Brynn and Sebastian Hate Each Other, page 16
A funny jerk, he had thought, but in hindsight . . . just a jerk.
He looked back up at Doc, who had become completely preoccupied by the shingles hanging above Ken’s insurance agency, but Sebastian knew he hadn’t missed a thing. Doc never missed a thing.
Sebastian peeked over his left shoulder again and was once again taken aback by what appeared to be actual human emotion on Brynn’s face. Orly was leaning in, speaking emphatically. And though she was giving Orly her full attention, the way she was digging her fingers into her arm gave the impression she was having to work pretty hard to stay present.
“There are moments when she reminds me of everything I hate about the life I left behind.” He turned back to face the man who’d finally lost interest in pretending to show interest in shingles. “And there are moments when she sort of makes me miss it.”
“Journalism, you mean?”
Yeah, journalism. Mostly journalism.
“I thought she was superficial. And don’t get me wrong—she is. Like, ninety-five percent of the time. But every so often . . .”
“Every so often, I suspect you get a glimpse of the girl we knew.” Doc cleared his throat gently. “I’m glad to know she’s still in there somewhere. That’s the girl I was hoping to see today.”
“Well, I’d keep those hopes in check, if I were you. Like I said . . .”
Doc laughed. “Only five percent. I know.” His eyes softened, and the laugh lines began blending in with the rest of his weathered face. “Funny. Humans and chimpanzees are identical in their DNA except for . . . what? One percent?” He chuckled. “One percent is all the humanity it took to create the Mona Lisa and the steam engine. Beethoven’s Ninth and the Declaration of Independence. Seems to me like there’s been a whole lot of good to come from a whole lot less than the best five percent of someone.” He nudged Sebastian with his elbow. “Give her best five percent a chance to grow into more. That’s how it happens. That’s how you bring out the best in people. Not by focusing on the ninety-five, that’s for sure.”
Doc released a heavy sigh then, and it became clear he was shifting gears from the philosophical to the practical. “Bill’s preparing to make a bit of a scene.”
“What do you mean?”
“He sent everyone home and decided the council needs a personal apology before Brynn can do any filming around town.”
Sebastian stepped away from the wall enough to get a better look through the window. He’d been so focused on Doc as he approached, he hadn’t even noticed how empty the Bean was. Bill and Jo sat alone at a table in the back, and Andi’s face was scrunched up and she appeared to be grumbling to herself as she sorted cream and sugar packets.
“Are you kidding me? He can’t do that. We voted. She has the right to—”
“I know.” Doc nodded and spoke calmly and slowly, no doubt hoping to bring Sebastian’s escalating temper alongside.
“She doesn’t owe us an apology. I mean, maybe she does, but not in any sort of official—”
“I know, Seb. I’m with you. And so is Jo. But you know what a stink Bill can cause—”
“Because we let him!” Sebastian seethed. “She’s going to think we . . .” He rolled his eyes as he saw it all playing out in his mind. Great. “She’s going to think I set this up. Set her up.”
Doc shook his head. “Don’t worry about that.”
Sebastian scoffed. “Easy for you to say. She and I haven’t exactly been making progress on our Camp David peace accords as it is.”
As Doc’s eyebrows rose in amusement, Sebastian figured the older man was probably thinking at least one of the same two things he was at that moment. Either “Camp David peace accords? Why do you always have to be such a dork?” or “Why do you care what Brynn Cornell thinks?”
Doc was a lot nicer to him than he was to himself, so he was probably just thinking the second thing. They were both excellent questions, but the dork one would be waiting for him later, as it was always waiting. The caring one probably deserved some attention he didn’t have time to give just then.
“I’ll talk to her,” Doc offered. “Let her know it’s not your fault.”
“Oh, whatever. I mean, only if you want. It’s not that I really care.”
“Of course.”
Sebastian felt like he should backpedal some more, but deep down he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Not when he didn’t have a clue what he was pedaling away from or toward. Really, he was just spinning his wheels.
“I’ll, um . . . I guess I’ll go tell her you want to talk to her, then.” He tapped Doc twice on the arm with the side of his balled-up hand and began walking back to Orly and Brynn.
“Isn’t it funny?” Doc called out, just as Sebastian turned away. “It’s just that tiny little percentage of difference between us and the monkeys that keeps us from slinging our poop at one another.”
Hard to believe he’d never seen that cross-stitched nugget of wisdom hanging on Maxine’s wall.
Chapter 15
Brynn
Monday, March 21
8:56 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time
I tried to maintain eye contact with Orly, but my eyes felt too heavy. Too strained. A like-poled magnet was coming straight at me from Orly’s intent gaze, repelling my eyes and my senses. And the opposite pole of the magnet was anywhere—everywhere—else, attracting my focus and scattering my defenses, which were panicked, searching for a place to grab hold.
“Hey, Sebastian.” Orly said it in a loud, intentional way that made it clear the subject of our discussion was approaching. Or at least he had been the subject of our discussion, until it somehow became about me.
“Hey. So . . .” Sebastian released a gust of air as he stepped closer. “This may have been a bit of a bust. I thought there would be more people here.”
I sniffed and feverishly blinked a few times before facing him. “Oh, really?”
He took in my snide tone—one I hadn’t even intended to use—and an impatient expression overtook his face. “Yes, really.” He crossed his arms and his closed-off body language mirrored mine.
The magnets in my eyes suddenly seemed to affect my brain too. When had my mind opened for business as a hands-on magnetic polarity exhibit at a children’s museum? Pushing and pulling, attracting and repelling. It was too much. I couldn’t remember what role I was supposed to be playing.
“Maybe rather than trying to make it seem like you’re a good person, you could just . . . be one.”
When I looked at Sebastian, I saw his annoyance with me, and that made me want to both spar and apologize. I didn’t know which to pick. Just under his layer of annoyance was so much sincerity. Even as his body was closed off to me and his eyes fumed, I could detect the apology and humility with which he had approached us. But the fight came so easily. For both of us, it seemed.
It was this place. It had to be. No, the fact that my words had gone out to a live audience on Friday hadn’t been my fault, but it was easy enough to believe the subject matter of my hometown had thrown me off my game, just enough. And if even discussing it had that sort of impact, was it any wonder I couldn’t get my bearings now that I was back here? Adelaide Springs was my Bermuda Triangle, sending my compass and gauges spinning.
I’d spent twenty years trying to rid myself of what remained of B-R-E-N. Brenda Cornell wasn’t bad or weak, but her life and her mind were chaos. She was full of regret and sadness. She was lonely. She was a fighter, but not the right kind of fighter to survive in the world I had chosen to inhabit. Brenda fought for survival, and I was grateful that will to survive had lasted long enough to get me out. But those survival instincts weren’t the same ones you needed to get ahead. To keep climbing. To find the confidence and determination to convince the world you weren’t just a scared, broken little girl begging for someone to throw you a life rope.
B-R-Y-N-N didn’t belong in Adelaide Springs, Colorado, any more than B-R-E-N belonged in studio 2-A in midtown Manhattan.
I took a deep breath and implored my body to at least give off the appearance of letting down its guard. That guard had been built up over an entire lifetime, and it wasn’t going to crumble easily. But if I had any hope at all of sailing out of here with so much as a life raft intact, I had to start somewhere.
“Thank you, Sebastian. It will be nice to visit with whoever is here.”
Sebastian stared at me, his shoulders relaxing as every other muscle in his body seemed to bristle at the same time. I almost felt for him. Truthfully, I’d never had an easy time making sense of what was going on in my own head. I could only imagine how disturbing it must have been to witness from the outside.
“Yeah, well . . .” He cleared his throat and took another step toward me. “You may not feel that way here in a second.”
My stomach dropped. “Why?”
He stepped around the front of the vehicle and joined us. “I guess the city council sort of wants to have a chat with you.”
“The city council? Aren’t you the city council?” Nervous, absurd laughter spilled out of me. “Do I have some unpaid speeding tickets from twenty years ago or something?”
“I really don’t know much more than you do. The mayor just told me one of the other council members was insistent on some time with you. I guess he sort of chased everyone else off.” He shrugged, and for the first time I sensed his anger wasn’t just directed toward me. This time. “Honestly, Brynn, I didn’t know anything about this. This really is where all the locals hang out in the morning. The owner’s a good friend of mine, and I checked with her before we came. There was a good crowd. I . . .” He raised his hands in the air, and words seemed to fail him.
“It’s okay,” I said softly.
“They probably just want to unload a little about last Friday.”
I smiled at Sebastian—for Sebastian, maybe?—and shook my head. “Depending on who we’ve got in there, I’m willing to bet they’ve been carrying around some things for longer than three days.” One corner of my mouth managed to maintain the smile formation, but the other slipped down as I thought about the reality of that statement.
On the scale of hatred the citizens of Adelaide Springs felt for me, just for leaving without saying goodbye—and not even factoring in the Sunup stuff yet—I didn’t have to think very hard to determine who was probably at the top of the list. And I knew the people who had the most reason to hate me were also the ones who never would have needed me to explain why I left. They would have packed my bags and cheered me on. Which, I suppose, made it all the more unforgivable that I hadn’t told them. That I hadn’t said goodbye. That I spent the next twenty years doing all I could to forget they were still out in the world, probably wondering what they’d done wrong. I hadn’t even had the decency to tell them that the only thing they’d done wrong was love me more than I could accept if I was to have any chance of making it without them.
Tears sprang to my eyes. Pull yourself together, Brynn. You don’t have time for this. I’d had so many different types of armor through the years. Desperation. Immaturity. Ambition. The swapping of a Y for an E and the addition of another N. In twenty years I couldn’t remember ever truly regretting what I did or how I did it. And I didn’t have time for the Bermuda Triangle of the Rocky Mountains to make my internal compass go haywire right now.
“Are you okay?” Orly asked.
“Yeah. Of course.” I was grateful for the always reliable gusts of cold March wind sweeping through. Everyone’s eyes watered when the air hit. I quickly flicked away the moisture in the corners of my eyes and looked at Sebastian. His head was lowered, but I caught him discreetly raising his eyes to look at me. “So who’s on the council, apart from you?”
“Jo. And Bill Kimball—”
My eyes flew open. “Old Man Kimball’s still alive?”
Sebastian chuckled. “Are you kidding? I’m pretty sure he’s going to outlive us all.”
“Is he still a curmudgeonly old—”
“Oh, most definitely. And for the record, I’m pretty sure he hates me.”
I laughed. “I’m pretty sure he hates everyone.” Sheesh. Old Man Kimball. Talk about someone I never thought I’d see again. And it certainly wasn’t that I was looking forward to the reunion. But it was funny . . . the fear was gone in an instant. My former teacher and the grandfather of one of my best friends. They were each terrifying in their own ways, but deep down they had both loved me once, and I had loved them.
Well, maybe Old Man Kimball hadn’t loved me, exactly, but he’d had plenty of opportunities to make good on his threat to run and get his shotgun when we’d all snuck into the bar late at night with Cole, and he never had. If years of not shooting someone when you have the chance isn’t love, I don’t know what is.
“Orly, are you ready? Film it all. For better or worse.” I lowered my voice and added, “Although there’s a very good chance only half of what Bill Kimball says will be appropriate to air.”
I stepped between them and began walking toward the Main Street storefront, but Sebastian’s hand on my elbow stopped me.
“Before you go in . . .”
There was something about the tiniest bit of human touch right there in that moment, when I was feeling the vulnerability that came with a long-postponed day of reckoning, that made me want to turn around and get a hug. To let one of them hug me. I didn’t even care who—although, let’s face it, my only slim chance for a hug was from Orly. But to just let someone . . . beg someone to wrap their arms around me. To make the chill go away. To make, just for a second, the whole blasted thing go away.
Needless to say, Sebastian Sudworth hadn’t stopped me in hopes of giving me a hug.
“The mayor would like to talk to you for a minute.”
I bit my lip and turned back to him. “Okay. Sure.” I looked up at the man he had been speaking with on the sidewalk, just as Sebastian pointed to him. I would inquire as to the ousting of Lady Xanadu another time.
“I’m pretty sure you know Griffin Atwater. Doc.”
What in the name of Dances with Wolves was happening?
Mouth agape and with eyes as big as the whole wide Waterworld, I studied the man with the denim shirt tucked into his jeans that led down to cowboy boots and then snapped my eyes back to Sebastian. No . . . he was messing with me. First of all, Doc’s name was Griffin? I was this many days old when I learned that. But that couldn’t be him. Could it? I couldn’t quite come up with a logical explanation as to why Sebastian Sudworth would think to play that particular practical joke on me, but there was no way that was Doc Atwater. I’d been shocked by Mrs. Stoddard, but this?
Except . . . I was looking right into his eyes. And even with all Costner references aside, the man in front of me raising one hand in greeting and smiling was suddenly as familiar to me as every single note of The Bodyguard soundtrack, which Addie, Laila, and I had listened to on constant loop for about two years, pretending we could sing like Whitney. I saw the only doctor I’d ever had in the first half of my life. I saw my best friend’s dad. I saw the person who’d paid for my bus fare to California—though he probably hadn’t known that’s how I would put my graduation gift to use. I saw the man who used to set a place for me at his table every night, just in case my mother forgot to buy groceries or pay the electric bill. Just in case she didn’t bother coming home.
I saw the only adult man my little-girl self had ever felt completely comfortable with.
The emotion bubbled up in me, and heaves overtook my breathing as I tried to swallow it all down, but the longer I stared into his heartbreakingly familiar eyes, the more hopeless it became. I grabbed on to Sebastian’s arm, because he was there, and begged my knees not to give out. It was too late for my eyes. Tears were falling freely, and Doc saw it. Doc saw me and came rushing over, and within seconds I was safe and secure and wrapped in his arms, and the compass in my head was finally pointing north.
“Welcome home, kid.”
Chapter 16
Sebastian
Monday, March 21
9:05 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time
Jo looked up from her coffee and Bill looked up from his newspaper in response to the jingle of the bell above the door.
“What are you doing, Bill?” Sebastian asked as soon as he entered. He pulled off his jacket and hung it by the door before walking up to their table, pulling out an empty chair, and swinging it around, slinging his leg over and sitting in it backward like he was Mario Lopez, circa 1991. He couldn’t remember ever sitting in a chair that way, but in the moment it just felt right. Like invoking the power of youth and Bayside High would help him win the day. “What can you possibly hope to accomplish with this little coup d’état?”
Bill returned his eyes to his paper. “As I see it, you and Doc are the ones staging the coup. You forced this whole thing on us—”
“We voted!”
“—and come to that, I think we need to revisit the bylaws. Why should the mayor have the deciding vote?”
Jo sighed. “Then like I said, Bill, we can discuss that. Bring it up at a town meeting. Maybe we need to have a fifth person on council. Whatever. But the vote was fair—”
Old Man Kimball lowered his paper in a huff. “The vote, if you recall, Josephine, was supposed to be about Township Days. That’s what was on the agenda. I’m not even sure the vote about the Cornell girl has any legal standing.”
Sebastian’s eyes grew wide as they locked with Jo’s, and she rolled hers and shook her head. Legal standing. Bill was one to be a stickler about legal standing, considering the number of times Jo had had to record into the minutes things like, The quorum proceeded with the vote after Mr. Kimball dozed off.
“Where is she, anyway?” Jo asked. “Did she get scared away?”
No, she hadn’t gotten scared away. She’d probably had every right to refuse to go along with whatever this was, but she hadn’t fought it.
“She’s out talking to Doc.”
