Page 85 of Every Little Thing

Chapter 23

Harper

I wasn’t supposed to come here. Wasn’t supposed to do this. I couldn’t turn back, couldn’t step on ground I’d already left, but I just… all sense had left me when I’d heard about her in the hospital. I’d been sick with worry that night I got Annabel’s messages, picturing every horrible thing that could have happened. Every horrible thing that could have been happening.

So I’d told Susanna it was a personal emergency, took PTO. She was understanding—told me I could work remotely once I came off PTO too if I needed. And I’d been on a flight the next day, and the whole time, I hadn’t paused for breath until my feet touched the ground.

Probably not even. Even after seeing Paisley, pale and sickly in a hospital bed, I still felt like I was lurching forward trying to catch myself. I don’t think I actually stopped to take in reality until we were sitting side-by-side on the garden bench behind Dr. Hardy’s clinic.

Me and Paisley. Here in Bayview. It should have been panic—and I think it was, under the surface somewhere—but above all else, she was okay. I felt like I’d cry with relief so thick it made it hard to breathe.

“Malnutrition?” I said, looking sidelong at her. “How do you even get to that point?”

“Ugh.” She kicked at the dirt. She was so… it felt like she was the exact same as I remembered her and completely different all at once. She still had her blonde hair, and she was wearing her glasses right now along with a hospital gown, but above all else, there was just something… missing. Like her presence itself was gutted. Thin, wispy, like she was barely there. And not just physically. “I’ve been busy. Blame yourself.”

“Me?”

“Well, yeah. You’re the one who ditched the place, and I had to learn on the spot how to keep it running.”

My head was spinning. It felt like something thick, moving slowly inside my skull, a fuzzy sensation blotting out my thoughts. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think? Your dumbass bakery. You should have told me laminating dough is such a pain, I’d have burned the place down.”

I stared at her, just… trying to put two and two together, incapable all of a sudden. This whole place—seeing Paisley again, all of it—it had me reeling. “You… you kept Crystal Lights open?”

“Well, yeah.” She hugged herself. It was a chilly night, the crisp fall air setting in as October went into its last week, and Paisley wasn’t exactly dressed for the outdoors.

But impossibly, I felt like if I let her go back inside, I’d never see her again. And I needed… I needed just a second longer.

“I mean, if I let it close, Anders wouldn’t be able to buy Nancy those cupcakes,” she said. “And Emberlynn would have nowhere to get her bread.”

“But—what about the bookstore?”

“Got help…” She shifted. “Oliver helps me run it. Connor and Will help out too, sometimes. Kay’s been spotting me some help in the bakery, too, here and there.”

She was running herself ragged. I’d worked for years in bakeries before running my own, and even then, it had almost taken me out completely jumping into opening my own. Paisley had just dived straight into the deep end. “No wonder,” I heard myself breathe, and she gave me a look.

“What? Quit looking at me like that. You clearly didn’t want to look at me at all anymore.”

The words were knives grazing all over me, but I took it in stride. I deserved it, anyway. I looked down at the ground. “No wonder you haven’t been able to look after yourself.”

“Because I’ve been busting my ass, I know, I know. Emberlynn already gave me the spiel yesterday and she gave it to me today too.You can’t work too hard, you’ll burn out.Well, I’ll burn out if I don’t. Ugh.” She hunched forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and she was quiet for a while—the two of us sitting in an awkward silence with nothing but the rustling of leaves overhead—before she mumbled, “I don’t just want to… to… sit around and brood.”

Seemed like I wasn’t the only one who’d thrown herself into work as a coping mechanism. I swallowed. I deserved this—it was part of the fallout for what happened, for who I was—but Paisley was just getting unfairly caught in the crossfire.

Hearing Paisley complain about Emberlynn was too nostalgic. I wondered how Anders and Nancy were doing. Wondered if she could taste the difference between my cupcakes and Paisley’s.

Probably not. Paisley always had been good in the kitchen.

“But… you’re okay,” I said, quietly. “It’s not too severe?”

“No, yeah…” She scratched the back of her head. “I was majorly sleep-deprived, too, so I just wiped out on the floor yesterday afternoon. I’ll be okay. Doctor just says I need some time to rest and recover.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.” The words came out in a whisper, and Paisley clenched her fists tightly before she stood up.

“Sorry I dragged you out here for nothing, then, I guess,” she said, her voice distant in a way I wasn’t used to hearing from her. I stood up with her, and she took a step away.

“Don’t apologize. I chose to come out here. I’m the one who should… apologize.”

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