“Thanks for coming,” Noel said as she hurried into the kitchen from the back porch. She came over and gave me a hug.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I replied. I wasn’t a stranger, but none of the rest of the club had been invited. Only the Hawthornes were present, except for Lou, Bas, and me. Frankie and my brother weren’t even there.
“Of course.” Noel smiled. “I didn’t want you to think you could skip it, since I knew Bas would be here.”
“He spent an hour at the store looking for the right present,” I told her, smiling back.
“I’m not surprised.” She glanced over her shoulder at Bas. “The kidslovehim. He’s so good with them.”
“Mama,” one of her girls called, waving her arms over her head.
“Duty calls,” Noel said with an exasperated sigh. “If we don’t get a chance to talk again tonight, you guys should come over next week for dinner! I promise, it’s usually not so chaotic here.”
“Was it just me, or was she trying to convince you of how good Bas is with kids?” Nova joked once Noel was out of earshot.
“She was,” Noel’s sister Esther said with a laugh. She was doing something at the sink with her back turned toward us. Titus and Otto had married sisters. It was less weird than it seemed.
“He’d make such a good father,” Nova said, fluttering her eyelashes at me.
“Shut up,” I mumbled.
God, Bas was hot. He was laughing at something Titus said, and I had a flashback of the first night we’d kissed when his smile had completely changed everything for me. I could no longer imagine seeing him and not finding him the most attractive man in any room.
Dinner was chaotic, with all the adults eating where they stood while the kids took up every inch of the kitchen table. Afterward, we sang the “Happy Birthday” song and watched Ariel blow out her candles. While Esther and Aunt Heather plated cake and ice cream and passed it out, Ariel opened her presents.
I watched as she shook Bas’s, and her eyes lit up. With a squeal she ripped off the paper to find the Lego set Bas had meticulously chosen.
“I’ll come over this week and help ya build it,” he told her when she looked around the room for him.
“Just me and you?”
“Just me and you,” he replied. “Or maybe you can come over to my place and we can make it there.”
“Can I?” Ariel demanded, her head whipping toward Noel.
“Sure,” Noel said, leaning back against Titus’s chest.
Ariel looked toward Bas. “Is Harpy gonna be there?”
He glanced at me across the room. “Not if you don’t want her to.”
Ariel thought about it for a minute and then shrugged. “She can come.”
I grinned as she hopped up from the table and ran to Bas, hugging him tight around his legs. I couldn’t hear what they said while she was over there, but eventually Ariel made her way back to the table to open the rest of her gifts.
There were so many people in the house that it was pretty easy to avoid any awkward moments for the rest of the night. The kids ran off to the living room to play with Ariel’s new toys while the adults visited. Someone turned on music, though much quieter than they’d had at the last party. I helped clean up, rinsing the dishes as they were brought from the table and loading the dishwasher.
By the time we were finished, some people had already left. I couldn’t see Bas anywhere, but Noel looked like she was getting a little frazzled as it got later and later, and I knew she needed to put her kids in bed, so I went searching.
I heard him first.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” he asked quietly. “I didn’t give you shit when you and Cian hooked up.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it,” Myla replied. “Lou—”
“Have you talked to Lou?” Bas demanded.
“Of course,” Myla spat. “She said she doesn’t care who you’re with.”
