Locked Down In Watch Hill : A Small Town Romance Read online

  Locked Down in Watch Hill

  S.Celi and Sara Celi

  Published by Lowe Interactive Media, LLC, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  LOCKED DOWN IN WATCH HILL

  First edition. March 2, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 S.Celi and Sara Celi.

  Written by S.Celi and Sara Celi.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE | ASHLEY

  TWO | ASHLEY

  THREE | KYLE

  FOUR | KYLE

  FIVE | KYLE

  SIX | ASHLEY

  SEVEN | ASHLEY

  EIGHT | KYLE

  NINE | KYLE

  TEN | ASHLEY

  ELEVEN | ASHLEY

  TWELEVE | ASHLEY

  THIRTEEN | ASHLEY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For all who need love

  ONE

  ASHLEY

  Disaster.

  That was the best word for my year. Disaster. One after the next, all culminating in my current state—locked down in COVID-19 quarantine, furloughed from my full-time job, and all alone just a few days before my thirtieth birthday. The same birthday I had planned to celebrate with a trip to Cabo San Lucas, where I planned to spend four days luxuriating on a beach at an all-inclusive resort, fruity drink in my hand and sunscreen on my face.

  Maybe I’ll make it there for my thirty-first birthday. Or fortieth? God knows.

  Sighing, I closed the travel app on my phone. The resort staff had been kind and understanding, but they also hadn’t offered me the much-hoped-for full refund. All the begging and pleading in my sweetest voice didn’t get me anywhere with the people at the call center on the other end of the phone. Instead of money back in my checking account, I now had almost five thousand dollars in airfare and hotel travel credits, along with promises that they wouldn’t expire anytime soon.

  A trip for a woman with a whole different life, one who lived in an alternate universe.

  I got up from my couch and paced the floor of my apartment once more. Eight hundred eighty-two square feet of open floor plan in a renovated building three blocks from downtown Watch Hill, a leafy and quiet suburb on the east side of Cincinnati. A living room, galley kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, two closets, and a balcony overlooking the small courtyard that united twelve units, all of which fanned out in a small U-shape.

  Two years earlier, I’d called the place perfect while on the phone with my mom. She didn’t know anything about Watch Hill, but she’d been happy to hear me so happy about my new job as the special events coordinator at the Taft Boutique Hotel. “Dad and I can’t wait to see it,” she’d said. “And I know you’ll have fun decorating it.”

  And I had.

  I’d scoured online sales, antique shops, and closeout deals for the perfect pieces designed to turn the bare walls and square rooms into a mid-mod aficionado’s dream. A year later, I surveyed the place with satisfaction, dreaming of all the Instagram-worthy dinner parties and wine nights that I’d throw now that I had every wall decorated exactly right.

  That was then.

  Before COVID-19 shook everything up, causing governments to close schools, restaurants, bars, and hotels to try to slow the spread of the virus. Before lockdowns, travel restrictions, and regular quarantines. Before . . .

  Stop obsessing over it, Ashley. You’ll go crazy in here if you do. Besides, you’re luckier than a lot of people, and you know that.

  My stomach rumbled, so I headed for the refrigerator. A few sticks of string cheese, some lonely orange juice, a box of takeout from last week, some canned wine, and a few condiments. A glance in the small pantry near the apartment’s back door didn’t do much better—just a mix of crackers, flour, some cereal, and a few canned soups.

  Another sigh escaped my lips, this one heavier than the first. I needed to go to the grocery store, but that meant masking up and braving social distance guidelines I wasn’t sure would protect me from the virus. Not that you can go, anyway. I closed the refrigerator and leaned against it. I was in quarantine thanks to a contact-tracing email from my dentist office that said I shared the waiting room with a patient who later tested positive for the disease. I knew I should have canceled that routine cleaning.

  Still feeling defeated, I flopped back onto the living room couch, the pull of hunger in my stomach growing stronger with each breath. I knew I could order groceries online, but I wanted to save the service fee, and somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to open the app on my phone with a running list of necessities. A grocery order meant cooking, and by God, I didn’t feel like doing that either.

  Then I remembered the email gift card.

  A month earlier, my sister, Bridget, sent it to me as a surprise, a virtual kiss all the way from New York City. She sent it along with regrets about being unable to make it to Cabo due to her own COVID-19 quarantine restrictions and concerns about her future mother-in-law who lived with my sister and her boyfriend in Manhattan and had a withering case of COPD. “I’m going to miss you so much on your birthday,” the email read. “And especially the chance to have one of our epic pizza nights. Order some on me.”

  The message included a thirty-dollar voucher to Watch Hill Pizza, a spot just around the corner from my apartment.

  God bless Bridget. She often had epic timing. A few clicks later, and I had someone on the line from the establishment.

  “I’ll take a large pepperoni pizza,” I told the employee who asked to take my order. “With an extra round of cheese, please, and some garlic knots.”

  The whole thing came to about twenty bucks, and it was far too much food for one person, but I’d save the rest for lunch the following day. I hung up with a smile on my face and a relief coursing through my veins. My upcoming thirtieth birthday might look nothing like what I expected, but at least I’d get a decent meal out of the unexpected twists. Add a little red wine and some binge-worthy TV shows, and I’d be able to make it through the weekend.

  And making it was what mattered.

  KYLE

  What a year.

  What a blasted, strange, twisted, unforgettable year. But at least amid all the upheaval I had the restaurant. We’d managed to stay open despite all the state-wide operating restrictions, and for the first time since taking it over, I was thankful I was the guy who ran a pizza parlor for a living. Watch Hill Pizza was my savior in more ways than I could have ever expected. If there was one thing people wanted during hard times, it was pizza.

  Pizza, beer, and chicken wings.

  “Got another order,” Tyler said after he hung up the main phone line. “Pepperoni pizza and garlic knots.”

  “I’ll add that in. I assume it’s local?”

  “Right around the corner, on Hilltop. One of those apartment complexes near the library.”

  Nodding, I turned back to the trays of uncooked dough and bowl of signature tomato sauce in front of me. Normally it took four employees to handle the orders and walk-in business, but the pandemic forced me to cut back the staff once we shut down the small dining room and placed our emphasis on takeout orders and delivery. Now, Tyler and I held down the place most nights, and I was glad I’d stumbled on the college freshman a few weeks after he graduated from high school. Good workers were hard to find, but Tyler told me many times he was grateful just to have the job he did.

  Besides, the clientele that frequented Watch Hill Pizza tended to tip rather well.

  “Why don’t you man the store for a while and I’ll g
et these out,” I told Tyler once we’d finished up the latest round of orders. We had ten in the immediate area that needed delivery. “I could use the fresh air.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind driving.”

  “I know, but you’ve also wanted to train on how to manage this place, and that starts by being here when I’m not.” I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “So, tonight is the night. Think you can handle things while I’m gone?”

  “I think so.” He glanced at the large clock near the cash register and shook his head. “It usually slows down around now, anyway.”

  I slid the last pizza into the warming case that would soon go in my trunk. “When I get back, we can talk about how you did. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Soon enough, I sat behind the wheel of my SUV, yacht rock on the radio, the aroma of fresh pizza and calzones wafting through the cab. It was just a little after six and only a few cars were on the street, another symptom of months of lockdown restrictions focused on slowing the spread of the virus. A year or so earlier, Watch Hill would have been busy, with friends and neighbors gathering at Sam’s Deli, stopping at Already Perked for coffee, or passing through town on their way to a night out in downtown Cincinnati.

  But not anymore. Not since the virus. Not since . . .

  I shook my head and turned up the music, reminding myself to not dwell on the bizarre nature of how much life had changed in the last few months. If I lived in the past instead of the present, I’d go crazy, and I knew it. I still had my health, and I hadn’t lost any friends or family to the disease. That made me lucky, and I needed to remember that. To get through this, I needed to keep my nose to the grindstone, and focus on the task ahead. At the moment, that meant delivering pizzas.

  I set about dropping off order after order until the final one remained, a lonely order of one pepperoni pizza and garlic balls destined for the apartment complex near the library. I pulled the car into a parking spot on the street and took the receipt from the top off the box to double-check the address.

  Ashley Stevens, read the name on the order.

  I frowned. Ashley Stevens?

  Common enough name. I knew that. How many women named Ashley had I met over the years? Too many to count; Ashley was one of those names that parents in the 1980s and 1990s loved to bestow on their children, sometimes with variations of spelling designed to show they weren’t part of the collective path, even though they weren’t fooling anyone. And Stevens had been around for as long as the country itself.

  Still, one Ashley Stevens stood out to me.

  One I’d met in the before—before COVID-19—just weeks before the virus began. The New Year’s Eve party I attended to ring in the year, the one I’d paid too much money to get into at The Frosted Heart, a basement nightclub in downtown Cincinnati run by Seth Sampson. Seth, who wanted to bring Las Vegas style nightclubs to the area and transform this conservative Midwestern city. Seth, who’d lost everything when The Frosted Heart had to shut down at the start of the pandemic. And Seth, who had also recently called me, begging to pick up hours delivering pizza. I’d wanted to hire him, but I hadn’t been able to make it work.

  Like many now, you either had employment or you didn’t. And not by choice. Damn virus.

  Ashley had been there that night too, ordering vodka sodas and dancing with a gaggle of women I knew from the city’s miniscule social scene. Go to enough parties and events around Cincinnati, and you tended to see the same people over and over. It was only natural to find yourself talking to them once you met eyes enough times.

  Ashley, with the long honey-blonde hair, glittering brown eyes, thick eyebrows, and small dimple on her left cheek when she smiled.

  I put the receipt back in the cupholder. This order probably wasn’t for the same Ashley Stevens. Women like her didn’t live in Watch Hill, they tended to live closer to downtown, usually in renovated lofts with fancy names and views of the Ohio River.

  No, this wasn’t the same Ashley Stevens at all. I punch go to destination on the car GPS, turned up the radio, and proceeded with the delivery.

  Time to earn that money.

  TWO

  ASHLEY

  Deliveries—the one bright spot of my current life.

  Over the last few months, I’d spent so much time at home, almost never leaving my apartment, that I’d come to regard the occasional drop-off from a delivery driver as an event, something that qualified as the highlight of my day. A ten-second interaction, sometimes less, and sometimes a moment that came only with the silent thud from a person leaving a package on my doorstep before slinking away without a word.

  But nonetheless, an event.

  I leaned closer to the mirror, examining my face. It had been so long since I’d put on a full face of makeup that I had almost forgotten how. The compacts, mascaras, tubes of lipstick, and palette of eyeshadow on the bathroom counter were all strangers now, relics of a former life, one where I needed to be presentable every day at work, one where I had a commute, happy hours to attend, trips to plan, brunches to eat, and an Instagram account to maintain.

  Now, I went days without opening that stuff.

  Still, I could use a little spruce up. If I greeted the pizza delivery driver with some makeup on my face, I might feel better about the fact that I was about to be alone with nothing but a bottle of white wine for company, and my own misery to hold me tight.

  I unscrewed the cap on the BB cream and patted a gob on my cheek. Then I rubbed some on my chin, and a little more on my forehead. There, that’s better. Once finished with the foundation, I opened the compact of loose powder topped with a small blending brush. After that came a swipe of mascara on my eyelashes and some blush on my cheeks. Even better still.

  For once, I didn’t look like sunken, hollowed-out mess.

  “Give me a second,” I called, when the doorbell rang.

  I slipped on the mask hanging from the hook by the door. I hated wearing it just to get a delivery, but I’d been exposed to someone who had the virus and I didn’t want to risk giving anything to anyone else. Still, it felt odd. I didn’t have any symptoms, and I’d been taking my temperature every four or five hours for the last few days. Always normal. I pulled the door open a few inches. I knew I could have just instructed them to leave the dinner on the welcome mat, but I wanted—needed—to see someone else. There was something about having my gaze catch with another person, something about the mere act of saying hello . . .

  “Kyle?” I stepped back from the doorway. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kyle Ross, right?”

  Good Lord, I remembered this man. He was gorgeous to look at, but he’d also been fun. Witty and intelligent. And now he was here. In front of me.

  “Guilty as charged.” He held the large pizza box and a smaller container of garlic knots in his hand. “And you’re Ashley Stevens from New Year’s Eve, aren’t you?” The skin crinkled around his eyes, so I guessed he smiled underneath the white mask he wore with the Watch Hill Pizza logo stenciled in the center. “From The Frosted Heart.”

  “Same one.” I laughed once, realizing I was smiling too. Not that he could see that underneath the black fabric across my mouth and cheeks. “We did the vodka shots.”

  “Yep, and you were telling me all about the different ones. I didn’t realize there was such an art to the ordering of a vodka and club soda.”

  “There is, thanks to that semester abroad I did in Finland.”

  “Probably the first person I know who did a college semester abroad in some place other than London or Paris.”

  “Trust me, if you ever get to go to Finland, you’ll love it.”

  His eyes softened. “Of course, travel like that seems so far away right now.”

  “I know. We used to travel so easily, as if it all was no big deal. We just went to the Bahamas, or Canada, or . . . or . . .” My breath caught on something raw about that sentence, and I pushed away the emotion. “I was supposed to be in Me
xico this weekend. Cabo, actually. And then I had to cancel it.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  My face fell. “And it’s my birthday in a few days. I was supposed to celebrate it there.”

  “That’s a shame,” he said softly. “I mean, that really sucks.”

  “It does.” I winced. A missed birthday wasn’t a big deal, and yet it was.

  “Why didn’t you go ahead and go?” Kyle studied me. “I didn’t realize Mexico was closed to us. I see people posting from there all the same time on Instagram.”

  “It’s not, it’s open. But . . .” I touched the outside of my mask. “I got exposed to someone who has the virus. At least, I got an email from a dental surgery telling me that I did, and that I was sitting next to someone who later tested positive. I’m in quarantine for five more days.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine.” I held up a hand. “I don’t have any symptoms at all. I mean, not at all. I’ve been taking my temperature and checking. Not even a cough.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Of course, I might be asymptomatic. I might have it and not even realize it.” I stepped a little farther away. “And I mean, I don’t want you to get it. I don’t want you to get sick.”

  “We both have on masks. I’m sure it’s okay.”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  He shrugged. “Then I guess we will find out.”

  “We will.” I sighed. “So even though I could probably go to Mexico once the quarantine ends, something about the trip didn’t feel right.”

  “I guess that makes sense. One of the few things right now that probably does.” The two of us stared at each other for a long moment. Then finally, he held out the food. “I guess I should give you this. You’re probably hungry.”

  “Thanks.” I took the boxes but made no move to close to the door. “Listen, I, um . . . it was nice meeting you back on New Year’s Eve. That was a great party.”