Rory glanced from her sisters to the golf cart currently parked behind her very used Honda, her eyebrows raised. “Since when do you have a golf cart?”
“Since Gary bet me he knew more baseball stats than me,” Mac said.
Rory’s mouth dropped open. “And you held him to it?”
“Of course. It’s not my job to babysit every dumb-ass man in this town. That’s what they’ve got mommas for. ’Sides, I wasn’t gonna pass it up. It only takes three minutes to get from my house to yours this way. The girls are gonna love it.” Mac set down her six-pack, cracked one open, and settled on the swing next to Rory.
Without a word, Will slipped into the house and came out a minute later with her own wineglass and the bottle Rory’d opened earlier. She topped off Rory’s and poured herself a good-sized amount before settling on Rory’s other side.
“Y’all didn’t have to come over, you know.” Rory tugged at the hem of her long-sleeved shirt, feeling uncomfortable and relieved at the same time. “If you had plans.”
Mac snorted. “Yeah, I was gonna have a riveting time tonight fallin’ asleep in front of the TV. Again.”
“Shouldn’t you be out livin’ it up? Findin’ a nice boy to have some fun with? You’re not even thirty.”
“I keep tellin’ her that,” Will said. “But she doesn’t even wanna look. Hasn’t had more than a passing interest since—”
“Will,” Mac warned in a low voice.
Rory split a look between the two of them, her brow furrowed. “Since…what?”
In the past year, Rory’d come to realize just how much of her sisters’ lives she’d missed out on. She’d gone away to college and had been in her own world, completely unconcerned about what was going on at home. She couldn’t get that time back, but she soaked up every tidbit of history she could get.
Will lifted her brows, and Mac simply glared at her in response.
“I’m not sure what’s goin’ on, and I understand if it’s something you don’t want me to know, but—” Rory swallowed, her throat suddenly thick. It’d been like this on and off for days. Since Nash had stepped off her porch and walked away. She’d be fine. Totally and completely fine, going about her day as if nothing had changed. And then all of a sudden, the realization of what she’d lost came crashing down on her, and it was hard to even suck in a breath. “But I could use the distraction.”
She didn’t need to look up to know her sisters were having a silent conversation around her.
Finally, Mac sighed and slumped back against the swing. “Fine.”
Rory turned toward her. “You’ll tell me?”
“A very brief and incredibly condensed version of the worst time of my life? Sure, why not.” Mac patted Rory’s knee. “And thenyou’regonna telluswhat’s been goin’ on.”
So, yeah… She’d, um…she’d kind of neglected to tell her sisters anything. At all. Like the fact that she’d been in a relationship with Nash for months, or that she was pretty sure she was in love with him, or that he’d left—not because of the myriad of issues trying to tear them apart, but because she couldn’t get her shit together enough to keep him.
The night her sisters had come home with her, they’d let her just be. They hadn’t pushed and she hadn’t offered up anything, and it’d been a wonderful respite while everything inside her had been a jumbled mess.
Everything was still a jumbled mess, but maybe that was part of why she’d texted her sisters in the first place. Maybe their insight would help her work through everything she needed to. Or at least point her in the right direction.
“Deal?” Mac asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Deal.”
Mac sighed and rested back against the cushion. “The week before I left for college, Hudson and I had a…thing.”
Rory blinked, then slowly twisted to face Mac. “Hudson. Miller. As in your best friend since elementary school? That Hudson?”
“The very one.”
“Define ‘a thing.’”
Mac shrugged and took a pull of her beer. “We slept together. He basically told me he loved me, and I told him the same. Then I left for the college we were supposed to attend together, and he…didn’t.” She said the words like she’d rehearsed them. Like they didn’t mean anything—like they’d happened to someone else.
“And…”
“And…that’s it.”
