Two
Jenny closed the door of room 215 softly behind her, dropped her bag and her yoga mat…and then fell face down onto the bed, her arms splayed from end to end.
What. The. Hell?
Had she really just yapped her way into a room at a closed inn? She didn’t know whether to be appalled or proud. Of course she’d seen the sign that said the inn was closed. No one could miss that damn sign—all it lacked was a skull and crossbones. But the thought of spending the night on that bench or the side of the road had made her desperate. Or walking the five miles around the lake to East Beach.
This might possibly be the dumbest thing she had ever done. Not talking her way into the room—that had been genius, thank you. But taking off with Devin on this summer “trip.”
“You are one lucky idiot,” she muttered into the bedspread.
She pushed up to her elbows, swept her hair from her eyes and thought about the man behind the reception desk who looked like he’d just walked off the set of Outlander. How was it that someone that hot, wearing a kilt no less, could be tucked away in this old inn on the wrong side of the lake? He was awfully tight-lipped. But she could forgive his curtness because those lips made her blood rush hot and his eyes were so green and piercing.
He was the perfect person to meet after throwing her canteen at Devin.
Devin, Jesus. She was emotionally exhausted and furious with herself about that.
Jenny sat up, crossed her legs beneath her, and looked around. The room was tiny, and it smelled like fresh paint. She could see an oversize bathtub in the tiny bathroom—score—and it looked as if the pair of corner windows looked out over…
She shifted forward, straining to see out of the window.
Okay, well, the view was of a storage shed. But beyond the storage shed were the hills around Lake Haven. The setting was pretty, and the inn was charming in a gothic novel kind of way. Especially since it was tended by a mysterious man who rarely spoke, but when he did, it was with a deep and lilting Scottish brogue.
Why was it never she dated guys like Outlander? Why did she always hook up with the feckless Devins of the world?
Feckless. There were far more descriptive words to describe him. Not only had he proven himself entirely worthless—he couldn’t even pitch a tent—but he’d also proven himself to be a cheater. With Misty Pachenko, no less. The woman with the buzzed head and oversized denim shirts and excellent tent-pitching skills. Jenny supposed she ought to be grateful that someone had known how to do it.
Devin’s cheating aside, what really annoyed Jenny about the whole situation was herself. She certainly had not loved Devin, and let’s be honest, she couldn’t say how much she’d actually liked him after a few solid days in his company. Especially given that his performance between the sheets was vanilla at best. She was glad to be free of him.
But instead of thinking about all the reasons she had ended up with a guy like him and questioning what, exactly, she was doing with her life right now, she was thinking about the cute Outlander. She ought to be at least questioning why she’d needed to be in that horrible relationship with Devin, or why she always seemed to need to be in the sort of superficial relationships that were easy to escape. She clearly and desperately needed to examine her head, but she was tired and hungry, and she wanted to get on with the business of eating her feelings, because come on, Jen, that’s what you do so well.
With a moan, she fell onto her back to stare at the ceiling with a surprising and pretty plaster medallion.
Twelve minutes to sandwich.
Oh, but she could imagine what her friends would say if they were here right now. They’d be full of the told-you-sos and he’s-such-a-dicks. Vanessa and Brooke had warned her, had voiced their unfavorable opinions about her plans to hobo around with Devin this summer. “So irresponsible,” said Vanessa, who was supremely responsible.
“How is it that neither of you need a job right now?” asked Brooke, who often proudly reminded them that she’d been working since she was thirteen.
Jenny didn’t need a job—she had access to plenty of money. She wanted the right one. This camp-across-America trip with Devin and some of his musician friends had seemed like a very good way to think through her options. Just backpacks and tents, Devin had said. Camping in one place and then the next, like a pack of wanderers, playing gigs where they could get them. It had sounded kind of fun.
“It sounds insane,” Brooke had said. “I don’t get why you’re so keen to go. He never comes to see you, Jen. Half the time you can’t get him on the phone, he won’t answer your texts. And then you sent him five hundred dollars?”
Brooke had shrieked that part.
“It was a loan!” Jenny had shrieked back. Except that she’d known even as the words were flying out of her mouth that she would never get the money back. Well hang her from the highest tree, then—when someone told her they needed help, she helped. Devin was a free spirit, a musician without a muse, a man searching for his place in this world. In some ways, he’d reminded her of her—a liberal arts graduate who knew a whole lot about nothing that mattered, and nothing practical, who had devoted her entire life to taking care of her widowed dad who was a hoarder, and suffered from Parkinson’s disease, and needed her. She was all her father had. Well. Until recently.
Ten minutes to sandwich.
The thing was, Jenny could never be as certain about anything as her friends were certain about everything. Maybe that’s why she’d always felt like the perpetual spare tire in their merry little band. A barnacle stuck on the boat of their friendship.
She’d gone with Devin because she’d desperately wanted out of Santa Monica. Away from her dad and his overstuffed house and his new girlfriend with the sixteen year-old son. And Jenny could afford to flit aimlessly around the East Coast with a loser like Devin if she wanted to because her father was insanely wealthy and even more insanely generous.
Not that she intended to live off her dad. Nope. She just didn’t know what yet. What she’d needed for a very long time was a place to belong. That idea had grown like a weedy vine in her over the last year, covering all her other thoughts and ambitions to do with working and settling down. She needed to be and work where she belonged. She needed some space away from Dad and friends and bad boyfriends to think about being suddenly single and having no firm plan for her life.
So now that the summer of Devin was officially a bust, Jenny had to figure these things out. She didn’t want to go back to California, to no job and a family home stuffed to the rafters with junk and new people. She didn’t want to teach anymore. She needed something creative. Something big, something complex, something she could sink her teeth into.
Whatever it was, she needed to work it out on her own.
But she couldn’t work it out on her own with her stomach growling like it was.
Six minutes to sandwich. An image of Outlander in his kilt making a sandwich flit through her mind’s eye.
Yeah, okay, six minutes was close enough. Jenny pushed herself off the bed and picked up her bag and rummaged around inside until she found some palazzo pants and a clean T-shirt, and took those into a bathroom so small she could lift her arms and touch both walls with her elbows.
But there was enough room to freshen up.
She took a look at herself in the mirror. She looked fine. She didn’t look lost or desperate or confused. See? This wasn’t such a bad idea after all.