabrina feeling?” Jess asked.
Amelia’s daughter, Sabrina, had been running a fever over the weekend, so she’d had to skip Jess’s parents’ party.
“She’s doing a lot better. I think she must’ve picked something up at daycare.” Amelia set her purse down at her station. “How was the party? I was so bummed that I had to miss it, I would’ve given anything to see your dad playing The Newlywed Game.”
“It was great!” Jess enthused, hoping Daisy would let her out of revealing the big news for now.
“The game was a hoot.” Daisy agreed. “Jess and Ethan won.”
Guess not.
Amelia’s face scrunched in confusion. “Oh, you and Ethan played?”
“Yep.” Jess wanted the subject to drop immediately.
Lying had never been a big deal to Jess. Maybe it was because she’d spent her childhood imagining that she was living a life that wasn’t her own. Also, mortality puts things in a very stark light. A little white lie here and there, especially if it was for the greater good, didn’t bother Jess. But this, this wasn’t bending the truth, it was snapping that sucker in half and then putting it through a wood chipper. There might be shreds of truth, but they were in tiny, itsy bitsy pieces.
“Haven’t you heard the big news?” Daisy shifted in her chair to face Amelia.
“Big news?” Amelia’s eyes bounced between Jess and Daisy.
“Jess and Ethan are dating.”
“They are?”
“They are!” Daisy enthused, before her perfectly drawn on eyebrows lifted. “It came as quite a surprise to everyone at the party as well.”
Amelia looked at Jess. “I bet.”
Jess reached down and got her spray bottle as Daisy settled back in her chair. Before either woman had a chance to say anything else, Amelia’s first client, Mrs. Potter, walked into the shop.
The woman sat down, and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Boy that was some kiss yesterday.”
And that was pretty much how the rest of Jess’s day went. Everyone that came into the shop wanted to talk about Jess and Ethan. The kiss. The Not-So-Newlywed Game. There were Instagram videos of her pushing Ethan in the pool and, of course, their kiss. Being on the receiving end of the kiss, she’d missed the aesthetics of it. When Ethan’s hands cupped her jaw, the look in his eyes was so…intense. So real.
By the end of the day, she wasn’t sure if the things coming out of her mouth were lies or not.
Why had she ever thought this was a good idea?
Her lips tingled with a reminder of the hottest kiss in her life.
Oh yeah, that’s why.