Page 28 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

Heat shoots up my cheeks. “I didn’t mean you had to…” I start to mumble.

“I mean,” he begins slowly, drawing a line on the table with his pointer finger, “I am training you. I figured I should try to make you feel comfortable.”

Embarrassed and not sure how to feel about this display of kindness, which somehow seems like it’s edging on flirtation, I choose violence.

“Speaking of that, actually,” I pull my lips taut. “Why haven’t you been? Training me, that is?”

Oliver’s eyebrows rise quizzically. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve been giving me intern-level tasks all day and then running away in the opposite direction.”

“This isn’t a biochem lab,” he replies. “I figured you could handle basic things like shelving or cleaning without me showing you how.” His eyes rove over my face. “Was I wrong?”

I glare at him. “No, you weren’t wrong.”

He nods. “Okay, then. So what’s the problem?”

I don’t know, really. What is the problem, exactly? That he’s trusting me too much? That he seems to want nothing to do with me? That the work is much less interesting than I’d hoped?

That maybe, just maybe, working in a bookstore isn’t for me, despite my daydreaming about it my entire life?

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

Oliver’s mouth tips up into a smirk. “If you want me to insult your intelligence and follow you around for a little micromanagement after this, I can.”

“No, thank you.” I glower at him, then take a sip of my drink. It’s a latte, so I guess he remembered my order from the other day. And, because I really want to hate him right now, it just has to be beyond delicious. I think he knows I’m enjoying it, too, because he looks awfully smug.

“That’s what I thought,” he says in a self-satisfied way that makes me want to punch him in the face. Even if he did just go out and buy me a drink.

“Jerk,” I mutter under my breath, almost immediately regretting it.

Something like hurt flashes over his face, but it’s fleeting. “And besides,” he adds, narrowing his eyes, “why bother training you when you’re going to leave soon and I’ll just have to train somebody else?”

“Wow,” I reply. “Still hung up on that, are you?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t say I’m hung up on it. I just don’t think there’s much point.”

“Much point in training me?”

His eyes flick down. “Much point in you being here.”

I draw in a sharp breath. “Are you kidding me?”

“Sorry,” he says. “It just seems inefficient.” At the vitriol I’m pretty sure is displayed all over my face, his own softens a bit. “But, hey, clearly Maisie’s okay with it, so who cares what I think, right?”

He’s right, of course. I shouldn’t care what he thinks.

But for some reason, I think I do.

“It’s ridiculous for you to hate me just because I don’t live here,” I retort. “I’ve been coming here every summer of my life. I love this town, and my family has deep ties here.” I glare at him. “I’m not some oblivious tourist who rapes the environment and abuses the locals.”

He’s staring at me, and I can’t read his expression, so I barrel on. “And anyway, I have just as much right to a job here as you do. I’m a hard worker, and I need the money. I’ve been through a lot this year, and…” I pause, wondering how far to go with my explanation of my year.

On the one hand, I might garner some major sympathy points if I open up and explain how my charming ex-boyfriend cheated on me with one of our colleagues for five months, then refused to do the right thing and just dump me, instead publicly stringing me along for the next two. Even though pretty much everyone in the entire school knew about the affair by that point, aside from me.

Or about how my grandmother, who has always been my role model, had died suddenly, right before my parents’ equally unexpected and messy separation, so I couldn’t even grieve either her loss or their splitting up in my own way.

On the other hand, Oliver’s face is still impassive, and I don’t trust that he’ll have the reaction a normal person might if I were to share my story.