You Look Beautiful in Green

Last night ended the way standoffs do: nobody won.

You climbed out of the pool slowly, because you'd be damned if you'd scramble. He held out a towel without a word and kept his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above your left shoulder the entire time, jaw tight, like the towel was a live grenade. You took it. Your fingers brushed his. He let go first.

"I said I'd think about it," you told him.

"You thought fast."

"I'm very smart."

Something almost happened at the corner of his mouth. Then he turned and walked back to the guest house, and you stood there dripping on the warm stone, wrapped in a towel that smelled like cedar, furious at nobody.

Detective Wilder calls at nine in the morning.

"He made bail at seven," she says. "His mother wired it from Boston. He's under orders to stay a thousand feet from you and from the residence, and to surrender his passport. I'll be honest, Ms. Delacorte. A man who drives nine hundred miles to violate an order isn't impressed by a thousand feet."

"I know."

"Is Carrington still at the house?"

"Yes."

A pause. "Good," she says, like it costs her something.

You don't tell Hayes. You find out at breakfast he already knows: his phone is face up on the counter, a text from Darius on the screen. Pellham out. Mother posted. Hotel on Meeting St, paid two weeks.

"Two weeks," you say.

"He's not going home." Hayes is standing at the window with his coffee, watching the harbor like it owes him money. "Which means he thinks he's got a reason to stay."

By evening you're done being careful. You've been careful since January. You put on the green sundress Maisie made you buy last summer, the one with thin straps and a skirt that moves, and you put on lipstick for the first time in weeks, and you come downstairs and say, "I'm going to The Salt Cellar."

Hayes is at the dining table with a laptop and a pair of black-framed reading glasses on his nose.

He takes them off so fast he nearly drops them.

You stop. "Were those glasses?"

"No."

"They were glasses. Reading glasses. You wear reading glasses."

"I'm getting my keys," he says, stands, and walks out of the room, and you laugh for the first time in what feels like a year.

The Salt Cellar is a narrow brick room on King Street with candles in old wine bottles and a zinc bar Maisie restored with her own hands, and the second you walk in she comes over the top of it like a sprinter.

"Oh, thank God, you're alive, you're gorgeous, I hate him, sit," she says in one breath, crushing you in a hug that smells like orange peel and bourbon. She's all red curls and freckles and a vintage polka-dot dress, and people in Charleston walk into lampposts when she smiles at them. Then she looks past you, over your shoulder, and her mouth falls open.

"Oh," Maisie says. "Oh, no."

You don't have to turn around. You know exactly what she's looking at.

Hayes has stopped just inside the door. He's in a dark button-down with the sleeves rolled, and he's doing the thing you're starting to recognize: scanning the room, exits, faces, hands, in one slow sweep. Two women at the end of the bar have stopped talking mid-sentence. A bartender is pouring a drink onto the floor.

"He's not coming over," you murmur. "He's going to sit somewhere and watch the door."

"He can watch my door," Maisie breathes.

"Maisie."

"I'm sorry, I'm a feminist, I'm also not blind." She drags you to the far end of the bar. "That's your father's friend? Your father golfs with men named Chip. That's not a Chip. That's the cover of a book they keep behind the counter."

Hayes takes a stool at the opposite end, where he can see both you and the entrance, and orders a club soda. He doesn't look at you once. You know, because you look at him eleven times.

Maisie makes you a drink she calls a Restraining Order, gin and grapefruit and something smoky, and you tell her everything. The party. The four seconds. The towel. The glasses.

"He wears glasses?" Maisie presses a hand to her heart. "I'm going to need to lie down."

"It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that, babe. You're doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you say 'it's not like that' and then look at him." She tips her chin. "Like you're doing right now."

You look away from Hayes. He looks away from you at the same moment, and Maisie makes a sound like a teakettle.

You leave at eleven. Hayes is already on his feet before you've finished hugging Maisie goodbye, and he walks you out without a word, his body angled a little in front of yours. Your car is on Hasell Street, a block over, because you insisted on driving yourself and he insisted on following, and you compromised by both being annoyed.

"I'll pull around," he says at the corner, where his truck is parked. "Wait at the car. Doors locked. Thirty seconds."

"I know how to sit in a car, Hayes."

"I know you do. Humor me."

You walk the half block alone under the old gas lamps, keys in your fist the way you learned in a self-defense class in February. The street is quiet. Jasmine and hot brick. A couple laughing somewhere toward the Market.

Your car is where you left it.

There's something on the windshield.

You stop three feet away. It's tucked under the driver's side wiper: a single long-stemmed white rose, the petals perfect, and a small cream card. Your name on the front in neat, slanted handwriting you'd recognize anywhere, because it used to be on birthday cards and sticky notes on your bathroom mirror.

You don't touch it. You don't need to. The card is turned outward, so you can read it from where you stand.

You look beautiful in green.

The world tilts.

You look down at yourself. At the green dress. You bought it last summer. You've worn it once. You put it on two hours ago in your bedroom, in your father's locked house, with the alarm armed, and you didn't post a picture, you didn't tell a soul, and somewhere between your bedroom and this street, he saw you.

He's watching right now.

You turn in a slow circle. Doorways. Parked cars. A dark second-floor window. Your breath is coming too fast, and your keys are biting into your palm, and every shadow on Hasell Street has a tall blond shape.

Headlights swing around the corner.

They hit you full on, white and blinding, and you throw your arm up, and then the engine cuts, and a door slams, and you hear him before you can see him.

"Ava." Fast footsteps on the brick. "Talk to me."

You point at the windshield. You can't make your voice work.

Hayes looks at the rose. Then at the card. Then at the dress. You watch him understand, and you watch his face go so still and so cold that it frightens you more than the rose does.

"Get in the truck," he says quietly. "Please."

He doesn't speak on the drive home except once, into his phone: "Darius. Hasell Street. I need the camera footage from every business on the block before midnight. And find out where Pellham's been since six."

At the house he walks every room before he lets you past the foyer. Closets. Under beds. Behind the shower curtain in your bathroom, which would be funny on any other night. He checks every window lock and every door, twice, and then he stands in the front hall with his hands on his hips and his head down, breathing slowly.

"Give me your phone," he says.

You hand it over. He puts his number in and hands it back. Hayes Carrington. No emoji. No nickname. Just his full name, like a business card.

"Lock your door," he says, and goes.

You don't sleep. You sit on your bed in the green dress with the lights on, staring at your phone, until at 12:52 a.m. it lights up in your hand.

Hayes Carrington: Your light is still on.