If she read these, maybe she could understand Asher better and not make such a huge mistake in the future. His grief clung to him in the same way his wet suit did, and that more than anything was going to give her the courage to apologize and repack those boxes.
She needed to focus on her book anyway instead of getting distracted by boxes and lack of light and Asher Brooks.
Chapter 10
“Shedidn’tsuspectathing?” Don asked, skeptical. They sat at their conference table at the Palms to brainstorm for their impromptu fundraiser.
“Not a thing,” Nancy assured him.
Don had worried that planning a sea turtle fundraiser right after they learned about Eliana’s love of turtles would be too on the nose.
Then to add a game element to it, when they knew she loved games? It was obviously tailor-made for Eliana.
“She doesn’t know it’s couple’s games yet. Or that we’re going to talk Asher into coming too,” Nancy continued.
Rosa jumped in. “The idea of it really seemed to cheer her up,” she said. “Didn’t she look like she was about to cry when we bumped into her?”
Winnie nodded. “It’s the stress of this book and the wedding. It’s too much.” Winnie’s phone buzzed with a text.
Horace:I’m not going to make it home for dinner.
Her heart sank. This was the third time this week.
“She’s still writing thatI’m So Happy I’m Singlebook?” Walt said. “I thought you were going to convince her not to.”
“Happily Single,” Nancy reminded him. “And Winnie’s working on it.”
Winnie tried to put her head back into matchmaking. The truth was she’d been so focused on racing to finish Julia’s wedding dress and the bridesmaid dresses that she hadn’t had as much time as she would have liked to talk to Eliana about the beauty of a healthy relationship.
She had hoped that planning the wedding and seeing how in love Julia and Logan were would be a natural, organic way to convince her that she could be happy in a relationship too, but that seemed to be backfiring as well, as the stress of planning a last-minute wedding only seemed to be turning her off of marriage more.
Winnie’s friends looked at her expectantly, and she realized they were waiting for her to report how the plan—the non-existent plan—was going.
“Well …” Her phone buzzed again. Eliana was going live on social media. Eliana had helped Winnie set up an account and notifications so she could follow Eliana’s posts.
Social media. A light blinked on in her brain. “We need to speak her language.”
They all nodded, though she knew they didn’t quite understand her yet.
“By creating a social media page filled with our own stories about how we fell in love.”
They erupted at the same time.
“What?”
“Wait.”
“NO.”
“Ohh, fun!”
“I’m not against it.”
“Brilliant.”
Nancy said that, and she said it loud enough to quiet everyone else.
“We’ll all log in to take turns posting a picture of our wedding day—or as close as we can get, if you don’t have a wedding picture—and talk about the moment you knew you were in love with your spouse.”
