The Girl Who Chased the Moon Read Free Page B

cake and peach pound cake, but also green tea and honey macaroons and cranberry doughnuts. She knew the more unusual things would sell out first. It had taken nearly a year, but she’d won over her regulars with her skill with what they already knew, so now they would try anything she made.
    Sawyer walked out just as she set the chalkboard back on the counter. “I told Stella I’d come over with pizza tonight. You’ll be there?”
    “I’m always there. Why don’t the two of you sleep together and get it over with?” Sawyer’s Thursday pizza courtship of Stella had been going on ever since Julia had moved back to Mullaby. Stella swore there was nothing going on, but Julia thought Stella was being naïve.
    Sawyer leaned in close. “Stella and I did sleep together,” he said into her ear. “Three years ago, right after her divorce. And before you think that sounds indiscriminate, I try to keep my actions regret-free these days.”
    She gave him a sharp look as he walked away. His casual, almost flippant, mention of it took her by surprise and made her feel cool and tart, like tasting lime for the first time.
    She couldn’t blame him for being a scared teenager when he’d found out she’d gotten pregnant from their one night together on the football field all those years ago. She’d been a scared teenager, too. And they’d made the only decisions they were capable of making at the time. For better or worse.
    But she resented how easily he’d gotten on with his life. It had been just one night to him. One regretful night with the freaky, unpopular girl he’d barely even talked to at school. A girl who’d been madly in love with him.
    Oh, God. She wasn’t going to fall into this role again. She couldn’t.
    Six months and counting and she would leave this crazy place and never think of Sawyer again.
    With any luck.

Chapter 2

    W hen Emily woke, her hairline was wet with sweat and she felt bone tired. She also had absolutely no idea where she was. She sat up quickly and pulled the earbuds of her MP3 player out of her ears. She looked around the room—the lilac wallpaper, the tattered princess furniture. That’s when she remembered. She was in her mother’s old bedroom.
    She’d never slept in a place that felt so hollow. Even though she knew her grandfather was downstairs, having the entire upstairs to herself made her uneasy. All night, there had been long periods of quiet punctuated by loud wooden pops of the house settling. And leaves kept rattling outside her balcony door. She’d finally turned on her MP3 player and tried to imagine herself someplace else. Someplace not so humid .
    Scared or not, tonight she was going to have to sleep with the balcony doors open, or else perish into a puddle of perspiration. At some point last night, she’d kicked the bedsheet aside. And she’d started out in pajamas, but she’d wiggled out of the bottom part soon after turning in, and was now in only the top. Her mother might have been the most politically correct person on the planet—an activist, an environmentalist, a crusader for the underdog—but even she ran the air conditioner when it got too hot.
    She made her way to the antiquated bathroom and took a bath because there was no shower. And she was momentarily stumped by the fact that there were separate faucets for hot and cold water instead of both coming out of the same faucet like in a normal bathroom.
    Afterward she dressed in shorts and a racer-back tank, then went downstairs.
    She noticed the note taped to the inside of the screen door right away.
    Emily: This is Grandpa Vance writing you. I forgot to tell you that I go out for breakfast every morning. Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll bring you something back, but there’s also teenager food in the kitchen . The note was written in large block letters that slanted off the lines of the paper, as if he couldn’t see around his hand as he was writing.
    She took a deep breath, still trying to rearrange