“It’s nothing special,” she scoffed.
“It is if you use it properly. Gabrielle Décarie swears by it.”
“How would you know that?” asked Lisa.
“Because I spend a lot of time at her house, whoring around with Adam,” I said dryly. A thrill rushed through me. I could see them mulling it over. “She smothers her hands with it, leaves it on for ages and then washes it off.”
Even if a sense of decency had kicked in – which it hadn’t – it was too late to let them off the hook. Jasmine had already unscrewed the lid and begun slathering her hands in the grainy gunk.
“Like this?” she asked, seeking approval.
“Perfect.”
Nicole and I left the trio of Beautifuls sitting in a line on the pink velvet couch, identically posed, resting their elbows on their knees to ensure their hands received the optimum treatment. I instructed them to leave it on at least half an hour, but they were greedy. They’d put on twice the suggested amount and leave it on much longer.
I managed to contain myself long enough to suppress my dance until we were out of sight. Nicole threw her head back in a bray of laughter. “We’re going to hell in a hand basket,” she told me, laughing. “You know they’re going to be gunning for you now, right?”
I did know; which is why I had mapped out the rest of my afternoon in my head. I figured I had a few hours reprieve – an hour for them to finish their treatment and another few hours while they tried scrubbing the orange dye off their hands. All bets were off after that. They’d come looking for me, and past experience told me that the safest place to be when that happened was wherever Alex was.
I drove Nicole home before heading to the café. Alex’s Saturday shift should have been more bearable considering Gabrielle had surrendered the first day of her weekend to hang out there with him, but for some reason the atmosphere was tense. I frowned. He couldn’t have found out what I’d done so soon. There was no way the Beautifuls could have been hunting me down that quickly.
Gabrielle sat at the end of the counter, perched on the wicker stool with her legs crossed in a ladylike, but uncomfortable-looking pose. Alex stood a few feet away, arms folded and body rigid.
“Am I interrupting something?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“No,” replied Alex tensely.
“Yes,” retorted Gabrielle, staring at him.
Alex glowered at her. I’d seen that look a million times. He was silently ordering her to hush – only it didn’t work. She hesitated for only a second before continuing.
“There is an art exhibition next weekend that I would like to go to. Alex is refusing to accompany me.”
“Why?” I asked, making my way over to the counter. It wasn’t like Alex to refuse her anything.
“Because it’s in Stanley and we’d be gone for the whole weekend.” Gabrielle was speaking to me but glaring at Alex. His demeanour didn’t waver.
Stanley, a pretty seaside town in the northwest, was about as far away from Pipers Cove as they could go without leaving the state. It was a full day’s drive. Excitement bubbled inside me and I concentrated hard on not letting it show. But it was pointless. To Alex, I was completely transparent.
“Not going to happen, Charlotte,” he warned.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You didn’t have to.”
“They are not children, Alex,” snapped Gabrielle.
Everyone recognised the conundrum without anyone mentioning it. There was no way Alex would consent to leaving Adam and me to our own devices for an entire weekend. The only person with half a chance of convincing him otherwise was the French beauty queen staring him down from the other end of the counter.
“How was your morning with Nicole?” Alex finally asked, trying to change the subject.
“Interesting.” He looked at me for a long moment before speaking, probably debating whether to ask me to elaborate. Thankfully, he decided against it. “So, why are you here? I thought you would have gone to see Adam.”
I grinned craftily, making him smirk. “I’m pacing myself. I don’t want to appear too eager.”
“Let me guess. You’ve already called him and he’s on his way to pick you up.”
“Exactly,” I confirmed, levering myself on to a stool beside Gabrielle.
It was a relief when Adam showed up. When Gabrielle was upset with my brother, she had no qualms about letting him know. She was unyielding, refusing to let go of her lovely but impossible plan for a weekend up north. Alex refused to budge. Her reasoning soon deteriorated to bursts of French, complete with hand gestures. I couldn’t blame her. His bags would have already been packed if not for the fact that he had an irresponsible minor in his charge.
Gabrielle dropped the attitude as soon as Adam walked in, but Alex’s ire remained. After all, Adam was fifty percent of the reason why they were at loggerheads. I leapt off the stool, throwing myself at him with the enthusiasm of someone with separation anxiety. Gabrielle said hello before spouting something in French. Adam nodded but said nothing, taking my hand.
“English, Gabi,” scolded Alex, visibly unimpressed.
She didn’t get a chance to interpret. The bell on the glass door jingled violently and Jasmine Tate burst into the café, looking as deranged and furious as I could have hoped. I quickly moved behind the counter, standing beside Alex as if that made me bulletproof.
No matter how trashy Jasmine looked, she was usually seamlessly pieced together. Now she was almost unrecognisable in the holey grey windcheater and mismatched brown track pants she wore. Her brassy blonde hair was dishevelled and pulled in a messy ponytail.
“What have you done to me?” she screeched, holding gloved hands in the air.
I cowardly said nothing.
“Charli, what’s going on?” Alex didn’t take his eyes off Jasmine.
The chief Beautiful dragged the gloves off her hands to show him. I heard Gabrielle gasp. Her bright orange hands glowed. It was a better result than I could have hoped for; I wished Nicole was there to see it.
“We’ve tried everything to get it off. Give me the antidote.” Her tone, still angry, had taken on a desperate edge.
“We didn’t poison you, stupid. There is no antidote. You’ll have to wait for it to wear off.”
“How long?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “A couple of months at most.”
Her face grew almost as flushed as her hands. The seriousness of her predicament was starting to sink in.
“Bitch!” she screamed, lunging across the counter. She managed to catch the sleeve of my shirt and began pulling me forward. Alex grabbed me around the waist, lifting me off the floor as he reclaimed me. Adam did the same thing to Jasmine, but had to struggle a lot harder against her flailing ginger hands. Gabrielle sat perfectly still, wide-eyed.
“Enough!” roared Alex, motioning with his hand for her to stay back.
“Look what she’s done to me!” shrieked Jasmine. Her lurch forward was thwarted by Adam’s grip around her middle. She managed to shrug free. “You think she’s so precious. She’s not you know,” she screamed.
“All Charli has to do to aggravate you is exist,” returned Alex. “Everyone has a limit, Jasmine.”
Alex didn’t even know what I’d done to her. It was astonishing that he always defended me without question – especially when I least deserved it.
“She dyed my hands orange,” she bellowed, waving her hands under his nose.
“I see that.”
“Yeah, well….” Her voice trailed off. “There’s plenty you don’t see. Her reputation around town is as damaged as she is.” She spun around, pointing at Adam. “You could do so much better than her, you know that, right?”
Adam didn’t seem too worried. He actually looked like he felt sorry for her. I felt no pity whatsoever. I felt furious.
“Why are you doing this? You need to shut your mouth!” I yelled. “If you so much as say another bad word about me, Carol
Lawson is going to know that you’ve been stealing from her,” I threatened.
“You won’t tell her,” she said, calling my bluff.
“Are you prepared to take that chance?” I asked, hoping I sounded just as vile as her.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re despicable.”
Gabrielle let out a sharp laugh. “That is the pot calling the pan black.”
There was a long silence before Alex finally corrected her. “Kettle, Gabs.”
“Pardon?”
“Kettle. The pot calls the kettle black.”
“Why would the kettle be black?” wondered Gabrielle.
“I’ll explain it later, sweetheart,” he said gently.
Never before had I seen her grasp on the English language slip. But her blunder was nothing compared to Alex’s. He was either so distracted or so caught off guard that he had called Gabrielle sweetheart – right in front of the mouth of the south.
Jasmine let out a strange gurgling sound and stared at Gabrielle. Gabrielle was still frowning, fidgeting with the gold charm bracelet she was wearing, apparently trying to understand the black kettle situation. Jasmine returned her attention to Alex, and the look she gave him wasn’t kind. “You and her?” she asked in disbelief.
Alex smiled sweetly. “I’m not telling you anything. That’s how rumours start.” The biggest secret in the Cove was out; and judging by the Machiavellian look on his face, he didn’t care one bit.
“Ugh!” she growled, throwing her carroty hands in the air in defeat. “You all deserve each other!”
Her eyes flitted between the three of us. None of us spoke. She tugged on her gloves and stamped out.
Alex’s smile disappeared along with her, and an eerie silence set in. It was as if we’d all witnessed a terrible train crash and were too shocked to speak. I could feel his glare but kept my eyes on the front door.
“You have ten seconds to explain,” he informed me.
I punched out the explanation so quickly, I had five seconds to spare. I could almost see his mind ticking over as he processed my confession.
“Of all the stupid things to do.” His reproach was warranted, and defending myself would only have added fuel to an already raging fire. “You’re like a mini terrorist. Are you trying to get us run out of town?”
Gabrielle’s tried to stop a giggle escaping. I turned my attention to Adam
“I think it was ingenious,” he murmured, revealing the dimple on his cheek.
“You are too easily charmed,” complained Alex, waving his hands as if he was showcasing the major prize in a game show. “Charli Blake is the kind of girl your mother warned you about, Adam. Nothing but trouble.”
So much for defending me to the death! If he hadn’t been so worked up it would have been funny. The only people in the room game enough to see the humour were those of French lineage.
“I would be more than happy to claim her,” Adam told him.
“Me too,” added Gabrielle, much to my surprise.
Alex shook his head. He marched to the front door and flipped the sign, declaring the shop shut for the rest of the day.
“Are you closing?” asked Gabrielle, checking her watch. “It’s early.”
“I’m done. If I don’t get out of here, I might explode,” he muttered, pushing past me to collect his coat.
I knew Alex was close to breaking point. Escaping the café before he had a chance to lock the door seemed like a good idea. I reached for Adam’s hand. “I’ll see you later.” I moved quickly, giving Alex no chance of calling me back. Adam turned to face him as we reached the door.
“I’ll have her home early.”
“I honestly don’t care,” Alex said wearily.
He sounded broken. For a horrible second I wondered if I’d finally pushed him too far. Perhaps in the process of slaying the Beautiful dragons I’d accidently assassinated my white knight too. I peeked at my brother. “Do you mean that?” My voice was small because I feared his answer.
Alex looked back at me for a long time. He didn’t look angry any more, just beaten. “No,” he said simply. And I believed him.
Adam and I sat in his car while I explained the whole sorry saga to him. Even armed with all the details he didn’t seem to think I was as wicked as I clearly was. Alex and Gabrielle came out of the café soon after us, and left in separate cars. Not a good sign. Poor Alex had been pulled in too many directions that day, and knowing him, he was heading home to stew.
Alex was a big fan of brooding. I arrived home a few hours later to find him in the yard chopping firewood. Giving me the silent treatment while he took his frustration out on the woodheap was common practice. He’d hacked through enough wood in the last year to see us through at least three winters.
“Are you going to chop it all?” I asked, leaning against a veranda post, not willing to venture any closer while he was wielding an axe.
The axe smashed down on a block of wood. “I might.”
“Alex, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” I couldn’t dispute it. I wasn’t feeling a skerrick of regret for dyeing the Beautifuls; but disappointing him was never part of the plan. “Do you ever think, Charli? Before you do stupid things does any part of your brain stop to consider the consequences?”
“Not often,” I admitted.
He leaned on the axe handle as he wiped sweat with his forearm. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I think you should take Gabrielle to the art exhibition in Stanley,” I said, ignoring his question.
He punched out a hard laugh. “I’m sure you do. Leaving a criminal mastermind and her awestruck boyfriend alone for a weekend sounds like a great idea.”
“You can’t baby me forever,” I grumbled.
He smashed the axe down on another defenceless block of wood, so hard that splinters hit the garage. Staying on the veranda was a wise decision. “If you’re so big and brave, how come you came running to me when you knew Jasmine was on the warpath?”
“I’m not brave, Alex. I’m scared of everything, but lately I’ve become hopeful of changing that.”
“It’s fleeting, Charli. Adam is leaving in a few weeks. Then what?”
It bothered me that he’d mentioned Adam. He had nothing to do with anything that had happened that day. And now the speech I’d prepared during the drive home didn’t seem applicable any more. He’d gone off on a completely different tangent.
“It won’t be the end. I’m sure of it.”
Alex let out an appalled groan, swinging the axe over his head as if it was weightless. The ear-splitting crack of the wood made me flinch. “You’re absurd. You are so…. seventeen,” he said, puffing with exertion. “If you’re thinking of running off to New York, you’re making a huge mistake. You’d be giving up everything. You’ll get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be and you’ll hate every minute of it.”
“Like you did?”
Those three words grabbed him. Even from a distance, his hazel eyes looked as hard as glass. “Don’t you start,” he warned.
“You know it’s true,” I insisted. “I don’t even know what your dreams were but I know you gave them up to look after me. You give everything to me. You can stop doing that now.”
He dropped the axe on the grass and leaned down to pick up the chopped wood. “You do stupid things, make dumb decisions. I wonder if I gave you enough. Maybe there’s some major life lesson I forgot to clue you in about.”
Abandoning the safety of the veranda, I stepped on to the lawn.
“Alex, the things I do are no reflection of the job you’ve done. Sometimes I’m just a jerk. Don’t take it so personally.”
He pointed to the pile of wood with his free hand. It was a mute ultimatum that I understood perfectly. I picked up the smallest pieces I could find. Unimpressed with my effort, he offloaded a much larger log into my arms.
He smirked. “Sometimes I’m a jerk too.”
“This is too heavy,” I complained. r />
“Suck it up, princess.” He was already walking towards the garage carrying more wood than I could have shifted in a week.
I’d pushed the envelope too far that day to consider claiming pity points. Pretending to drop the bundle on my foot and faking a mortal injury wouldn’t wash. I followed him the to the neatly stacked woodpile.
“Don’t throw it all away for a boy, Charli,” he said as soon as I was close enough to hear.
It was a confusing exchange. He flitted from chastising me about the dumb decisions I made to my relationship with Adam. Why did he think the two were linked?
I dropped the on the ground. Alex began stacking it against the wall. It felt like I had only half of his attention and I found myself raising my voice to compensate.
“I would never regret it, no matter how short-lived it might be. I’d rather have five minutes of something amazing than a lifetime of nothing special. Staying here, playing it safe and never dealing with anything more challenging than Jasmine Tate would kill me.”
Alex walked past, ignoring the fact that I was yelling at him. I groaned in protest, dragging my feet across the damp grass as if I was physically damaged. He waited until my arms were laden before speaking.
“I’m not blind, Charli. I knew before you even did that there wasn’t enough in this town for you. A few months away will be – ”
The two logs thudding to the ground as I dropped them cut his sentence short. “I’m not coming back here, Alex, ever,” I blurted. “When Nic and I are done travelling, I’m going to New York.” I’d had no intention of revealing that little gem quite so soon, but as usual, my mouth got the better of me.
I might as well have drilled him in the side of the head with the blocks of wood he’d just chopped. He looked so devastated that I wished I could suck the words back in. Calming down and explaining my reasons was the only chance I had to make him understand – except I didn’t know how. “I need to be with him.”
Trite, I thought. He’s never going to buy it.
“You’re not supposed to need him, Charli. You’re supposed to just want him. Needing him is what I’m afraid of. You’re going to follow him to New York and get stuck there because you need him…and trust me…when need kicks in, you’re not going to want him any more.”