Chapter 3
Chapter Three
May wasn’t drunk, but she was certainly feeling looser than she had been earlier. She was relaxing on an Adirondack chair on the dock with her girls, and her third cup of juicy IPA was being delivered right now.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Lou told Ant.
“Yes, thank you, sweetheart,” May echoed when he handed over her cup.
“You’re both welcome. Lis, what’s up with you and that water bottle?”
Lisa looked up from her cell phone to peg Ant with a bored expression. “I have work to do. The city never sleeps. Unlike you, lumberjack.”
His smile broadened at the moniker. Ant was a skilled craftsman who was able to build stunning furniture as well as unique chainsaw art.
“Sadly, kids, duty calls.” Lisa stood.
“What? Noooo.” May wasn’t ready to go yet.
“Wanda needs me.” Lisa’s lips compressed in a line. “May, don’t leave. I’ll pay for your Uber home. I’m so sorry to bail on you.”
“Why does the mayor need you on a Saturday night?” A deep frown communicated Lou’s dismay.
“If it wasn’t urgent, I would stay.” Lisa moved to kiss Lou’s cheek.
“It’s always urgent.” Against her better judgment, or perhaps in favor of it, May stood from her chair as well. Which took some doing, considering it was an Adirondack. “I’ll come with you. I shouldn’t drink more anyway.”
“We’ll drive you home,” Lou and Ant said at the same time.
“No,” May stated emphatically. Those two had recently moved in together, and she refused to insert herself—even for a car ride—into their love bubble.
They’d been through enough adversity. They didn’t need to take care of her too.
“You two stay and enjoy yourselves. Go home the moment you can’t bear being in each other’s presence with your clothes on.
” She waved the topic away. “I can leave now. It’s not a big deal. ”
But she was disappointed. For the last few hours, she’d been wishing Xavier would come over and tickle her fancy with one of those sexy smiles of his.
If she couldn’t sleep with him, she damn well was going to flirt with him.
It made her feel warm and fuzzy—a lot like the beer she had been drinking.
Plus, the view from his dock was spectacular. The sun was setting, and the stars would soon shine. If only he would come down here and sit next to her, talk in that low, rough way he had…
She sighed. Not tonight, apparently. Hosting had taken up a lot of his time and attention, and understandably so. Xavier was a good friend.
“I heard that sigh. I refuse to allow you in my car.” Lisa leveled May with a hard look. “Stay here and flirt with Xavier instead.”
“I never…” May started, and then realized that bullshitting Lisa was a fruitless pastime.
“He’s busy. I’ve watched him being pulled into one conversation after another, and when he’s not, he’s stepping behind the bar to do what he does best.” She offered a small smile.
She really did love watching him move around with such confidence.
“Couldn’t convince him to take a night off, could you? ” She aimed this question at Ant.
“Me? It’s not my job to pull the stick out of his hardworking ass. In fact, anything around the topic of his ass should probably involve the woman who’s had her eyes on it all night.”
Lou burst out laughing.
“I have a rule that clearly states—” May began.
“No hot men,” Lou and Lisa said in unison.
“He’s hot, nice, and a millionaire,” Lou added. “You could do far worse.”
“I have done far worse,” May countered.
“Fair.” Lou nodded.
“Okay, I’m off. Do what you do best, May. Enjoy yourself and flirt so hard that you break something. Not literally, of course. Careful climbing that hill.”
“I’m fine.” May took another hearty swig of the beer that was making her feel more carefree by the moment. Xavier’s new brew was tasty.
“What she should break is her bullshit dating rule,” Ant offered.
“That’s not bad advice.” Lisa pecked May’s cheek next, squeezed Ant’s biceps, and headed up the hill toward her car. Ant followed, taking her arm when he was close enough. The man was chivalrous to a fault.
“She’s right, you know,” Lou told May. “If you won’t allow yourself to have sex with him, at least enjoy the dopamine hit that comes from flirting.
We are happy to give you a ride home. Or rather, Ant will, because I am going to have a few more of these.
Let’s sit by the fire.” Lou took May’s hand and dragged her toward the fire bowl.
“Have a seat.” Lou gestured to one of two open chairs near the flames.
Suspicious, May narrowed her eyes. “Why? What’s going on?”
Lou reached into the cross-body bag slung across her chest and pulled out an envelope.
A very familiar envelope.
“That’s supposed to be on my countertop!” May snatched the wedding invitation from Lou’s hand. “I am going to strangle Lisa. Isn’t it a felony to steal someone’s mail?”
“Out of the mailbox, for sure. I think it’s regular theft if she takes it from your house.” Lou offered a wan smile, sitting when May sank into her own chair.
“A good question for Brady,” May mumbled, flipping the envelope over.
“It’s not open. Which, as you know, took a lot of self-restraint for Lisa.”
“Yes, she’s a saint.” May rolled her eyes.
“You could open it.”
“I don’t have to open it. I know what’s in here. Prescott’s sister Posy is getting married, and I am invited to the wedding.”
“And you haven’t opened it because…”
“Because I wanted to decide whether or not I was going before I opened it. My ex will be there. I can endure him for a few hours. His mom and sisters, however…”
“You don’t want to see them?”
“I do, and I don’t. They’re going to ask me why I don’t come around anymore. Or they’ll ask me to come around more. When I have had lunch with them, they try not to talk about Prescott, but of course they do. I need to close that chapter of my life. But they mean so much to me.”
“I get that.”
“And you know he’s going to have a date. She probably has a banging career and a stable family and a killer body.”
“You have two out of three of those things. An envious career and a killer body are both wins.” Lou offered a sympathetic, if wonky, smile. “Come on, girl! You’re braver than this.”
“I used to be,” May said with a small headshake.
“When is the wedding, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I received the invite a week ago. Probably a few months from now.”
“Or more. Most people take eons to get married.” Lou winked, obviously poking fun at herself.
Elliott entered their tight twosome, three cups of beer clamped between her fingers. “I brought refills. This stuff is good.”
“I don’t want to puke on the lawn,” May said.
“You are made of tougher stuff than that,” Elli said.
“See? You are brave and tough.” Lou took a cup from Elli.
While May didn’t feel cowardly or weak, she could admit that she wasn’t armored up like she’d been before Prescott. Before her mother died.
“Here. I’ll trade you.” Elliott swapped the invitation for a red cup. “Thick, premium envelope. Someone went all out.”
May downed her other beer and then dropped the fresh cup into the empty one. A hiccup sounded from her throat, but she managed to keep it ladylike. Which was more than she could say for Elli, who held her cup between her teeth while unceremoniously ripping open the invitation.
May snatched the envelope and clasped it against her chest. “I can’t believe you did that.”
Cup in hand again, Elli shrugged. “I’m a new bride! I love wedding invitations!”
May didn’t buy that excuse for a second. She had been at Elliott’s November wedding, and while she had made a beautiful bride, she wasn’t necessarily a “new” bride.
“Fine,” Elli said. “Lisa told me to make sure it was opened tonight. She said you’re avoiding the inevitable.”
“Lisa needs to mind her business.”
“Okay.” Elli snorted. “I’ll also ask the sun to turn down the heat.”
Elliott and Lou both rerouted their attention to the envelope that May clutched against her chest.
“Can I at least see if it’s embossed with flowers?” Elli asked. “Inspiration for my T-shirt designs comes from everywhere, you know. What if I get inspired?”
“Then you owe me a free T-shirt.” May pegged her with a look.
“Deal.”
May set her cup on the small table next to her chair and tugged the invitation from its home. There, glowing in the flickering firelight, curly script announced Posy’s marriage to Marcus Waterford.
“His last name is Waterford? Like the crystal?” Lou asked.
“No flowers,” Elli remarked of the contemporary embossed line edging the invitation. “Classy.”
But May wasn’t paying attention to the design, the weight of the card stock, or the names elegantly written on it. She’d homed in on the date.
“Shit. The wedding is next weekend?”
“And here in the Cove! Hey, you won’t have to travel.” Elliott promptly lost her smile when May slid her a dismayed look.
“Posy is her ex-boyfriend’s sister,” Lou explained. “Which means the entire family will be descending on the Cove like a fleet of fire-breathing dragons.”
“Protect your peace.” Elliott’s tone shifted to serious. “You don’t have to be in the same room as your ex or his family. Want me to throw it in the fire?”
“It’s not like that.” But May understood the reaction. Elli’s ex was a narcissistic asshole. “Prescott’s mom and sisters are family to me. Since we broke up, it’s been…difficult to adjust. I want them in my life, but I’ve had to accept that they’re not my mom and sisters. They never will be.”
“Sorry, hon.” Elli rubbed May’s back.
“They try to include me in family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t go for reasons you might suspect.”
“Too intimate,” Lou muttered, hitting the nail on the head.
“I’ve managed to keep my distance, but in a way that feels like a betrayal. After my mom died, they were all I had. They rallied around me when my own family didn’t.”
Her mother had been in a car accident five years ago and never woke up. May had been twenty-eight at the time and caught in the purgatory of hospital visits and false hope.
Her father, who had been emotionally absent for most of her life, had slipped further and further away after her mom passed.
He moved out of state, started over with a new girlfriend, and left every memory of her mother behind—including May.
As for the rest of her family? They’d scattered too, as if the coma and everything that’d followed had somehow been May’s fault.
“May’s family is distant,” Lou said judiciously, knowing the gory details and, thankfully, not sharing any of them.
“That’s a nice way to say it.” May flicked her gaze from Lou to Elliott. “I’ve practically been disowned.”
“Which is why you are invited to all of mine and Ant’s holiday celebrations this year,” Lou said.
Sometimes May wished she hadn’t shared the details with Lou.
Not because she didn’t want her to know.
It would be unfair to crash everyone else’s intimate family celebrations.
And the only reason she’d been invited was because she didn’t have a family of her own to celebrate with. The entire scenario stank of pity.
“You can come over and eat dinner with Brady and me any Sunday you like. Gramps is usually there,” Elli offered. Sweetly.
“Thank you.” May didn’t have the heart to tell her no.
“In the meantime, what are you going to do about that?” Lou pointed at the invitation.
May crammed the card stock into the envelope, folded it in half, and shoved it into the pocket of her dress. “Right now, I’m going to find a bathroom and a snack.”
“I’ll come with you.” Lou started to stand.
“I need a moment, Lou.” May softened her comment with a smile.
She was accustomed to handling things on her own.
Processing her feelings by herself. “Alone” wasn’t something she’d mastered, but like it or not, she was good at it.
She put on a good show at girls’ night out, and when it was over, she dropped the smile and casual facade.
The habit had become a double-edged sword. She’d protected herself but felt isolated sometimes. She climbed the stone steps to the house, thankfully not calling attention to herself. She didn’t want an escort in the form of Ant or any other well-meaning man at this party.
Well, maybe one, she reconsidered.
She spotted Xavier at the bar, leaning in to poke Brady in the chest. Their laughter bounced off the air, causing May’s stomach to flutter.
Xavier was gorgeous, without a doubt. But he also felt like home to her.
He exuded that warm, included feeling that had been prevalent in the years before her mother’s accident.
Inside the house, she stepped through the kitchen and around the catering staff, finding the first-floor bathroom occupied. Rather than wait, she climbed the wooden staircase in search of another bathroom, her hand sliding along the thick, smooth banister on her way up.