By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(22)
Coffee. She needed coffee. She really didn’t want to go back down to the kitchen, but she also didn’t think there was a way she could hide up here away from Beau Towers for the next few days, so she might as well get it over with now.
Though this time, she put a bra on first.
Thankfully, the kitchen was empty, though there were zucchini chocolate chip muffins on the counter. Michaela must have left them for the weekend. Izzy brought two back up to her room, along with two cups of coffee—she didn’t want to go downstairs again until she had to.
When she got back to her room, she ate one of the muffins while she drank her first cup of coffee and scrolled through her phone. Priya texted right when she reached for the second muffin. Oh thank God.
Are you still alive?
If you text blink I’ll fly out there and destroy you
Izzy laughed. She started to text back, but she was tired of texting. She’d been communicating almost solely via email and text all week.
“She’s alive!” Priya said when she answered the phone.
Just hearing Priya’s voice made her feel better.
“Yes, of course I’m alive,” she said. “I texted you yesterday.”
Priya scoffed. “I mean, barely. I need details. OTHER than about the bathtub and the pool.”
Izzy laughed. She’d sent Priya many pictures of the bathtub, it was true.
“Unfortunately, the bathtub and the pool are all I’ve got.” She sighed. “I don’t think I’ve really accomplished anything here. Beau Towers doesn’t listen to a word I say; he’s absolutely never going to turn in this memoir.”
Ugh, just thinking about the pitying look Gavin would give her when she got back to the office made her cringe.
“You already accomplished something!” Priya said. “You opened the lines of communication! He actually emailed Marta! That’s far more than she had last week, and you know that. It’s not like she thought you would come back to New York waving Beau Towers’s manuscript around. Stop stressing about it! Enjoy the weather there while you can. But first, you haven’t told me a single thing about what Beau Towers is like, other than he’s very hot and he glares at you all the time. I want to know way more.”
“I did not say he was hot!” Izzy said.
“You didn’t have to,” Priya said.
Izzy would just ignore that. “Okay, here are the pros to living in Beau Towers’s house. First, it’s enormous. It’s so big that I have the entire second floor to myself. Second, his assistant is nice and at least she likes me, and she cooks fantastic food. Third, the view from my window, which I’ve sent you multiple pictures of. Fourth, and stop rolling your eyes, my bathtub: I think the two of us have bonded, I tell it about my day every night during my nightly bath, and I think it really sympathizes with me. Fifth, there’s a snack cabinet, Priya. As in, a whole cabinet, as tall as me, devoted entirely to snacks. Sixth, there are gardens, plural. I go take a turn around them every afternoon like some Regency romance heroine. And I can do that, because seventh, the weather is incredible. It’s overcast right now, but it often is in the mornings, and every afternoon is sunny and perfect.”
She took a big sip of coffee. “Also—this probably should have been one with a bullet—it’s so nice to be across the country from both Marta and my parents. That feels mean, to group my parents with Marta, and I don’t mean it that way, but it’s just so refreshing to be alone, not have someone ask me questions all the time or be in my space. That part is pretty relaxing, actually.”
“You’re sounding a little too happy,” Priya said. “You’d better not stay there.”
Izzy laughed out loud. “I haven’t gotten to the cons yet. I’d be perfectly happy to stay here if I could be here with you and not Beau Towers! This weekend I’m stuck here alone with him, and he barely speaks to me, or even looks at me.” She sighed. “I just realized that since I got here on Wednesday, I haven’t talked to anyone in person other than him and Michaela. I work and stare at the walls and occasionally walk around outside in the gardens, I talk to inanimate objects like my teacup and the candlestick because Beau Towers doesn’t talk to me, and I feel like at any moment the teacup and candlestick will start, like, singing and dancing for me.”
“You have a candlestick?” Priya asked.
“You’re missing the point!” Izzy said. “Since I’ve gotten here, I haven’t taken a step off his property. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“Are you…locked in there?” Priya asked.
Izzy laughed. “Of course not. I’m sure I can leave whenever I want, but where would I go? Michaela returned my rental car, and plus, there isn’t really any reason to leave—there’s lots of food, I did laundry so I’ve got clean clothes, and plus—”
“Isabelle,” Priya said in a stern voice. “Go for a walk. A real walk, not ‘in the gardens,’ whatever that means—go outside, into the real world. It’s what, almost noon there now? Go to a bookstore, or a coffee shop, or I don’t know, a grocery store and get some food that isn’t made in that weird enchanted house. Just go be outside in the world away from the bathtub that you talk to far too much and the candlesticks that are singing to you so I stop being afraid for your sanity.”