I love that this song "Don't Deserve You" by Plumb was written for her newborn son. It's about unconditional love that works perfectly for this story as well. I will be posting songs throughout Restless Hope. In future chapters, I won't comment on them unless I have a specific reason, but I highly recommend you listen to them before or while you read. It really does add something special to the experience. Enjoy this next chapter! xo Sarah

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Beth

I peek over at David's secretary. Fortunately for me, she is too absorbed in her nails to notice my mortification. That's a relief at least.

Leaning my head against the backrest of the couch, I stare up at the ceiling in shock. I can't believe Isaac is here. How strange to see him after all this time! What will he say to me? What can I possibly say to him?

I thought Isaac was still in Africa. I know because it was all breathlessly reported on an online gossip website when he hit Hottest Philanthropist list (because, you know, life would be pointless without categorizing everyone according to their levels of attractiveness. I keep waiting with baited breath for the Hottest Ophthalmologist list). I also know because his grandmother keeps me updated every time I eat at her cafe. She couldn't be more proud of her grandson. Isaac may have needed to escape the town, but he is a loyal grandson who contacts her every few days to make sure she's okay.

Considering that he's probably long forgotten me, it would be utterly humiliating if he knew how many times I've thought of him over the years. The memory of what we were, of what we almost became still haunts me.

The first time I saw Isaac was on the first day of 8th grade. My best friend had just moved to Maine, and I was dreading having to begin school without her by my side. When I arrived, I saw a group of kids gathered outside. Curious, I walked over to see what the fuss was about.

He was the fuss.

Isaac was standing in the middle, the gorgeous new kid from Chicago, looking all James Deanesque cool in a weathered leather jacket and white t-shirt, giving off a rebel without a cause vibe (I had recently seen the movie on one of my Netflix marathons and had a screen crush on Dean). Everyone was instantly nuts about the new kid, especially the girls. One of them, a girl with long brown hair and a killer bod, kept touching his arm and playing with his hair. I half expected him to ignore everyone else and focus on her, but he didn't. He had a way of giving each person his full attention, making them feel in that moment as if they were the most interesting person in the world. Even though we were only 14, I have never seen anyone work a crowd like him.

Just as I was about to turn away, his eye caught mine and we stared at each other, just like we had done today. There was this deep and instant connection between us. I can't explain it any other way. It couldn't have been more than 10 seconds we were staring at each other, but it seemed a lifetime, until Isaac broke into a broad grin that melted me and introduced himself, drawing me into the group.

Isaac chose me to show him around the new school and help him find his locker, turning down the flirty brunette who offered. I can only imagine what else she would have offered had he shown any interest. I couldn't understand why he'd pick me over her, except I couldn't deny there was an instant bond. I know he felt it too.

We were inseparable after that. I helped him with his algebra. He taught me how to cook. We would goof off at the mall after school, or play X-Men at the arcades. We would sneak out and ride roller coasters whenever the fair rumbled into town, then finish the night with sticky fingers as we split an elephant ear* dripping with butter and honey. For a girl whose formative years had been lonely, Isaac was the light that brightened my days.

For years, we were only that. Best Friends.

I was fine with it, and I'm not just saying it to make myself feel better. Sure I thought Isaac was attractive, but I saw way too many of my friends get serious with guys, then they'd break up and hate each other. There was one thing I couldn't live with, and that was to have Isaac Whitman hate me.

It would have been harder if Isaac had a girlfriend who resented my friendship with him, but he didn't seem too interested in dating. Learning didn't come easy for him, so he was always cracking the books. After washing out of a couple of marriages, his mother, Polly, and he had come to live with his grandmother in Lexington. Isaac had seen his mother leech off everyone around her since he was a kid, and he was determined that life would be different for him. He was going to make something of himself.

His grandmother, Violetta Adams, was one of the pillars of Lexington. She had moved up from South Carolina when she was a young girl. At the age of 17, she got pregnant, tied the knot in a hasty shotgun marriage and opened a cafe, bringing savory southern dishes her mother had taught her to waken the taste buds of our town. The marriage didn't stick, but the cafe sure did. Violetta's Cafe was known for having the best pulled pork and jambalaya north of Mississippi. She had won several distinguished awards, which she hung on the wall in a prominent place where you could see them coming and leaving. Some might dispute that claim, but they likely haven't tried Violetta's melt in your mouth pork with her secret barbecue sauce. And since Violetta taught Isaac how to cook, you can only imagine how good my lessons were.

I remember the exact moment everything changed, when Isaac saw me as something more than just a friend. We were hiking the stunning Monument Mountain when a freak storm passed overhead, instantly soaking us. Isaac found a small cave nearby to wait out the storm. According to the stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville used to hike these trails together. It was even in one of these caves that their conversation inspired ideas for "Moby Dick."

We crawled into the warm space and huddled together for warmth. I wrung my shirt out and happened to look up just in time to see a yearning expression in Isaac's eyes. I became conscious my shirt was clinging to my body. I realized that for the first time he was viewing me as a woman, not just a girl. Isaac slowly untied his jacket from around his waist and wrapped it around me, drawing me near. Our lips were so close they could almost brush.

"Come to prom with me?" he whispered.

"Okay," I whispered back.

I thought he would kiss me then, but he didn't. He did hold me, though, until I quit shivering, and the sun pierced through the clouds. Needless to say, I had high hopes for the prom.

One week before our senior prom, though, Lexington was rocked with devastating news. We were shocked to discover that Polly, who had made a career of targeting men to lust after her voluptuous body only to promptly blackmail them, had latched her claws onto the town's beloved mayor, and he, in a moment of weakness, had consumed the forbidden fruit. From there had followed a long and sordid affair consummated after hours in the back room of Violetta's cafe. The mayor's wife, Leah, became suspicious and had followed her sweetheart one night to the cafe. She walked in to discover the two in the act.

No one knows exactly what happened that night. All we know is that Leah, the kindest, sweetest, most gentle woman you could ever meet, a woman with honey blonde hair and green eyes who had won the hearts of practically every person in town, a woman who wouldn't hurt a fly much less a person, had shot the lovers, though it's quite a stretch to call them that.

Right after, Leah called Violetta in a daze and told her what she'd done. According to Violetta, she arrived to find Leah holding her dead husband's head in her lap, stroking his hair and weeping so heavily that mascara streamed down her face in rivers.

In the garbled, barely understandable testimony she spilled to the cops, she said that Polly had mocked her, claiming the mayor had never loved her and rubbing the seamy and explicit details of their affair in Leah's face while her husband just sat there, stone faced. Consumed with jealousy, Leah had pulled out the gun her husband had bought her for self defense and shot Polly. Her husband had lunged for her then, and she had shot him too.

Bang. Bang.

It was over that fast.

I just wanted her to shut up. I just wanted her to shut up. Leah kept repeating those words all night.

A town without a mayor, a mother without a daughter, a son without a mother. Lexington became a town shaken to its core.

The scandal broke Violetta's heart, who loved Leah like a daughter. Violetta was deeply religious, and even had a crucifix hanging on the wall in the back of the cafe. I'm not sure if it was the affair or the murder that cut her deeper. The thought of Polly and the mayor doing their nasty business under the tormented gaze of the suffering Christ still gives me the heebie jeebies. The cafe survived the scandal only because Viola had nurtured relationships with customers who passed through the town who remained untouched by the tragedy. But you rarely see locals crack the doors of her establishment anymore. I know because I eat breakfast there three or four times a week. Even if locals don't exactly blame Violetta for her daughter's actions, they don't have the stomachs to eat in a place corrupted by sin and murder, and I can't blame them. Guilty by association, and by memory.

The food is as wonderful as ever at the cafe, but the mood has changed. I've hinted to Violetta she should consider moving to a new location, one untainted by tragic memories, perhaps someplace less gloomy and depressing, but she will never do it. Isaac has more money than he knows what to do with now, and I'm sure he would have been happy to help set her up in a new place if she really wanted it. I suspect by now she is too used to her kitchen, too old and too set in her ways to start fresh. If she ever closes this place down, she probably won't open another. And this place gives her something to keep her hands and mind busy.

As far as I know, Violetta still travels every week to the jail to visit the woman who murdered her daughter and brings her sticky bread and companionship, because that's the kind of person Violetta is. And for all his fears that he might turn out like his mother, Isaac is just like his grandmother.

After the scandal, the town, in particular the high school kids, were not so kind to Isaac. He went from golden boy to despised overnight. When he returned to school, the kids, feeding on vitriol from dinner tables and everywhere else in town, turned cold and shunned him. They didn't say anything to his face, but there was a whole lot of whispering and judgmental stares and conversations ending abruptly when he entered the room.

Furious with the way the other kids were ostracizing him, I gave a few of them a piece of my mind, until Isaac firmly grabbed my hand and pulled me aside. It didn't matter, he tried to tell me. The town needed someone to blame, and since the mayor and Polly were both dead and Leah was in jail for a crime many of them sympathized with, it was only natural they would turn their anger on the families. It'll pass, he claimed.

"Then prove it," I'd said, resting my arms on his broad shoulders. "Come with me to the prom. For one night, let's forget about everything we've been through and just live in our own little bubble."

He paused, then looked at me with the saddest, most beautiful eyes. He wrapped his arms around me and tucked my head under his chin.

"I would rather just stay home, but if that's what you want, Beth, you've got it."

Then he whispered in my ear, "I bet you'll look gorgeous in your dress." 

I hoped I looked gorgeous enough for Isaac Whitman to finally kiss me.

The door opens and Isaac steps out, forcing my mind back to the present.

My heart aches with regret as I see the man that once agreed to be mine. How do two people whose hearts were once bound become such strangers? I brace myself for a conversation with him. What can I possibly say? If only things hadn't got so ugly last time we spoke.

Isaac doesn't even look my way. He's leaning over the desk, laughing and flirting with Ms. Nails, or at least she's flirting with him. I can't see what he's doing. All I can do is stare helplessly at his back, a fine, muscled back made all the stronger by laying concrete to build schools to educate the poor. Is he ignoring me?

"Beth?"

David greets me with a broad smile. I stand up and he pulls me into a tight hug. I smile against his firm chest, blinking back the tears that are threatening to form in my eyes. I refuse to let David, or Isaac, see me cry. It's clear Isaac has moved on. And why shouldn't he after the way I hurt him? Plastering on a bright, fake smile, I follow David into his office.

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* For any of my readers unfamiliar, an elephant ear is a large, round flat bread usually topped with butter and cinnamon sugar or honey. They are yummy!

I update every Tuesday and Friday. If you are enjoying this, please follow me and add" Restless Hope" to your library so you can be notified when the story is updated.

Dedication for this chapter goes out to the lovely and talented @MichelleJoQuinn. She is kicking off her Hearts on Sleeves anthology this month with several talented writers, many of them dear friends. There's a full range of sub genres, so you're bound to find something that fits your reading tastes. I highly recommend you check it out. Michelle also has recently published "Harley," with Limitless Publishing which I recently picked up from Amazon and am enjoying.