April’s throat felt a little achy. “But you’re happy.”
Ramona smiled. “I really am. And I want youwithme in that happiness. Even if it’s different from what we always dreamed or planned.”
April squeezed her hand. “I’m with you,” she said, and meant it. “Always. A hundred percent. Even with this stuffy wedding shower that Olive and Blair have been very bossy about.”
Ramona laughed. “That’s fair.”
April pulled Ramona into her arms, and they held each other for a few seconds before April smacked a kiss to the top of her head.
“Now, before I submit fully,” April said as she released Ramona, “I do require one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You know.”
Ramona’s shoulders slumped. “Apes.”
“Come on, come on. We need to commemorate your last single day with Llama Face. It’s the proper thing to do.”
Ramona groaned, but a smile played on her mouth, and April knew she had her. Ramona hooked her thumb under her top lip, her forefinger into her bottom, and then pulled them both outward, tongue rigid and sticking out as she made the funniest, most terrifying bleating sound in the history of all animal noises.
April cracked up, as she always did.
Ramona dropped her hands and wiggled her lips as though stretching them out.
“There,” she said. “Did that ready you to face the day?”
“You know what?” April said, throwing the covers back and standing up, placing her fists on her hips like a superhero. She puffed out her chest and pushed Daphne and the Devon into the back of her mind so she could focus on her best friend. “It really, really did.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
The next morning,April thought she’d arrived early to the art studio. She wanted some time alone to set up her pieces for Nicola and focus on the task ahead of her, the prize.
The rehearsal dinner had gone smoothly yesterday—a short jaunt down the flower-bordered aisle in Ramona and Dylan’s backyard, fifty white chairs already set up for guests, followed by a simple dinner with friends and family at Clover Moon, which Owen had closed to the public for the private event. April had managed to stay present and had even left her phone in Ramona’s guest room so she wouldn’t be checking for Daphne’s text every five minutes. With Ramona’s wedding at five o’clock tonight, she didn’t need her own bullshit mucking everything up.
Considering she hadn’t heard a peep out of Daphne, she wasn’t sure there was any bullshit left to deal with anyway.
But fate—or the stars, the moon, the planets, or possibly just April’s catastrophic luck—had other plans, because for the second time in forty-eight hours, she stopped cold as soon as she walked into the art room.
There, at the front of the room, perched on four different easels, were Daphne’s paintings. Of course, April had seen the firstpiece—Daphne as a girl among the wildflowers—and she’d caught a glimpse of the fourth on Daphne’s birthday, but this…
Seeing them all together, this story, even if it was unfinished—it ended thus far with Daphne meeting Elena in Boston, and the irony wasn’t lost on April one bit—was an experience.
No, more than that. It was a commotion, a storm, an undoing.
The colors were incredible. Intricate and textured, with Daphne’s ever-changing but omnipresent white dress like a blank space somehow, an absence of life, even while Daphne’s face got a little clearer with each iteration.
April weaved through the student easels and chairs, coming to a stop in front of the display, eyes thirsty and drinking in the story. She kept going back to the second piece, the one with Daphne as a teen inside an old chapel, dead leaves on the floor, a cross soaring right above her head. The effect was haunting and melancholic, like a poem that hit somewhere deep inside April’s gut in a way she couldn’t put into words.
Didn’t need to.
That was the beauty of art, the magic.
And right then, April knew—these pieces belonged in the Devon.
“Hi.”
