I knew firsthand that clinging to business talk was easier than admitting your whole world had tilted. I didn’t know the details, but I could almost swear Evangeline’s world had just suffered a tilt.
“Hey, can you not bring this up with the girls tonight?” Eve asked just before I left.
They were all due at the inn for Rio’s bachelorette—a sleepover, like the one I’d promised Eve we’d have the night I stayed over at hers.
“No problem,” I said.
When I left her at Bay & Bloom, I glanced back once, the bell over the door jingling behind me. I thought about her long after I drove away. Bar us and the Holmeses, Evangeline was alone in the world, and maybe that was whyshe wanted so badly to belong to someone. We all knew it. Which was why we never teased her about her serial dating. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever considered that the belonging she ached for was closer than she let herself imagine. Maybe too close.
WE GATHERED IN ONEof the inn’s cabins that night, wine bottles and food trays scattered across the coffee table.
“Thanks for my third mini-bachelorette party,” Rio said, laughing. She laughed at everything tonight, so deliriously happy that it was infectious. She laughed when she told us that June, the owner of the health shop and her friend, had taken her to celebrate one night, and that her sister-in-law had given her a gift another day, and now she had us. “Piece by piece, it adds up,” she said, raising her glass.
Eve laughed right along with us, looking like her usual self. She even told us about a date she’d been on where the guy flirted shamelessly with the waitress right in front of her. “When he came back from the restroom with his fly open and toilet paper stuck to his shoe, the waitress and I just looked at each other and cracked up.” Eve shook her head, grinning. “I told him the babysitter called and I had to run.”
“The babysitter?” I echoed.
“Yep. He said, ‘I didn’t know you had kids.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, six of them—didn’t I mention Bruce was my firstborn and favorite?’ Then I left.”
We roared, wine sloshing in our glasses.
For a second, looking at Daphne, I wondered if she knew about Hayden. She and Eve had gone to the same school. Eve always said Daph was the tough, smart girl no one dared mess with, so they hadn’t been in the same circle. Still, a small town, Daphne knew the families, the history. Maybe she just didn’t think there was much to it.
When the laughter calmed, I told them about promoting Sandra to vice manager so I could breathe a little easier. “The inn’s full right now, and I wouldn’t even be able to sit here if I hadn’t released the reins a bit and promoted her. She’ll be more committed now that she’s got a title and less time to nitpick herself. Keeps her busy, keeps me free.”
Daphne arched a brow. “Isn’t she the one who flirted with Seb?”
I blinked. “Wait. Did I tell you guys that?”
Rio smirked into her glass. “I think you mentioned it.”
I grinned smugly. “Well, she can flirt all she wants. He’s mine.”
I wondered what anyone passing by the cabin would make of our whoops and cheers when Rio tore open the wrapped box we’d given her. She laughed through her tears when she saw its contents, and it hit me all over again—how strange and right it was that she’d ended up with Owen.
And me with Sebastian. Both of us with someone who’d somehow always been there. I almost said it out loud, but thinking of Eve, I didn’t. I sensed that saying it would be the equivalent of pulling a thread connected to an explosive device that had to be handled with precision and care.
“You’d be his personal cheerleader,” Evangeline said.
Rio held up the sexy nightie in Owen’s jersey number and team colors, plus the matching lingerie set and satin robe we’d got her so she wouldn’t catch a cold cheering him on.
“Is it true footballers don’t have sex the night before a game?” Eve asked.
Rio threw her head back, laughing. “Hell, no. Not in our case.”
Catching a quieter moment before we turned to sleep—we weren’t twenty anymore after all, and if we wanted to look rested the next day, we needed our sleep—I texted Sebastian.
The evening served as a great distraction, but I missed him with every nerve and bone and space in me.
“I miss you,”I wrote.“Don’t let it go to your head.”
Sebastian’s reply came fast. “Too late. I’m already drunk on it.”
I smiled at the screen like a fool, then tossed the phone aside before I could get too sappy. We talked every night and texted in between, but I didn’t want us getting used to technology replacing the real thing.
We didn’t have a date for his moving back to California yet—too many moving parts at NASA, apparently—but at least I knew he’d be here soon for the long weekend of Rio’s rehearsal dinner and wedding.
Houston could have him for now, but soon enough, he’d be all mine.
