So Inn Love

by Catherine Clark

“Easy. I pedal, you sit on the handlebars.”

  “You sure that will work? I’m kind of tall,” I said.

  “Well, you could sit on the seat and I could stand and pedal,” Hayden suggested.

  I eyed the bike, which was a cruiser style with fat tires. “Where did you get this, anyway?” I asked.

  “Oh, there’s a shed out behind the Inn. It’s got tons of old stuff like this. They used to be for nice bike rentals but they’re really old.”

  “And anyone can use them?” I asked.

  “Sure. You just need a key to the shed.” He smiled and held up a small key. There was a semiarrogant tone that went with that, but I didn’t mind. He had a bike—I needed one. “Climb on,” he said.

  I walked around to the front of the bike. “I haven’t tried this since I was about six. I was a lot shorter then.”

  “And lighter, probably,” Hayden said, adjusting his stance a little as we prepared to set off.

  Was he trying to imply something? “Hey. If you want, I can pedal and you can ride.” I looked over my shoulder at him as I balanced myself on the handlebars.

  “I was kidding, okay? And you’re only offering that because you just realized that if we crash, you’ll go down first,” Hayden said.

  “I hadn’t even gotten to thinking about crashing yet.” As Hayden pushed off, I squealed and lifted my feet, and we started to wobble along the street. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic, which was good because we were weaving all over the place until Hayden straightened out the bike.

  “You doing okay?” Hayden called up to me.

  “This is great—” I started to say, honestly this time.

  Then we hit a giant pothole.

  The bike tilted to the right, jolting me off the handlebars. I landed on my feet, just as Hayden hopped off the bike, grabbing me by the waist to steady me. I looked over my shoulder at him. “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Sorry. I thought you were—uh—falling.” He looked very embarrassed, which was kind of an odd look for him.

  “No. I’m fine,” I said.

  Hayden leaned down to pick up the bike, while I refastened the elastic in my hair, which had come loose in all the excitement of the near-crash. “Maybe I should just walk,” I said. “If I run, I could—”

  “It was one pothole. Come on, get back on,” Hayden said. “You know that old saying about having to get back on the bike.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, there is one.” He grinned and patted the handlebars. “Come on, take two. And this time, when you see giant dips in the road? Tell me.”

  Chapter Four

  Miss Crossley met me outside the door to her office. “Iced tea?” she offered as we walked inside, where she handed me a tall, icy glass, complete with lemon wedge.

  Somehow that made me even more uneasy and suspicious, even though she was having a glass as well, because she was being so nice to me. Too nice. “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Elizabeth, here’s the situation,” she began abruptly.

  I sipped my iced tea and tried to slow down my breathing. Riding that bike with Hayden had gotten my heart rate up to a slightly dangerous level. Then again, the fact my heart was pounding probably wasn’t the bike. It was the fact I had only been here two days and was already getting my second “talking to.” It was like being sent to the principal’s office, not that I would know much about that, except for a few dress-code violations.

  Or maybe it was my encounter with Hayden that was making me feel out of breath. I couldn’t explain what it was about him, but we clicked, as if I knew him already, only I didn’t. Unless I was his cat, from a former life, reincarnated or something.

  “Mr. Talbot Junior and I were talking at lunch,” Miss Crossley went on. “We were evaluating our staffing levels, and we seem to have overlooked a few things.”

  Don’t say my qualifications, I thought, or lack thereof. “You know, I’m really good at sports,” I said. “Is there anything you need help with in that area? I could teach volleyball, or—”

  But she wasn’t even listening to me, not really. “We realized we have enough housekeepers, if we juggle things a bit. And we don’t need you at the front desk, as we thought we did,” Miss Crossley said.

  “Right,” I said slowly.

  “And we’re covered in the restaurant, we have enough servers around the clock,” she said.

  Last hired…first fired. I’d heard that phrase before. Was I about to find out what it meant?

  They didn’t have room for me. They didn’t have a job. And all because I was lousy at cleaning my room at home for my entire life. Why hadn’t I paid attention when Mom yelled at me all those times?

  “Is this just because I didn’t get all the sand out of the carpet?” I asked. “Or is it because I sucked that guest’s belt into the vacuum? Which completely and kind of ironically damaged the vacuum belt?”

  “You did what?”

  Oh. So she hadn’t even heard about that. I coughed. “We got it out. No problem.”

  “As I was saying. Every once in a while we discover we’re short somewhere,” Miss Crossley went on. “So I’ve rethought your position here. You seem like the perfect person to give this new theory a try.”

  What new theory? “I do?”

  “You have a lot of energy, and you’re highly adaptable.”

  “I am?” This was kind of news to me. Hadn’t my ex-boyfriend called me the most rigid, uncompromising, stubborn person he ever met?

  But that was in a moment of anger, when I broke up with him because I wasn’t ready to move things to the next level, and he was, and he wouldn’t stop bugging me about it. Which is when my friends and I came up with our theory: You don’t really need guys. Until you sort of just, you know, want one around. But if he’s not good to you and won’t listen to you? Forget him. You can do better.

  “That’s what your recommendations said, that you were a person who could handle anything. Therefore, as of right now, you’re the official Tides Inn gofer!” Miss Crossley raised her glass of iced tea in the air, as if to clink against mine in a toast.

  “Gopher? Is that like some kind of animal terminology?” I asked.“ ’Cause I prefer fox, if that’s the situation.”

  Miss Crossley didn’t look amused. She never did, around me. “No. It’s a—a term. Gofer. Means you will go for whatever we need you to,” she said.

  “You say jump. I say off what?”

  She laughed. Finally, I thought. I’d made her laugh. She didn’t completely hate me, then. “Not exactly, but close. We’ll assign you each day based on where we need help. We’ll do it on a trial basis. If it doesn’t work out…”

  I thought of the beach, the Inn…all the friends and people at home I’d bragged to about this job. No way was I going home. “Oh, it’ll work out. I’ll be the best gofer ever. In fact, what can I do right now?”

  “Well, we’re a little shorthanded in the laundry room—got a little bogged down by beach towels,” Miss Crossley said. “So if you could help out there, and then run them out to the beach cabana, and see what else needs picking up. And then—well, I’ll have to see.”

  Did I mention I’m about as good at doing laundry as I am at cleaning mirrors? I almost said so, but stopped myself. “Laundry. No problem!” I said cheerfully.

  But I couldn’t help wondering: Was this job going to be the best thing that could have happened to me, or the worst? Being at Miss Crossley’s beck and call could be a little stressful, but I’d rejoice at anything that got me out of vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms, so I wasn’t about to complain.

  “I think this will work best if we set you up with an exclusive Inn pager,” she said. “Only the two of us will have the number. We should have it set up by tomorrow.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said. But all I could think was that moving from job to job was either going to be very cool, or very Cinderella-like—or some of both.

  “What are you doing here, newbie?” Hayden
asked when I walked onto the beach later that afternoon. He was standing at the ocean’s edge, binoculars around his neck.

  “Hi, old person,” I said.

  “Old person?” he repeated.

  “Or is it oldie? If I’m going to be called new all the time, then you can be called old. Right? It only makes sense.” I picked up a pink-streaked shell that caught my eye.

  “Yeah. Okay. Anyway, what are you doing? Shouldn’t you be keeping house, or whatever?”

  “Didn’t your pal Miss Crossley tell you? I’m the new go-to girl,” I said.

  He just stared at me. Actually he was looking me up and down a little, checking me out in my bikini, which I took as a positive thing. He didn’t feel the need to look away, anyway.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers to get his attention back to my face. “Someone sends me to work on the beach, I dress for the beach. You know?”

  I don’t mean to sound vain, but I’m not sure his attention was totally on the water, or the people swimming in it. Fortunately for them, another lifeguard was stationed nearby, so there was backup if needed.

  I gazed at the water for a moment and spotted a lone figure taking slow, deliberate strokes through the ocean. “Who’s that swimming way out there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s Mr. Anderson. He lives a ways down the beach and he swims a couple of miles every day,” Hayden said. “Which would be impressive enough, but then he’s at least eighty.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “You’re working here now?” Hayden asked. “On the beach?”

  “I’m the Tides gofer,” I explained. “I go wherever I’m needed.” I saluted. “Sounds kind of militaristic, but that’s Miss Crossley for you. Does she have a background in the military?”

  Hayden still looked a little dazed.

  “Excuse me. That’s ‘Peach’ to you.” I went over to unlock the heavy wooden locker in the dunes and started pulling out beach toys. Chelsea was collecting the kids in the Inn lobby and bringing them down—we were the two “Beach Time Players” for the afternoon, while parents played tennis, went golfing, or just lounged in solitude for a while.

  When I turned around to bring a collection of plastic shovels and buckets down to the hard sand, I noticed Hayden was checking out something with his binoculars. Me.

  I smiled and waved at him, and he quickly pulled them away from his face and turned to face the ocean again. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to check me out while I was leaning into a footlocker, but oh well.

  “So, uh, when did this new job start?” Hayden asked when I got back to him, pretending he hadn’t just been examining me from afar.

  “About two hours ago,” I said. “Remember that meeting we hurried back for?”

  He nodded. “My quads remember.” He rubbed his legs as if they were hurting.

  “Shut up,” I said, pushing him.

  “Uh oh. Here come the tykes. You’d better run. Ooh, look, there’s Will the Third. Lucky you.” He playfully popped me on the arm before heading back up the steps to his lifeguard post.

  Okay, so maybe there were going to be challenges to this new position. But if it meant I could hang out by the water—with Hayden nearby? I was all for it.

  Chapter Five

  “So how’s the new job?” Josh asked me when Claire and I ran into him on our way over to the Inn for breakfast the next morning.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “The best part is that I think I’ll get to spend more time outdoors.”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t know about that,” Josh said. He was working both as a server in the Inn restaurant and delivering room-service orders. “Although I did get an order yesterday from someone at the beach cabana, so I had to trek down there with a cooler full of beer and soda. It was very tempting to take it down to the beach and shake out a towel and just stay there.”

  “Except for the losing-your-job part,” Claire said.

  “Yeah, I started thinking about how much my textbooks are going to cost. And the guest gave me a huge tip when I got there, so it was worth it.”

  “It’s so gorgeous here. I couldn’t leave.” I spread out my arms. “The view. The ocean. The salt air.”

  “You’re obsessed with salt air,” Claire said.

  “I know. I tried to bottle it once, to bring home after our vacation, when I was a kid. Didn’t work. So instead I keep buying candles that call themselves ocean breeze and they’re so not,” I said with a laugh.

  “You know what you need to do? That semester-at-sea thing. That’s made for you,” Claire teased.

  I laughed. “I totally should do that. I hear it’s really expensive, though.”

  “Maybe you can get a work-study job. You know, on the ship,” Claire said.

  “Housekeeping,” we said in unison, laughing.

  “So what’s today’s gofer assignment?” Josh asked me.

  “I have no idea. I have to wait until I get paged, or Miss Crossley finds me in person.”

  “That sounds like a real drag,” he commented.

  “Not always,” I said, thinking of the afternoon I’d spent on the beach. Some assignments, like washing towels, were going to be chores. Others were not half bad, especially when they involved hanging out near Hayden. I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about him, or whether I should even think about things like that, considering Mark and I weren’t “officially” over for good, and considering I didn’t even really know Hayden all that well yet.

  But I did know that I liked spending time with him, and that I didn’t mind looking at him.

  Is that shallow of me? Well, okay then, I guess there’s a shallow part of me. But honestly, it’s 25 percent, at most.

  No, really. It’s the very top layer.

  “Down to the Hull,” Josh said as we walked in the side entrance of the Inn. We ate in the basement—literally—the employee kitchen and dining area, which was called the Hull. There was a lot of cute ship imagery around the Inn—well, at least some people thought it was cute.

  “Otherwise known as servants’ quarters,” Claire said. “This is how it is in all the old English novels. The maids. In the scullery.”

  “Scullery? Isn’t that on a ship?” I asked.

  “And since when am I a maid?” Josh asked. “I’m like way too masculine for that.”

  “Uh huh.” Claire laughed. “I think the scullery is where they hid the people who did all the actual work,” she said.

  “Let’s call this the Hullery then,” I said as we walked into the kitchen.

  It seemed as if we were the last people to arrive, which made sense considering breakfast was available from seven to eight, and it was nearly eight. Several other people were already sitting around the big, long tables.

  “You know who checked in last night?” Caroline was announcing to the room.

  “No, who?”

  “C. Q. Wallace.” She looked smug.

  “And that is…,” Josh prompted as we picked up bowls, plates, and silverware.

  “The famous author, of course,” Caroline said. “His last book was in Oprah’s book club and number one on Amazon for like a year.”

  “Still drawing a blank,” Josh said.

  Caroline let out a loud, exasperated sigh. “You must live under a rock then.”

  “You know what? I do,” Josh said. “I’m not used to all this light, actually. My eyes, my eyes!” He shielded his face from the overhead fluorescents.

  “Give me a break.” Caroline groaned, as we all laughed.

  I caught Hayden’s eye across the room and smiled, then started to pour myself a bowl of cereal. The cooks sometimes made up chafing dishes of eggs and other hot breakfast treats, like pancakes or potatoes or French toast, for us, but our standard fare was cereal, toast, and fresh fruit. A continental breakfast, according to Miss Crossley.

  “What’s continental about this? That’s one thing I’ve never understood,” I said to Claire as I poured milk over my Frosted Flakes. “Does that mean European? Because I
don’t think Frosted Flakes are European.”

  “They must mean this continent then.” Claire dropped a few slices of wheat bread into the toaster, while Josh grabbed an orange and a couple of bananas. I followed them to the end of a table to sit down, which just happened to be where Hayden was sitting.

  “So how’s it going?” Hayden asked.

  “Fine. Except of course for the endless initiation tasks,” I said.

  The night before, we’d been conned into going out to the store for soda and snacks for the entire dorm, after we’d been told it was part of the deal of being newbies.

  “Are there any more we should know about, so we can be prepared this time?” Claire asked.

  “There’s not really any formal initiation. You realize that, right?” Caroline asked. “Those guys were just making fun of you.”

  Was it me, or could she suddenly take the fun out of anything? When had she turned into such a killjoy? I was surprised Zoe wanted to be her roommate. Zoe seemed like she knew how to have fun. Maybe it was the fact I’d seen her boyfriend come to pick her up at the dorm on a motorcycle the night before. That tended to make a person seem daring and adventurous, even when she wore a helmet.

  Caroline, on the other end of the spectrum, probably wouldn’t even go near a moped or a scooter. It was strange, because she used to be the one who took risks before I did. How did we both change so much?

  “Caroline’s right. There’s no formal anything around here,” Hayden said. “But there are traditions, right?”

  “Well, I didn’t get tossed into the ocean last year when I was new,” Caroline said primly.

  “Oh. Then we’ll have to make up for that. You free around nine tonight?” Hayden asked.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Caroline said.

  “Okay, but you realize your Tides Inn resume is going to be incomplete,” Richard said.

  “Like Harvard will care,” she said.

  “Ooh. Harvard. Impressed,” I said sincerely.

  She shrugged as if it was no big deal, but at the same time looked pretty pleased with herself. “My parents went there,” she said.