Years ago, her dad had told her to always have a “walkout fund”—enough money saved that if she ever needed to quit her job and storm out of the office, she could. As soon as her dad gave her the advice, she made a separate savings accounts, filled it with two months of income, and hadn’t touched it since. Without Jace to feed, she might be able to stretch it to three months if she was frugal. Though, with the car repairs, she’d be back down to two months…maybe even six weeks.
Anxiety gripped Stella’s chest like a vise. If Mike decided to fire her, would she even be able to find another job in six weeks? What if she couldn’t, and she lost the house? Or her car? In the blink of an eye, a future full of defaulted payments and repossessions filled her mind, and she almost shouted into the phone that she took it all back.
Thankfully, Mike found his voice before then. “Let’s talk about this when you get back in the office next week, okay?”
His voice was authoritative, but it was a retreat nonetheless. She’d pressed, and he had relented. Stella had won.
When she hung up the phone, she dropped back down on the bed and shook her head in disbelief.
As it turned out, this new Stella was a bit of a firecracker.
Stella wished she would have asked the Baldwin girls about her hair and makeup. Should she wear her hair down? Up? Half and half?
And makeup. Oh, makeup. It had always been the bane of Stella’s existence. For an embarrassing stretch of time several years ago, she’d watched teenage makeup artists on the internet and tried to replicate some of their techniques, but without much luck. Apparently, blush had gone out of vogue, which was news to Stella. Blush was basically the only makeup she wore as a teenager—red slashes of color all along her nonexistent cheekbones and up into her temples.
She tried giving it up at the behest of the teenage girls in the videos, but she eventually went back to her tried and true routine: tinted moisturizer, setting powder, blush, and mascara. It was basic and impossible to mess up. So, that was what she planned to go with tonight. She was nervous enough for the date without also having to worry about looking like a clown.
For her hair, after giving it a wash and a blow-dry, she pinned one side back above her ear and stashed an extra hair tie in her purse in case it was windy on the beach. It wasn’t like Sam hadn’t already seen her worse off. When he came to tow her car, she’d sweated off her makeup and had her hair pulled back into a wild bun that looked more like a hornets’ nest on top of her head. Literally anything was an improvement on that look.
The first time she finished getting ready, she looked at the clock and realized it was only five. She still had an hour to wait. So, she touched up her hair, applied another few layers of chap stick, and dabbed on perfume.
Forty-five minutes left.
She paced for fifteen minutes, checked her purse for her wallet and room key, and considered calling Jace.
He didn’t want to know about this date. There was a reason Stella kept her dating life out of his view. Eighteen years old or not, no boy wants to know about his mom’s dating life. Jace would probably prefer Stella moved to a nunnery than hear the details of her pre-date jitters.
Was “jitters” a strong enough word for what she was feeling? It made no sense. Stella was leaving town tomorrow. She wouldn’t ever see Sam again, so why did this matter so much? Why did she keep cycling through conversation topics in her mind and trying to think of funny anecdotes just in case an opportunity to use them arose?
Stella was never nervous about talking with people. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, but she wasn’t a caterpillar, either. She fell somewhere in between. Either way, social situations didn’t give her stomach cramps and make her want to curl into a ball on the floor of her closet. So why did she want to do both of those things right now?
Stella shoved her phone deep in her purse and marched out of her room with conviction. The longer she sat in that room with nothing but her worries to keep her company, the worse she’d feel. She needed to give herself room to breathe and relax.
The inn had a small sitting area just off the lobby with two comfortable couches and a wall of bookshelves. Maybe reading a book would distract her and help pass the time. When she got to the room, though, someone was already there.
Georgia Baldwin was curled into a chair with a large book open on her lap and a mug of steaming tea in the other hand. She didn’t look up when Stella entered. She didn’t even look up when Stella pulled a book blindly from the shelf and sat on the sofa across from her. In fact, it took Georgia a full five minutes to realize anyone was in the room with her. When she did realize, she let out a small yelp and sloshed tea over the edge of her cup.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t even hear you come in.”
“I’m sneaky,” Stella said, even though it was a lie. She’d actually made a decent amount of noise when she came in, hoping Georgia would look up and talk to her, but apparently her book had been too engrossing.
Georgia shook her head and laughed at herself. “I tend to get lost in a good book. Richard always said I could read through a hurricane if the book was good enough.”
“I wish I could get lost in anything right now.”
Georgia’s brow furrowed, and she put the book over the arm of her chair and leaned forward.
