I shake my head her way. He must have perfected them because I’ve never encountered that one.
“And fourth,” she grins wickedly, “he has the most adorable habit of making pancakes shaped like handcuffs on Sunday mornings.”
I gasp hard, and my mouth falls completely open. I love my Sunday handcuff pancakes! How dare he make them for her, too—even if she was first to receive them. Jasper is in so much trouble, I hope he can feel it twenty miles away.
“Oh, we’re doing this?” Macy’s eyes light up with competitive fire. “Because, honey, I can absolutely top that. My current boy toy—and yes, Emmie, I see you cringing—has some delicious secrets of his own.” She shoots a look toward where Emmie is getting her toenails painted, clearly enjoying her mortification. While Jordy isn’t Emmie’s ex, he’s her brother, and that’s ten times worse. “First, he practices his tough guy poses in front of my full-length mirror. Second, he uses my expensive face masks and pretends he doesn’t know what they are. Third, he’s secretly addicted to reality dating shows and has very strong opinions about who should get the final rose. And fourth, he keeps a journal where he writes poetry about my eyes. BAD poetry. Like, roses-are-red-violets-are-blue-level terrible.”
Emmie looks like she wants to crawl under her pedicure chair and disappear forever.
I bite down on a smile because learning intimate details about Jordy was definitely not on my agenda for today. “But that whole poem thing is sweet—no matter how bad they might be.”
The rest of the women agree with me on that one.
“My turn again!” Georgie announces, bouncing in her chair like an excited puppy. “Oh, honey, I’ve got an entire collection of romantic disasters—and these are from some of my ex-husbands.
Some of her ex-husbands? My mouth falls open as I look at her. Just how many does she have?
“My first ex—Marcus, insisted on serenading me during intimate moments,” she begins. “Not sweet love songs—but with show tunes. I’ve been traumatized by ‘Oklahoma!’ ever since. My second ex—Derek, had a thing for cooking shows and would narrate everything in bed like he was hosting his own culinary program. My third ex—Eddie, could only get in the mood if we were watching home improvement shows, because apparently, drywall installation was his ultimate aphrodisiac. And my fourth ex—Kevin, insisted on wearing his lucky socks during romantic encounters because he was convinced they were the secret to his ‘fun-tastic performance.’ They were bright orange with little tacos on them. I wish I would have kept the socks.”
The entire area erupts in laughter and champagne threatens to come out of everyone’s noses.
“Okay, ladies,” Georgie announces, climbing onto her chair again like it’s a soapbox at a political rally, “I think it’s time I demonstrate my wedding planning prowess and really wow you.”
“Georgie, please no. Get down before you hurt yourself or worse yet, someone else,” Mom calls out from across the lawn, but it’s too late.
Georgie starts gesturing wildly, apparently attempting to illustrate proper wedding bouquet throwing technique, except she’s holding her champagne glass instead of flowers and standing on a plastic chair that wasn’t designed for any sort of choreographed enthusiasm.
What happens next unfolds in slow motion, like watching a perfectly orchestrated disaster where you can see the catastrophe coming but are powerless to stop it.
Georgie’s dramatic toss of her hand sends champagne flying in a perfect arc across the lawn. The champagnehits Charlotte’s phone, which she fumbles while trying to save her livestream. And the phone sails through the air and lands directly in Kiki’s pedicure basin with a spectacular splash.
The splash sends soapy water cascading onto Macy’s fresh pedicure, which causes her to jerk her foot back and kick over a cart full of nail polish, and soon bottles of polish go flying in every direction like colorful tiny missiles of chaos.
Camila jumps up to avoid the nail polish shower and accidentally knocks over the champagne bucket, which creates a slippery river of ice water. The nail techs start scrambling to save their equipment while slipping and sliding as if they’re about to break their necks, and I can smell the lawsuits from here.
Charlotte screams about her waterlogged phone while trying to fish it out of the basin. Kiki shrieks about her ruined manicure. Macy wails about her destroyed pedicure. The nail techs are shouting in what sounds like three different languages as it continues to rain an entire rainbow over us.
Georgie, still standing on her chair like the captain of a sinking ship and grinning like she’s just pulled off the greatest performance of her budding career, tips sideways and crashes into the woman standing next to her. That woman topples into another woman, who falls into the next, and suddenly we’ve got a domino effect of falling women that’s at least twelve deep. Bodies are tumbling, arms are flailing, and someone’s purse goes flying through the air like a designer missile.
The entire area descends into complete pandemonium—women running, screaming, slipping on spilled champagne while trying to untangle themselves from the human pile-up. Rainbow-colored nail polish creates abstract art patterns across the previously pristine white deck, and somewhere in the chaos, I hear someone yelling about a lost contact lens and another person demanding to know who stepped on her Louboutins.
By the time the chaos settles, we look like survivors of a very glamorous natural disaster, complete with ruined manicures,destroyed pedicures, and enough drama to fuel every soap opera that ever existed.
Georgie has successfully turned a peaceful spa day into what can only be described as the Great Pedicure Catastrophe of the century.
We may not have caught a killer this afternoon, but we didn’t break a hip either.
So, there’s that.
CHAPTER 8
It’s one of those perfect summer evenings in Cider Cove where the ocean breeze carries just enough salt air to remind you why people vacation in Maine, and the temperature is warm enough that nobody’s complaining about the humidity for once.
The beach is dotted with families enjoying the golden hour, and my sister Buffy has set up her weekly Storytime by the Sea reading session for the local toddlers right here on the sand in front of the inn.
Buffy is my relatively newly discovered sister, and the kicker? She shares the same supernatural quirk that I do, albeit she can’t hear anything thatpeoplehave to say, only animals. And I call that the luck of the draw—or the paw as it were.
After three days of wedding chaos and murder investigations, watching her read to a circle of giggling children feels like the first genuinely peaceful moment I’ve had since Charlotte and Piers arrived. Which is probably why I should have known it wouldn’t last.
