Madelaine barked a laugh, giving my shoulder a playful shove. “I don’t need to know that!”
“You started this conversation,” I pointed out. “I can’t help it if he’s got a big dick.”
Madelaine burst into giggles, kicking her feet like a kid learning it was her birthday and Christmas at once. My face muscles pulled as my smile widened. It was nice to see her laugh.
“Send him my way when you’re done, then,” she said, and the smile dropped clean off my face, the weight in my stomach rolling over nauseatingly.
The way her eyes widened a second later told me she hadn’t meant that like it sounded, but she hadsaidit. She’d said it because she knew what my romantic life looked like.
What it was, inevitably, going to look like with Simon.
“It’s just for the weekend,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue. I was stupid to even consider trying to make it last longer. Simon would realize I was too needy, that I wanted too much from him—more than he already gave me, which was more than anyone else ever had. He’d get tired of me.
It had to end when we went home.
Madelaine raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“What happens in Montauk.” I shrugged.
“That’s what he said?”
I shrugged again. “That’s what he said.”
Madelaine’s brows drew together. “Huh.”
“I want it too much to say no,” I confessed, pressing my nose to my knees so my voice was muffled.
“Yeah,” Madelaine agreed. We’d never talked about how I felt about Simon. She knew, though.
EveryonebutSimon seemed to know. Or maybe he did know and had been politely ignoring it all this time for my sake. Maybe that was what this was. A compromise. Letting me have what I wanted for a little while without promising me a forever he knew he couldn’t give me.
That sounded like Simon, actually. He was always too generous with everyone, me worst of all. It made sense that this was more of that.
“You should talk to him,” Madelaine spoke up after another pause I’d thought meant she’d dropped the subject.
“About—”
“Madelaine, hi!” Audrey interrupted, pushing her way through the still-thick breakfast crowd. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have an emergency and you seemed like the best bet. I need you and your sewing kit.”
Madelaine raised an eyebrow. “Sewing… kit?”
Audrey’s face fell at Madelaine’s tone, which made it sound as though she didn’t know what either sewing or kits were. Or at least, what the two words could possibly mean in sequence. Shewasa surgeon, she kind of had to know what sewing was.
“No sewing kit?” Audrey asked, biting her lip. Wisps of hair had escaped from the bun she had tied at the back of her head, and I was realizing the flush to her cheeks was real, not makeup.
“I’ve got one,” I volunteered.
That wasn’t true. I’d never owned a sewing kit in my life.
Simon, though, never went anywhere without his. He kept it in an Altoids tin covered in stickers. He’d sewed a lot of buttons back on for me over the years.
He wouldn’t mind me borrowing it. He would’ve been proud of me for offering.
The worry melted off Audrey’s face, a bright, earnest smile dawning over it instead. “Really?”
She was beautiful, actually. More than that, so far she’d been nothing but sweet and charming. I’d been unfair to her.
Simon would’ve been proud of me for acknowledging that, too.
