Then Aidan, helpful as always: “It was both of them. I have a full report.”
Lottie appears from the hallway. “They knocked the bookshelf off the wall. It’s fine. Nothing broke. Except the wall. The wall has a hole in it.”
“I’ll fix it,” Jack calls from somewhere in the back of the house.
“Jack, you already fixed the door and the kitchen faucet and the —”
“Already fixing it.”
Paul pushes off the doorframe. “I’ll help him.” And just like that, he’s gone. Down the hallway toward the sound of Jack’s toolbox and twin destruction, leaving me in the kitchen holding my iced coffee and a feeling I can’t putdown.
By noon,the house is moved in. Not decorated, not organized, not home yet—but filled. The furniture is placed. The beds are assembled. Jack fixed four things nobody asked him to fix and found two more that need attention next week. The boys’ room has bunk beds and a rug and a poster of a shark that Aidan contributed as a housewarming gift. The studio room has Lottie’s backdrop stands and her lighting kit and three boxes of props she hasn’t unpacked yet.
Amber arrives with lunch from The Salty Pearl—shrimp tacos and coleslaw and a key lime pie that makes Mads moan in a way that’s probably inappropriate for mixed company.
“This pie is a religious experience,” Mads announces from her chair, which she has not left in two hours. “I’m having another piece and if Asher texts one more person about my glucose levels, I’m hiding his phone in the ocean.”
Everyone eats in the living room, spread across the new couch and the kitchen chairs and the floor. The boys are in the backyard with Harold, who has graduated from bowline knots to some kind of game involving the garden hose that I can hear but have chosen not to witness.
Justin is leaning against the kitchen counter,eating a taco. Lottie is across the room, not looking at him. Justin is across the room, not looking at her. They are both very committed to not looking at each other, which is its own kind of looking.
“So,” Michelle says, settling onto the couch arm with her plate. “Book club tonight?”
“Tonight?” Lottie looks up. “I just moved in. I don’t even know where my wine glasses are.”
“We’ll bring wine glasses,” Jo says. “And wine. And the book.”
“I haven’t read the book.”
“You have approximately six hours,” Hazel says. “It’s a fast read.”
“What is it?”
Michelle pulls a paperback from her bag. The cover features a scowling man in a flannel shirt and a grinning woman in a sundress, standing on a dock. Adock.
“Grumpy by the Sea,” Michelle reads. “By Waverly Kane. Quote from the back: ‘She was sunshine in human form. He hadn’t seen the sun in years.’”
Mads makes a sound like a teakettle. Hazel elbows her.
“It’s a grumpy-sunshine romance,” Michelle continues, her face perfectly innocent. “Setin a small coastal town. He’s a brooding boat mechanic. She’s the optimistic new neighbor who won’t stop talking to him.” She looks at me. “The book club chose it unanimously.”
“Unanimously,” I repeat.
“It was Grandma’s pick,” Mads says, and then has to stuff pie in her mouth to keep from laughing.
I glance across the room. Paul is standing by the front door, talking to Dean about something—truck engines, probably, or fire code regulations. He didn’t hear the book description. He doesn’t know that the entire book club is about to spend an evening analyzing a fictional version of our situation while sitting in the living room of the house that exists because Lottie is building a life here and I am falling for my neighbor and nothing about any of this was in the plan.
“I’ll read it,” Lottie says. “But I’m going to need more wine than usual.”
“Already handled.” Amber holds up her phone. “Brett’s bringing three bottles after the dinner rush.”
The men filter out slowly over the next hour. Justin leaves first, nodding goodbye to Lottie without quite meeting her eyes. Dean whistles for Rex and heads out with Jo promising to stay for book club. Jack kisses Hazel’s forehead and tells Lottie the backdoor works now but the bathroom vent needs a new motor. Dawson and Finch head out on Dawson’s boat, Jenna watching from the porch with studied indifference until Finch waves goodbye and she practically melts into the railing.
Paul is last.
He finds me in the kitchen, rinsing plates. The house is loud behind us—women settling in, wine being opened, Mads demanding someone bring her a pillow for her back.
“The wall patch needs twenty-four hours to dry,” he says. “Tell Lottie not to hang anything on it until tomorrow.”
