Page 6 of Wrapped with a Beau

It’s the kind of small talk old friends make all the time, but it makes Elisha bristle.

Of course he has nothing bad to say about her, she hadn’t done him wrong.

She wasn’t the one who proposed in their last semester at Drexel University, three years into their relationship.

She wasn’t the one who accepted a job teaching econ and math at Piney Peaks’s high school so that his partner could move back to her beloved hometown, only to turn it down a few weeks before the semester started because of a better offer at some fancy-schmancy East Coast prep school.

And she definitely wasn’t the one who kept promising to show up and finally move into the cute little apartment they’d rented above the Main Street toy shop, only for soon, soon, I promise, I’m just tying up some loose ends first to turn into oh, by the way, I’m not coming after all. Found some greener grass. I’m just starting my career, I can do better than Piney Peaks. Would you mind sending my great-grandmother’s ring back? Without a shred of shame, much like how he’s standing here now.

“So, if everything was so great back in Atlanta, what are you doing back here?” Bentley gestures around the Old Stoat, as if Piney Peaks is somehow the lesser option. Which, Elisha realizes, to him, it probably is. It’s enough to set her teeth on edge.

“I could ask you the same question,” she parries, keeping her voice light, bright, and, if not merry, then at least casual. Everything she isn’t at this exact moment but is trying desperately to convey. “You finally showed up. Three years too late, though, huh?”

His eyes flick to Tori. “Things change.”

It’s an artful way of dodging the question. Vague, limboing between honest and mysterious.

Elisha can feel Solana’s worried gaze. Maybe she shouldn’t have jabbed at him like that in front of his wife. She tips her drink in his direction, then throws it back. “Guess they do.”

“I’m ready to put down roots.” Bentley slips his arm around Tori’s waist. “Victoria wanted to get out of New York City and she has family in town, plus I’m familiar with the area, so... why not here?”

Maybe because a reasonable human being does not deliberately move to the same town as his ex-fiancée unless he’s trying to win her back? Which Elisha is pretty sure is not what’s happening here, with a wife in tow—who happens to be wearing the same diamond engagement ring Bentley had once slipped on Elisha’s finger. She doesn’t hold back her scoff. All class, this man.

“So, you’re just visiting for Christmas?” Solana asks Tori.

Elisha supposes it makes sense; even though Piney Peaks isn’t the vacation destination it used to be, it’s one of those chocolate-box villages that get all decked out for the holidays.

“Oh, no.” Bentley is the one who answers, shaking his head. “We visited over the summer to start looking at houses when we decided to start trying. You know, for a family.” He grins adoringly at Tori, who doesn’t seem thrilled with their personal business suddenly being laid out there. “We just got here today to continue the house hunt. We’re short-term renting an apartment right now, but we’d like to find a real place before the semester starts.”

Elisha suddenly feels the overpowering urge to throw up. And it has nothing to do with the sickly-sweet cocktail she just chugged. “You what?” she rasps, voice as hoarse as if she’d guzzled a glass of something a lot stronger.

Solana takes one look at Elisha before quickly leaping in with “Wow! Congratulations!”

Elisha’s too nauseated to summon the gratitude for her best friend’s swift response.

“I’m actually, uh, going to be teaching economics and AP calculus at the high school starting in the spring semester,” says Bentley.

She blinks. That can’t be right. “The same job that you turned down before?”

He shrugs as if unapologetic. “Like I said...” Things change hangs in the subtext between them.

Tori’s gaze shifts between the exes, forehead creased. “Am I missing something here?”

In the silent standoff that follows, Elisha feels her right eyelid working its way up to a twitch. It usually only happens when she’s stressed at work—sometimes providing logistical support is more drama than it’s worth—but it rarely occurs in Piney Peaks.

That it’s happening now, in front of Bentley of all people, is unacceptable. One, she doesn’t want anyone to think he’s successfully gotten under her skin (even though he has). Two, he’s not allowed to win their breakup by showing up back here (and she can tell that he totally and mistakenly thinks he is).

It’s petty and not very Christmasy of her, she knows, but come on.

It was one thing when she knew in the general-existential sense that he was out there somewhere in the world living his life. But not right here, right now, in front of her with his pretty new wife and a flannel shirt that he used to say he’d never be caught dead in. Looking for all the world like he belongs here.

In her town. Where she lives.

Where she could run into him at the grocery store, reaching for the last carton of eggs and go through the whole no you, no, please, I insist, you spiel. Be obliged to wave at him across the street instead of hurrying away without making eye contact.

Her stomach lurches. In a town so small, what if nowhere is safe? Maybe they’d even wander into her parents’ year-round Christmas emporium, the Chocolate Mouse, for décor and desserts. Coo over how cute the little baby stockings would look on their mantel. Make small talk at the checkout. She’d have to go from pretending he didn’t exist to exchanging requisite niceties on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

“Listen,” says Bentley, flashing his most charming get-out-of-trouble smile. “We’re planning a little holiday soirée soon. We’d love it if you and Solana could come.”

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