Page 32 of An Overdue Match
My heart plummets to my feet before shooting straight into my throat, my pulse so loud I can feel the beat between my ears. I seal my eyes shut. Behind my lids, my future here in Little Creek plays out, an encore to how it was in Chattanooga before I moved. The stares and speculations. Thepitying glances oryou poor dearconsolations from those who think I have cancer. The inner battle of simultaneously remaining polite while explaining myself to strangers to whom I owe nothing while also wanting to scream. I’ll no longer just be Evangeline Kelly, the local librarian. I’ll be the bald woman. My lack of hair becoming my sole identity in everyone else’s eyes.
I open my eyes to find Tai’s gaze roaming my face. Starting at my chin and moving slowly up my jawline toward my brow, his look feels like a physical touch, igniting a path of shame that slices through the thin veneer I’ve managed to encapsulate my heart with. Is he picturing me barefaced, stripped of makeup, no fake eyelashes or temporary eyebrow tattoos? Is he mentally removing my wig, dethroning my crowning glory of womanhood and leaving me in an unnatural state of nakedness?
“There’s a pop-up restaurant near Athens this weekend. Go with me.”
I blink against his unexpected change in conversation. The formation of his words makes his sentence declarative instead of interrogative, but I hear the question in the cadence of his tone. I blink again. Is he ... mocking me? He now knows I lack some of the fundamental physical attributes that make a person attractive and he’s still asking me out. Why? I shake my head to clear the cobwebs and try to align the new information being thrown at me.
“I see,” Tai says softly. Regretfully. He’s taken the shake of my head as a response of no to his invitation. Which, I mean, he isn’t wrong. I won’t go, but that’s not what I was saying no to.
He leans against the back of the bench and extends an arm over the top until his hand lands near my shoulder. His thumb and forefinger gather a strand of my hair between the pads of his fingers. He stares at the tresses, entranced, as he pullsout an envelope from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “I think this belongs to you.”
I reflexively take the envelope, staring at it uncomprehendingly. What?
Oh!
This is the love letter I snuck into Dalton’s workshop. Does that mean the secret Tai knows ... isn’t my alopecia? He doesn’t realize the hair he’s running his fingers through isn’t my own but a wig?
A twisting sort of sensation happens beneath my ribs.
Relief. The feeling is relief. Not disappointment. Not even a little. Because why would I be even a little bit disappointed that my most-hidden secret is still safe? That I’m still invisible—I mean,anonymous—in this town? That the obvious attraction in Tai’s eyes would still be there even after he’d discovered the truth about me. Which, it turns out, he hasn’t. Or at least notthattruth.
“At first, at the baseball game, I wasn’t sure why you had their library book checkout histories with you. You have to admit, it’s an odd thing to take to a sporting event. But I thought maybe you were killing two birds with one stone. Getting some work done while supporting your favorite local team. But then Stacey showed me a love letter she’d received from a mysterious sender. And lo and behold, Dalton had a similar letter written by the same person. Which, not so coincidentally, were the same two people’s information you’d been studying so intently at the game.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat that’s been lodged there since hearing the words“I’ve discovered your little secret.”
“How do you know the letters were written by the same person?” I ask.
He gives me a crooked smile. “You write your capitalSs and lower caseBs in print while every other letter is written in cursive. In both notes.”
It’s probably pointless to try and refute his claims at this point, but that irrational side of my brain is starting to speak again.
He only has conjecture. Don’t unwittingly give him more evidence against you and seal your own fate.
I seal my lips together instead.
He continues to play with the ends of my hair, watching the way the length falls through his fingers. Can he feel the synthetic fibers of the strands? Realize by the texture alone that the weave is machine made? I want to snatch the hair away from him but force myself to be still. An overreaction will draw more attention.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glance down to where he’s touching me. The tendons along the back of his hand flex and bunch with the movement of his fingers, his veins pulsing with life and vitality. Dark black and various shades of gray color on the skin at his wrist disappear under the cuff of his jacket.
My finger twitches on my lap. I want to run the tip over the lines, trace the stroke marks and become intimately acquainted with the artwork. If our bodies are a temple, then Tai Davis’s is like the Sistine Chapel, every inch covered in a tapestry of art.
Is every inch covered? What masterpieces are being hidden by his clothing?
Embarrassment heats my body and chases the chill of the evening air away.
“I know you’re the author of the letters for another reason as well.”
Tai’s words snap me out of my trance, and I flick my gaze back to his face, hoping he can’t read the thoughts that had been skipping through my mind.
“Everyone in Little Creek—that is to say, anyone who’s lived here longer than six months—knows that Dalton is engaged to Rachel Belvedere.”
“Dalton is . . .” The blood drains from my face. Did I really try to matchmake an already engaged man?
Tai nods. “Taken. Spoken for. Affianced.”
My spine sinks into the support of the bench.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell either of them that their secret admirer was the town’s new romantically inclined meddling librarian.”
