“Too late. Sit down. We have questions.”
I sit. I have no choice. The book club ladies have summoned me and resistanceis not an option.
“So,” Jo says, tucking her legs underneath her on the blanket. “Paul Spencer.”
“What about him?”
“Whatabouthim?” Amber repeats. “Emma. You kissed a man in an abandoned lighthouse during a thunderstorm. That’s not a Tuesday. That’s a chapter title.”
“It was actually a Wednesday.”
“It was aromance novel.Mads, tell her.”
Mads shifts in her pregnancy chair, one hand on her belly. “I’ve read that exact plot point in at least four books. Trapped in a storm, forced proximity, confession of feelings followed by an impulsive kiss.” She counts on her fingers. “You’re textbook. You’re living in a trope.”
“I’m not living in a trope.”
“You’re living in a trope and the trope is "enemies to lovers with forced proximity and a grumpy-sunshine dynamic,” Jessica says without looking up from her book. “I sell this story twice a week.”
“We weren’t enemies.”
“He tried to evict you,” Hazel points out.
“That was a misunderstanding.”
“He cited electrical violations as a reason to terminate your lease,” Michelle adds.
“He was concerned about safety.”
“He was concerned aboutyou,” Grandma Hensley says from her chair. She hasn’t spoken until now, sitting there in her sun hat and her floral blouse like a woman who has been watching this story unfold since page one and already knows how it ends. “That boy has been concerned about you since the day you backed your houseboat into his dock and knocked over his toolbox.”
“I didn’t knock over his—okay, I did knock over his toolbox.”
“He picked up every tool,” Grandma Hensley says. “Reorganized the whole box. Then he walked down to check your mooring lines without being asked. Harold saw the whole thing.”
“Harold sees everything,” I mutter.
“Harold sees what needs seeing.” Grandma Hensley adjusts her hat. “And what I see is a man who hasn’t let anyone new into his life since Holly died, and a woman who’s been carrying everything alone since her marriage fell apart. You found each other at the right time. Don’t overthink it.”
The circle goes quiet for a second. Grandma Hensley has that power—the ability to say the true thing in the middle of the funny things and make everyonestop.
Then Amber breaks the silence. “So was it a good kiss?”
“Amber.”
“What? We need details. This is book club. We analyze romantic developments. It’s literally in the bylaws.”
“There are no bylaws.”
“There are unwritten bylaws and the first one is ‘tell us about the kiss.’”
I take a sip of my drink. Look out at the water. Think about Paul in the lighthouse, the rain on the glass, the way he saidbecause I can’t sleep when your light is outand I stopped his sentence with my hands on his face.
“It was a good kiss,” I say.
The book club erupts. Amber claps. Jo does a little seated dance. Michelle raises her drink. Mads says “I knew it” with satisfaction like she’s been tracking this romance since the first chapter. Hazel nods approvingly. Jessica dog-ears her page, which means this has officially become more interesting than her book, and Jessica doesn’t dog-ear pages for anything less than a major development.
Grandma Hensley just smiles.
