Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Two weeks later, Lily still hadn’t picked out a wedding dress, nor booked a venue, nor considered what food she wanted to serve to her undetermined guests.
October winds fluttered through orange, yellow, and red leaves, and the sea turned the color of a nickel.
Walking up and down her mother’s beach, she was in the thick of work, calling her matchmaking clients from New York City to Los Angeles to the ones right here on Nantucket Island, checking up on their most recent dates and asking if they’d discovered “the one” yet.
Their hearts beat in time to the tempo she set.
It was up to Lily to find the perfect one.
She recognized that their love was a perfect distraction from her own, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Maybe, with Liam gone, it was a sort of blessing.
For Mick Hamilton, things in the dating world had gotten off to a bumpy start.
The week after he’d hired her, he’d gone on a date with a woman in her mid-twenties who’d moved to Nantucket to start an East Coast fashion brand.
Lily paired them together because they were both driven, independent, and eager to do their own thing with their art.
What Lily hadn’t reckoned for was the fact that the fashion lady never, ever laughed.
When Lily first met her and decided to pair her with Mick, the fashion lady smiled nervously, asked several questions, and agreed to the pairing.
It had felt standard and formal; there had been no bubbling intensity that suggested Lily and the fashion lady should be friends or keep in contact, which was fine.
But just because Lily hadn’t clicked with the fashion lady, she hadn’t been able to imagine someone not clicking with Mick.
Apparently, the date had been so bad that Mick had ducked out immediately after dinner, saying his stomach hurt.
The fashion woman had called Lily two hours later to tell her how much she didn’t like Mick.
It was odd. Lily had never missed a pairing so terribly before.
She called Mick to tell him about his next match, a sailor lady with gorgeous red hair, a golden doodle, and a trust fund.
“She’s hilarious,” she promised, remembering her first conversation with the goddess with more money than she could fathom.
“She laughs and laughs and cracks jokes and laughs. You’ll have a great time. ”
“Maybe that’s too much laughing. I don’t want to get carried away. What if she never stops?” Mick teased her. “By the way, where are you? You sound like you’re in a wind tunnel.”
It was true that the winds off the ocean had picked up. Lily hurried off the beach and ducked under the cover of her mother’s veranda, where she pulled a big, itchy blanket over her. “Sorry,” she said. “I was walking up and down the beach, making phone calls.”
“Sounds frantic,” Mick said.
“I like to be on my feet when I talk to clients,” she said. “It helps me think.”
“Did you also stand up for all your dates with your fiancé?” Mick asked.
“Yep. I had to prove myself,” Lily joked.
“I’ll try that next time. Every woman loves a man who towers over the dinner table, right?”
“It makes digesting really easy,” Lily quipped.
“Who is this fiancé, anyway?” Mick asked. ”Is he on the island? I have almost no male friends, and it would be nice to get a beer with someone from time to time. Talk about guy things. Whatever those guy things are.”
Lily imagined Mick and Liam sitting at a bar together and wrinkled her nose. What could they possibly talk about? A part of her worried Liam wouldn’t like Mick; another part of her worried that Mick would think Liam was basic, just another successful, rich boy with an acting contract.
“He’s out in LA right now. He’ll be back in a couple of months.”
“Wow. LA? What’s he doing out there?”
Lily told him about Liam’s career and his “big break.”
“It must be hard for you,” Mick suggested, his voice tender. “I know it’s not easy to do long-distance.”
“We’re making it work,” Lily told both him and herself. “I’m overjoyed for him. Maybe down the road, we’ll have to spend more time in LA together for his career. Who knows? But I’m actually going out there this weekend.”
“That’s great.” Mick sounded genuinely happy for her. “Are you going to stalk any celebrities?”
“Maybe,” Lily said. “Which ones should I go after?”
“I’ve always been intrigued by Hilary Swank,” Mick said after a pause. “What’s going on with her? What’s her life like? What kind of milk does she buy?”
“All the hard-hitting questions,” Lily said.
It occurred to her they were incredibly off topic, rolling so far away from Mick’s dating life that it would be hard to bring it back up.
But it had been ages since she’d joked around with a friend.
And even chatting with Liam felt especially serious right now.
Stress from the set was getting to him. She understood that.
“Let me know how your date goes,” she reminded Mick.
“I’ll call you every few minutes and tell you what’s happening,” Mick said.
“I’m sure she’ll love that,” Lily said. “Don’t sabotage me. I’m trying to build up a good matchmaking reputation around here!”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Mick said. Lily knew his smile was big and goofy, his hair in wild curls around his face. She hated that she wanted to stay on the phone.
It was up to Lily to get to the airport on her own. The Nantucket Memorial Airport was teeny-tiny with a single tarmac, a coffee kiosk, a brewpub and sitting areas, most of which were empty this long after the tourist season. She texted Liam that she was about to board, and he wrote back.
LIAM: Can’t wait to see you, my love! Get ready for the trip of a lifetime. You’re going to love LA.
But Lily wasn’t so sure about that. All the way from Nantucket Airport to Newark Airport, where she transferred to her flight to Los Angeles, Lily was jittery with nerves.
She half-expected that she would get off the plane and Liam wouldn’t be waiting for her.
She half-expected him to text her after she arrived, explaining that he couldn’t break up with her in person.
He wasn’t strong enough. She wasn’t sure where this narrative was coming from.
The funny thing was that things were going amazingly with Liam’s friend and co-star, Bex Shepherd and the skateboarder influencer Lily had managed to set her up with.
Bex had called her the day after their first date, gushing about how handsome, fun, and genuine he was.
“I mean, he’s sort of famous, but he barely has any followers compared to me,” Bex had said on the phone.
“It’s so refreshing that he doesn’t really care about that. ”
Lily had guessed correctly that Bex saying that she didn’t want anyone famous was only a half-truth.
Famous people wanted to be around other famous people; they just wanted to remain “important” in their presence.
Dating a normie was not possible for many of them.
(Of course, Lily knew that Liam didn’t think that way; that Lily being a “normie” was not a deal-breaker. Their love was stronger than that.)
So, if Liam was cheating on her, it meant he wasn’t cheating on her with Bex. Great.
At LAX, Lily grabbed her suitcase and wheeled it into the provocative sunshine.
It was eighty-two degrees, without a single orange, yellow, or red leaf in sight.
She’d escaped the frigidity of autumn. But she missed the Nantucket Sound, missed how close it always was on Nantucket. At LAX, the Pacific felt miles away.
She scanned the cars as they petered through the pickup line, searching.
And then, there he was, Liam, waving like crazy from the driver’s side of a Corvette.
Lily’s heart leaped into her throat. Liam stopped the car, swept her out of the car, and wrapped her in a hug and a kiss.
Immediately, Lily felt all her fears disappear into the bright-blue sky above.
“My love!” Liam called everyone at LAX. “My love is here!”
Lily felt overwhelmed with joy.
Liam threw her suitcase into the back and opened the passenger door for her.
Inside, he played a playlist they’d curated together last spring, songs that reminded her, achingly, of college and all she missed about the big city.
But this was a brand-new, fully alive city, with its sprawling concrete, its rolling dusty hills, and its Hollywood sign.
Liam talked a mile a minute, excited to tell her everything about his world.
He kissed her knuckles between sentences.
It was late afternoon, which meant they had the entire evening ahead of them.
Liam said he’d booked them a dinner with a few of his cast members, so that she could meet everyone.
“They’re dying to get to know you,” he said as he parked the car in front of his rental house.
“I mean, I talk about you all the time. And now that you’ve set Bex up with that skateboarder dude, more and more people want you to pair them up.
I hope they don’t throw themselves on you. People are rabid, Miss Matchmaker.”
Although Lily was initially disappointed that the dinner wouldn’t be just the two of them, she couldn’t stop smiling. Liam gave her a tour of his place, kissing her in each room, each corner, next to the kitchen counter, out on the back porch.
“By the way,” he said between kisses, “I think my mother’s really falling for you.”
Lily’s heart stopped beating for a second. “What makes you say that?”
“She’s worried about you, for one,” Liam said, cutting a smile. “That’s how Japanese mothers show they care. They worry like crazy.”
“It was sweet to see her the other week,” Lily said. “I think everyone really liked each other.”
“Of course they did!” Liam said. “They’re our families, right? They’re going to be family soon! Time for them to get used to it.”