Page 104 of Hottie on Her Shelf
Chapter Twenty-One
Even though she’d lived in Swan Cove for five years, Hallie had only been inside its iconic opera house once. Tickets to their season were way outside of her price range. So she openly goggled at its ornate Rococo gilt flourishes on every wall and ceiling. It was a stark contrast to the two-story rustic saloon mostly constructed on the stage—sets for La Fanciulla del West.
Two months ago, she would’ve felt out of her element. Today? All she felt was pride that her small town had such a sterling reputation for its summer operas that they pulled in big names from all over the country to star.
Hallie would be walking onto that stage in just a few minutes when the winner of the election was announced. Not as a laughingstock from the wrong side of the tracks. As a genuine contender for mayor who’d garnered votes.
She just didn’t know how many…
“How ya holding up?” Ana put an arm around her waist and leaned over to touch heads briefly. “Because you look fantastic. Smart but approachable.”
“Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what you said this outfit would look like when you laid it across the foot of my bed and ordered me to wear it tonight,” Hallie said, tongue firmly planted in her cheek.
Still, she was grateful her friends had done the legwork and given her the closet makeover. The white boatneck dress had big watercolor splotches of blues, oranges, and pinks across it—a little dreamy, a little feminine, but paired with a white blazer to keep it businesslike.
Ana beamed, evidently not put off at all by the sarcasm. “See? You’re a good listener. Great skill set for, oh, being a mayor.”
“Fitz is a great listener,” she said wistfully. He had such a knack for making a person feel like they had 110 percent of his attention, no matter how mundane the conversation.
“No. Nonononono.” Ana shook her head briskly, long dark waves careening over her shoulders. Then she put a finger perpendicular to Hallie’s lips to shush her. “You can’t mope tonight of all nights. You can’t pine after the guy you chose to break up with when you’re about to crush him into a fine powder.”
Who knew it was possible to spit out so many inaccuracies at once? Hallie batted away her friend’s hand. “First off, I’m not moping. I’m pining. There’s a difference. Moping is just sadness. Pining has a top layer of wishing for what you know you can’t have.”
“I prefer my thesauruses to be inanimate, thank you very much, and preferably with a speckled calf leather binding and original wrappings.”
Hallie would not let Ana distract her by dropping rare book terminology that often made her drool with want. “Also? I didn’t choose to break up with Fitz. I simply acknowledged that it was a foregone conclusion and acted accordingly.”
“You can spin it however you want. Bottom line?” Ana dropped into a chair and put her feet up on the one in front of her. “Fitz didn’t dump you. You’re the one who made the call.”
“I ended things so he wouldn’t be forced to choose between me and his family. I did it to make it easier on him, because I care that much.” She pushed Ana’s dusty boots off the green velvet upholstery. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be on my side, bucking me up?”
A sharp tug at the hem of her blazer pulled Hallie down into the adjacent seat, and then Ana twisted to look at her full-on. “Sometimes being on your side means making you acknowledge the thing you’re trying hard to ignore.”
“What’s that?” Hallie cast a quick glance at the rapidly filling auditorium. She didn’t want anyone to overhear this conversation.
She also kind of didn’t want to be having it immediately prior to joining her ex on stage, for the simple reason that her breath still hitched in her throat every time she thought about Fitz. Even in a thought as barely there as an air kiss.
There was nothing barely there about Ana when she decided to open the bay doors and drop her classic truth bombs. She was the bluntest in their little group—but also unerringly accurate with her observations.
“There was no foregone conclusion about you and Fitz. The odds weren’t impossible, just stacked against you.” Ana put a hand on her hip and made the giant silver hoops brushing her collar dance as she shook her head. “Do you want to know my hot take?”
“Probably not.”
“You got scared.”
Hallie winced. The truth indeed hurt. “I’d like to upgrade my response to definitely not.”
“You realized it’d be hard to fight the mighty Montgomery machine on two fronts—as mayor and as Fitz’s girlfriend. You knew his parents would move heaven and earth to replace you at his side with someone more wealthy, more cultured, and more appropriate. You instantly regressed into that teenage bookworm who never felt like it was possible to fit in. The one who was too smart to have a lowbrow conversation with the jocks or the average students. Who wasn’t pretty enough to be catapulted out of nerd-dom, but that was okay because it gave you more time to read.”
Wow. Wow. “Don’t hold back or anything.”
Ana smirked. “That ship has sailed, crossed the equator, and dropped anchor.” But she squeezed Hallie’s shoulder. “I think you’re the bee’s knees, Hallie. I also think you’ve got a reverse chip on your shoulder from growing up in Crow Harbor and from being every single cliché about a librarian. You’re more than your job. I just wish you could see it.”
Oh. My. Goodness.
That was more or less what she’d encouraged Fitz to see about himself.
How could she have not looked in the mirror and realized that, while her hang-up stemmed from a different place, it was essentially the same as his? Somebody stuck in a predetermined box wrapped in other people’s opinions, ones that weren’t necessarily true at all.
