Chapter 2: Tea and Confessions
The faculty lounge smelled like burnt coffee and dry-erase markers, which Joan had learned was simply the ambient scent of a school in October. She sat at the corner table with her tupperware of leftover pasta and her copy of a case file she wasn't actually reading. Across from her, Mel was dissecting a sandwich they'd made out of half a bagel and what appeared to be an entire avocado.
"You eat like a raccoon," Joan said.
"Raccoons have excellent instincts," Mel said, popping the last of it into their mouth. "Anyway. Weekend. You busy?"
Joan shook her head, and immediately regretted the honesty.
"Good. Potluck. My place, Saturday, six o'clock. Bring literally anything, even a bag of ice. Some of the science department is coming, a couple of people from the front office, my neighbor who breeds show pigeons. It's chaos. You'll love it."
"That sounds fun," Joan said, and she meant it, and it was true, and none of it helped.
Because the truth underneath was uglier and quieter: Mel was the closest thing she had to a friend in this town, and she was terrified of ruining it. She'd been at the Academy for eight months now, and her social life outside work consisted of grocery stores and the gym and a woman at the farmer's market who noddingly knew her. If she went to the potluck and sat in the corner clutching a bag of ice like a lifeline, that was it. That was the whole picture Mel would have of her forever. The sad counselor who couldn't do a Saturday.
"You don't have to look so panicked," Mel said. "It's lasagna and dip, not a deposition."
"I'm not panicked. I'm thinking about what to bring."
"Bring yourself. Anything else is a bonus." They checked the clock on the lounge wall and grimaced. "Ugh. Sixth period. The frogs dissection class. Wish me luck."
"Good luck."
"That was not sufficient luck. Try again later." Mel slung their bag over one shoulder, paused at the door. "Really, Joan. Come. People are going to ask about you anyway. Better that you're there to answer."
Then they were gone, and Joan sat alone with her cooling pasta and the phrase better that you're there, which felt like a compliment and a threat at once.
She spent the rest of the day half-present. A seventh grader cried in her office about a group chat and she handled it well, said all the right things, gave him a strategy for Monday. Meanwhile, some other part of her brain was drafting and deleting lists. What do you bring to a potluck when you want eight new people to like you? Wine was safe but lazy. A dessert showed effort but invited judgment. Something homemade said warmth; something homemade badly said pity.
By three o'clock she'd decided on the problem underneath the problem, which was that her whole house smelled like nothing and she owned soap that came in bulk packaging from a warehouse store. If she was going to host herself in someone else's home, she at least wanted to arrive feeling like a person who had a life. A person with a nice kitchen. A person with handmade soap.
There was a shop downtown she'd walked past a dozen times on her way to nowhere in particular. Handwritten sign in the window, tie-dye, a smell of patchouli that drifted out the door even when the door was closed. She'd always thought it looked like a place where everyone knew each other.
She left right at four.
The bell over the door chimed, and the smell hit her first: lavender and sandalwood and something citrus underneath, warm and thick. Racks of flowy skirts, shelves of candles, a whole table of tumbled stones with handwritten price tags. Behind the counter, someone was restocking soap bars into a pyramid, humming along to a song Joan didn't recognize.
"Don't knock the pyramid," the woman said without looking up. "It took me twenty minutes and my one coworker keeps messing with it."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were going to say it looks like a Jenga setup. Everyone does." She looked up then, and Joan's whole plan for the afternoon fell over like a badly stacked bar of soap.
The woman had long dirty blonde hair pulled into a loose braid, and eyes that were some impossible color between blue and green, and a smile that arrived a half-second before she finished speaking, like she'd already decided Joan was funny. She was shorter than Joan by a good margin, broad-shouldered under a linen top, and she was looking at Joan like Joan was the interesting thing in the room.
"Okay, so what are you looking for?" she said. "Be honest. First time in here?"
"Is it that obvious?"
"You're doing the scan-and-hover. People who've been in before go straight for the incense. New people hover by the door like it might bite them." She came around the counter, wiping her hands on a cloth. "It doesn't bite. I'm Lauren."
"Joan."
"Joan. Okay, Joan. Soap, candles, or are you a secret crystal person? We get secret crystal people all the time. They come in for soap and leave with a whole amethyst."
"Just soap," Joan said. "Maybe. Possibly an amethyst."
Lauren laughed, a bright open sound, and steered her toward the back shelf. "Okay, we can work with that. What do you want it to smell like? And don't say clean. Nobody knows what clean smells like. That's a marketing lie."
Joan considered the rows of wrapped bars, the little handwritten labels. "Something warm. Not floral. Something that smells like a kitchen."
"Like a kitchen." Lauren's eyebrows went up, delighted. "See, most people say ocean or rainforest and I have to pretend those are real smells. But a kitchen, that's a real thing. Try this one." She pressed a bar into Joan's hands. Oatmeal, honey, something faintly like toasted bread. Joan breathed it in and felt, absurdly, like she'd walked into someone's grandmother's house.
"That's it."
"I know it's it. I made that batch." Lauren leaned back against the shelf, casual and pleased. "So what's the occasion? Nobody buys fancy soap on a Thursday for no reason."
Joan hesitated. "A potluck."
"Whose potluck?"
"A coworker's. My first one. I'm new in town, kind of, and I don't want to show up empty-handed looking like I have no life."
"Nobody's soapless at a potluck, Joan. That's not a personality people judge on." Lauren took the bar back, wrapped it in brown paper with a neat fold and a piece of twine, and rang it up. Then she paused, twine in her teeth, and looked at her with those blue-green eyes. "Okay, real question. What are you bringing? Food-wise."
"I hadn't gotten that far."
"Oh, we're getting that far. That's the whole potluck. The soap is for you. The food is for them." She was already leaning over the counter, tearing a page off a receipt roll, clicking a pen. "Tell me about the coworker. What do they like?"
"They're a science teacher. They eat like a raccoon."
"Sweet. So we're doing something with chocolate in it."
And Joan stood there at the counter of a hippie shop she'd never intended to enter, watching this stranger draw what appeared to be a recipe diagram on the back of a receipt, and felt the knot in her chest, the one she'd been carrying since the lounge, loosen by exactly one notch.
"Here." Lauren slid the paper across. "Honey lavender shortbread. Stupid easy, looks impressive, travels well. If it comes out ugly, still delicious, and I want a full report." She held out her hand for the five dollars, then waved it off halfway. "First purchase discount. It's a real thing. I just made it a real thing."
Joan paid anyway. Lauren dropped the coins into a tip jar shaped like a mushroom.
"Saturday?" Lauren said. "You'll be at the potluck Saturday?"
"Yes. Six o'clock."
"Then you've got plenty of time. And hey," Lauren said, pointing the pen at her, grinning, "if the shortbread fails, this place closes at six on Saturdays. Backup plan."
Joan walked out with the paper-wrapped bar in her bag and the smell of honey on her hands, and she caught herself smiling at the tie-dye in the window from the outside, which was not something she'd ever done before.
She was halfway to her car before she realized she'd never told Lauren the shortbread was for a potluck she was dreading. And it didn't matter. Somehow, it didn't matter at all.
The shortbread came out of the oven at four-thirty on Saturday, golden at the edges and only slightly lopsided. Joan stood over the cooling rack and pronounced it ugly-delicious, which Lauren had promised was a legitimate category. She wrapped it in parchment, tied it with the leftover twine from the soap, and spent twenty minutes deciding between two shirts before laughing at herself out loud in her own hallway.
Mel's house was a small blue bungalow with a cactus garden and a bicycle welded to the porch railing. Joan could hear the party from the curb: music, laughter, someone yelling about a timer. She checked the shortbread one last time, as if the parchment had come undone in the last ninety seconds, and walked up the path.
Mel opened the door before she knocked. "The sad counselor arrives. With baked goods. I knew the soap would work."
"You knew about the soap?"
"Joan, you smell like a bakery candle. It's very soothing. Come in." They took the shortbread, held it up to the light like an appraiser, and whistled. "Honey lavender? You made this?"
Lauren's recipe. Joan felt the words line up and decided against them. "There's a shop downtown. I got advice."
Mel's eyebrows went up, but the doorbell rang again behind her, and the moment dissolved into the crowd.
The house was warm and loud and strange. A woman from the front office had brought deviled eggs arranged like a smiley face. The pigeon neighbor had brought, inexplicably, two folding chairs. Joan floated near the kitchen holding a glass of wine she wasn't drinking and answered the standard questions. Where are you from. How do you like the kids. Do you have anyone.
She gave the standard answers. Nobody, she said, smiling like it didn't cost anything.
At six-fifteen, the doorbell rang, and Lauren's voice carried over the music before Mel had even finished opening the door. "I come bearing ice. Two bags. It's the only thing I had in the freezer, don't judge me."
Joan turned around too fast and the wine sloshed against her fingers.
Lauren stood in the doorway in a sundress and flip-flops, hair down, holding the ice like a trophy. Her eyes swept the room and landed on Joan, and the grin that spread across her face was slow and knowing and completely unfair.
"You," Lauren said, crossing the room without hesitation, "made shortbread."
"How did you possibly know that."
Mel was walking past with the ice. "She brought shortbread," they told Lauren, jerking a thumb. "Honey lavender. It's getting destroyed."
"That's my recipe." Lauren said it to the whole kitchen, delighted, and Joan's ears went hot. "I designed that shortbread for this exact potluck and I wasn't even invited. This is the greatest day of my life."
"You're here because of the ice," Joan said.
"I'm here because the shop closed at six and I remembered a backup plan." Lauren's eyes were bright. "Also I genuinely needed ice. Both things are true."
For the next hour the party did what parties do, and Joan kept finding Lauren at the edge of her orbit. Lauren learned the pigeon lady's name and her champion's name. Lauren got into a heated debate with a chemistry teacher about whether honey was vegan, and lost, and celebrated losing. Every so often she'd look across the room at Joan and something would pass between them, small and electric, that Joan had no name for and no defense against.
By eight-thirty the crowd had thinned. Joan was at the sink helping stack plates when Lauren appeared beside her with a dish towel, shoulder bumping hers.
"So," Lauren said, quietly enough that it stayed between them. "You came. Full report required."
"The shortbread went fast. Your recipe held up."
"I meant the potluck report. Are you surviving? Did anyone interrogate you?"
"A woman from the front office asked if I had anyone. I said nobody. She said 'yet' in a really ominous way."
Lauren laughed, then went quiet, wringing out the same plate she'd already dried. "Ominous 'yet.' She's probably right, honestly."
"Probably," Joan said, and heard how it came out, too fast, too willing, and looked down at the suds.
Lauren set the plate down. "Hey. Walk me out? It's nice tonight."
The front porch was cool and dark, moths batting at Mel's porch light. Somewhere down the street a dog was complaining about something. Lauren stood on the top step, one below Joan, so that for once they were nearly the same height, and looked up at her with the streetlight catching the edge of her smile.
"Okay," Lauren said. "I'm going to say a thing, and you're allowed to pretend it's about soap."
"Lauren."
"Ever since you walked into that shop, I've been thinking about you. Like, an embarrassing amount. I told my friends about you before I even knew your last name. And now you show up to a potluck with my shortbread recipe, looking like that, and I'm standing here trying to play it cool and it's not working at all."
The dog down the street stopped complaining. Joan could hear her own pulse.
"So that's the thing," Lauren said. "Not about soap."
"Lauren." Joan's voice came out lower than she meant it to. "You don't know what you're starting."
"I know exactly what I'm starting." Lauren's chin lifted. "Do you?"
Joan had spent eight months being careful. Careful with Mel, careful at work, careful with her own front door. She looked at Lauren's face, open and steady and waiting, and felt the careful thing crack straight down the middle.
"I think about you too," she said. "Constantly. Since the shop."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. It's very inconvenient."
Lauren's grin softened into something quieter, something that looked almost nervous on her, and Joan realized with a jolt that she had done that. She had made the unreadable girl look flustered.
"You want to get coffee sometime?" Lauren asked. "Like, a real one. Not a potluck one."
"I would like that very much."
"Okay." Lauren exhaled, laughed at herself, started down the step. Then she turned back, rose up on her toes, and kissed Joan's cheek, quick and warm, right at the corner of her jaw. "Saturday. I'll text you. Drive safe when you go."
She was halfway down the walk before Joan remembered how to breathe. Lauren glanced back once, saw her standing there frozen, and pumped a fist in the air like she'd just won something.
Joan stayed on the porch until the sundress disappeared around the corner, her cheek still warm, the whole night rearranged around one point of contact.
But that wasn't quite how it went. Joan's memory would try, later, to file the whole night under backup plan, but the truth was louder and warmer and had started days earlier, two doors down from Mel's blue bungalow.
Because the pigeon neighbor had a name, and the name was Dot, and Dot had been coming into the shop every Thursday for two years to buy beeswax candles for her coop. Lauren had heard all about the potluck by Tuesday. Mel's guest list, the deviled eggs, the poor new counselor who'd shown up in September and hadn't been to anything. Dot had described Joan the way bird people describe birds they like: quiet, well-kept, watches everything.
So when Lauren pushed open Mel's screen door at six-fifteen, two bags of ice balanced on one hip, she wasn't scanning the room for a stranger.
"Dot!" she called over the music, and the pigeon lady's face split open. "You started the party without me, you monster."
"You're late, honey."
"I'm dramatic. There's a difference." Lauren handed the ice to whoever was nearest, kissed Dot on the cheek, waved at the front office woman like they were old war buddies, and pointed at the deviled eggs. "Those are criminally cute and I'm eating at least four."
The room rearranged itself around her the way rooms did. Within ten minutes she'd learned the chemistry teacher's dog's name, gotten into a shouting match about whether honey was vegan, and convinced the pigeon lady to show phone photos of a bird named Reginald to three separate people who had not asked.
Joan stood near the kitchen holding her glass of untouched wine and watched all of it happen, feeling something complicated. Because Lauren had walked into her shop on Thursday and played it cool, played it like a meet-cute, played it like Joan was a stranger with nice eyes. And this was a woman who kissed people's cheeks and knew their birds.
Then Lauren's gaze swept the room, snagged on Joan, and the grin that spread across her face was slow and deliberate and completely unashamed.
She crossed the kitchen weaving through guests, plucked a slice of shortbread off the platter, and held it up to the light.
"Huh," she said. "Honey lavender. That's so weird. I had an idea for a really good recipe last week and I never wrote it down because I was worried somebody might've thought of it already." She took a bite. Chewed. Nodded slowly, like a judge. "Somebody definitely thought of it. Somebody thought of it and executed it and made it look easy."
"You said it was your recipe," Joan said. "At the shop. You wrote it on a receipt."
"I did no such thing." Lauren leaned against the counter, entirely too comfortable. "I said, and I quote, 'I have a Pinterest board.' The recipe is from a blog. I just wanted to see if you'd take the credit home with you."
Joan's ears went hot. "You let me tell people I made it."
"I let you tell people you made it," Lauren agreed, "and it's getting destroyed over there, which means it's excellent, which means I'm taking full credit as your anonymous recipe consultant. Also." She lowered her voice, and the playfulness in it went soft at the edges. "Dot's been talking about this potluck all week. Her neighbor Mel. The new counselor at the school. Quiet, pretty, watches everything." She tilted her head. "I was really hoping this was the same potluck. I brought ice as a cover story in case it wasn't."
"You already knew."
"I already knew." Lauren shrugged, unapologetic. "Is that weird? That's probably a little weird. In my defense, Dot showed me a picture of Reginald and I got so charmed I'd have come to a christening."
"How long have you known Dot?"
"Two years. She buys beeswax candles. Says the paraffin gives the birds headaches, which I don't believe, but she's very committed." Lauren's eyes were doing something warmer now, something that made Joan aware of the counter at her back. "So. The soap, the recipe, and now I find out you're the mystery counselor. Thursday wasn't an accident for me either, you know. I just had better cover."
"You could've said something."
"Said what?" Lauren's voice stayed light, but the question underneath wasn't light at all. "'Hi, remember me from four hours ago, the pigeon lady says you're pretty'?" She reached past Joan for the shortbread plate, close enough that Joan caught the citrus smell of her, then stepped back with it balanced on her palm. "I wanted to see if you'd come find me. You didn't. So I'm finding you."
"I was going to find you," Joan said. "I just didn't want to do it in front of thirty people who think I'm mysterious."
"You are mysterious. You're mysterious and you can bake." Lauren took a step back toward the party, walking backwards, plate held out like an offering. "Come on. Come meet Reginald. He's got an eye condition and a better personality than most people I know."
The rest of the evening happened in Lauren's orbit. Joan learned that the chemistry teacher was scared of the pigeons, that Mel's neighbor bred them competitively, that the front office woman's ominous 'yet' had apparently been delivered about half the couples in a fifteen-mile radius. Dot showed Joan the phone photos. Reginald did, in fact, have a better personality than most people Joan knew.
And every so often Lauren would find her again at the edge of the room, bump a shoulder against hers, steal a comment or a grape, and disappear back into the noise. By eight-thirty Joan wasn't watching the party anymore. She was tracking one sundress through a crowded bungalow and pretending very hard not to.
When the crowd thinned, Lauren appeared beside her at the sink with a dish towel, as if she'd been there all along.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Real talk. Dot told me about you on Tuesday. I've been thinking about you since Thursday. And I've spent this entire party pretending I ran into a potluck by chance." She wrung out the same plate twice. "So the question is whether that's charming or a red flag. I genuinely can't tell."
Joan dried the plate in her hands and set it down. "It's charming. It's a little unhinged, but it's charming."
"Unhinged-charming is my whole thing. Ask anyone." Lauren looked at her, and there was something underneath the grin now, steadier. "Walk me out? I want to say a thing and I don't want Dot narrating it to the whole coop."
On the porch, the night was cool and the moths were busy at the light. Lauren stopped one step down, which put them nearly level, and looked up.
"I was going to play it cool for like a month," she said. "Text you about soap. Run into you places. Do the slow thing. But I've got zero interest in doing the slow thing when I could just tell you I really, really want to see you again."
"You could've led with that," Joan said. "Instead of the ice."
"The ice was load-bearing." Lauren's smile faltered, just slightly, into something honest. "Saturday. Coffee. Real one, not a potluck one. Please say yes so this wasn't an unhinged evening."
"Yes," Joan said. "Obviously yes."
Lauren exhaled, laughed, and came up onto her toes to kiss the corner of her jaw, quick and warm. Then she started down the walk, turned back at the mailbox, and pointed at her.
"You made my shortbread," she called. "That's basically a love confession in this town."
Joan stood on the porch until the sundress disappeared around the corner, and didn't bother pretending otherwise.