Pour Timing (Man of the Month Club #10)

Prologue Kylie - Six weeks ago

“K ylie!”

I roll my eyes as I hear Patrick bellow my name from the living room for the third time.

“Yes?”

“Where’s my planner?”

Mumbling to myself, I say, “If you’d open your eyes, you’d find exactly what you need.”

“What?”

Then, loud enough to be heard by Patrick in the other room, I add, “By the dishwasher!”

He joins me in the kitchen, snatching the planner from the counter and stuffing it in his briefcase. “Don’t forget I have a meeting after work today, and then, tomorrow morning, I fly out for two days.”

I drop my arms to my sides, the sweatshirt I’m holding now dragging on the ground. “Did you forget what Saturday is?”

He watches me and I can see the wheels turning until it clicks. “I’ll be back in time. Don’t worry.” He turns, dismissing me and walking back into the other room. I follow.

“I thought you told me you were going to slow down with work before the wedding.”

“I am, but there are some loose ends I need to tie up first. Which involves me flying out tomorrow morning.” He turns and pulls me into a hug. My body goes stiff against his. “Don’t worry. I’ll take a break and we’ll enjoy the last few months here before the wedding.”

Something about the way he says it makes me pull away. “What do you mean the last few months here?”

“Well, once we get married, we have to move to the city. That’s where my job is. I can’t keep flying back and forth or working remotely when I’m needed in the office.” I start to protest, but he continues, “I’m next in line, Kylie. I have to show my face and have to make sure I’m doing everything right before it all gets passed to me.”

His grandfather started this company and his dad has trained him from the ground up, citing that it will be his one day, but that doesn’t matter to me. “I don’t want to live in the city. I told you that when we started dating, Patrick. I don’t want to leave Starlight Bay. Ever. I like this town, and I like being by the water. I need the ocean waves to sleep, not trains or car horns at three in the morning. I don’t know how you sleep when you go there.”

I was given a chance to leave this place once, and I couldn’t do it then. Why would I now? He knows this.

He steps away from me and says, “You’ll get used to it,” as he grabs his briefcase. “I’ll be late tonight, so don’t wait up.” He spins his keys around his finger, picks up his coffee, and he’s out the door.

That conversation felt like a whirlwind, and it’s exactly how our relationship has been since day one. At first it was exciting. My spur-of-the-moment personality loved when he would surprise me with dinners at five-star restaurants. Even more so when he came home on a Thursday and told me to pack a bag because we were flying to Mexico that night. Aside from my first semester away at college, before we met, I had never been outside of Starlight Bay. It was fun to go away, but I loved coming home even more.

Starlight Bay is not a town I ever planned to leave. I have everything I need right here. The family-owned restaurants, the beach, and a moon that seems to shine brighter and sits lower in the sky than anywhere else in the world.

I fell in love with this town when I was a kid and continued to fall harder as I grew older. The town itself is romantic: the beach, the sun, the warm nights. Growing up, I couldn’t ever get over the warm feeling it gave me. And at the time, I had him . Matthew.

Matthew Byrne and I grew up here. We were best friends in elementary school and then became high school sweethearts. When he received a football scholarship, I thought we could go away together for a time, then return to Starlight Bay to live our life together once the four years of college were up.

But he had bigger plans, and I wasn’t part of them.

I always wondered if I had left, how different would life be right now? I shake my head, clearing those thoughts. I still don’t think I could ever do it.

I’m cleaning up the plates from this morning's breakfast, still caught up in thoughts about whether I'm making the right decision to get married, when I hear a knock on the door. Glancing at the clock, I know it’s my sister and yell, “Come in.” Sadie enters, holding a binder in one hand and coffee in the other.

“Hey, sis!” She falls down at my kitchen island, the binder making a huge clap on the tile.

“What is all that?”

“This is your wedding day in a book.”

I scoff, but before I can get out any other words, she talks over me.

“This holds everything we need to do to get ready for your big day.” When I roll my eyes at her organization, she throws herself exaggeratingly onto the counter. “Let me have this," she whines. “I’m never going to find a normal guy to marry, so please let me live vicariously through you and plan the most perfect day.”

I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze. “First of all, you are going to find the most perfect guy because you are the most perfect woman. Second, no matter how much you plan, something always goes wrong.”

“Says the one who’s never planned a day in your life. You just wake up and see where the wind takes you. I have no idea how we are sisters.”

I laugh because she’s right. I never make a plan and never know what I’m doing from one day to the next. I wouldn't say I’m scatterbrained, dreamy maybe, I just move as things hit me, as I feel they’re right. It’s why I love my freelance writing job. “Yeah, well, why don’t you start with this Saturday and tell me how to plan a wedding when I don’t think my fiancé will even be back in time to be there?”

She gasps. “What do you mean he’s not going to be here? Doesn’t he know how important this first meeting is? You have to pick a menu; you have to pick napkin colors. You have to pick tables, do you want round or square? And where will you be seated? Do you want to sit with your wedding party or alone?—”

I stand and stop her before her head explodes. “It’s fine. He doesn’t care about that stuff anyway. Like I said, we’ll get married and it’ll be over.”

She looks at me with wide eyes. “You should be excited about this. I thought everything was great.”

I shrug. “It’s fine.” When she narrows her eyes at me, I continue. “Patrick is a good guy but the excitement has waned. Maybe that’s what happens in marriage. We used to do these trips and he’d surprise me with things, but that has faded away. Taking over this company has become his love, and I feel like I’m sitting in second place. He won’t even watch football with me.”

My sister covers her heart and acts like she’s falling off the chair, and I giggle at her stupid antics. “No football? That’s it! You should call the wedding off right now.”

I put my hand on my hips and raise a brow. “I think my first line of business will be to fire my maid of honor.”

“Kylie, it’s not about football. You can watch anything at any time.”

“No, Sadie, it actually is about football. It’s about doing things that I like sometimes too. He’s never even home for dinner. What kind of life is that going to be? What if we have kids? I'm going to raise them by myself while he works himself to death? And don’t get me started on him wanting to move to the city.” I sink back into the chair, the words hanging in the air as my doubts rise close to the surface.

She furrows her brows and quietly asks, “You’re going to move away from Starlight Bay?”

I shake my head and drop my eyes from hers, rising from the chair and moving around my kitchen doing busy work, trying to avoid it all. “I don’t want to, but he says we have to live in the city for this job.”

The room falls silent as thoughts of what will be fill each of our minds. And the most important thought for me is, if I didn’t leave the town with my high school sweetheart, the love of my life, what makes me think I could leave now?

As if reading my mind, Sadie says, “Things used to be simple when you thought you were going to marry Matt and live here forever.”

Hearing his name always makes my heart skip a beat, and my sister knows my heart loved him big and probably still does. Matt is the one I never got over but had to move on from anyway because he moved on from me and this town. “Yeah, well, shit happens when you grow up.” I clap my hands, wanting to move from that line of conversation. “Listen, everything is going to be fine. We’re going to get through this. It's just a little stress before the wedding.”

“It’s not about getting through it, Kylie.” She eyes me with skepticism, much like the way I look at myself in the mirror every morning when I let all the thoughts of second-guessing a marriage run through my mind.

Are you sure you want to do this?

“I’m here for you. If you want to get married, I’m your girl. If you want to run and bury the body later, I’m still your girl.”

We snicker together and I give her a hug, but in the back of my mind, one question still lingers. What happens if I don’t show up?