6. Chapter Six Theo
Chapter Six: Theo
I stare up at the crooked wooden sign swinging to-and-fro outside the bar. The door has been propped open to tempt in the evening sea breeze, but there is so much noise pouring forth from inside that I can’t hear the ocean at all, even though the beach is right behind me. There’s a chalkboard sign posted on the sidewalk, declaring that the place is closed for a private event, though it looks like what’s going on here is anything but private.
The sign overhead looks like it’s been fixed to the post protruding from the building since this town was settled. The chains from which it dangles are rusted, and the faux medieval lettering is chipped and faded. Siren & Sword, it spells out. Just below the words is a rudimentary rendition of a mermaid tail curling around the blade of a sword, the bluish scales seemingly impervious to the sharp edges.
Nobody can say that this town can’t stick to a theme.
I sigh to myself, stepping aside to allow a pair of blonde twins into the bar. One of them shouts a thunderous hello to someone inside before they even cross the threshold, and a tall man behind the bar waves at her over the heads of the crowd. The girls are locals, presumably. Childhood friends of the bride or groom.
I need to go inside. If I keep standing out here like an idiot, someone is eventually going to start asking questions about a lurker. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself as a party crasher and have to defend myself by stating that I have, indeed, been invited to this event.
Another sigh passes my lips. I shift on my feet, moving aside again as still more people filter into the party.
Apparently, the future Mr. and Mrs. Cromwell opted not to have separate bachelor and bachelorette parties, and instead planned a combined soiree here at the local watering hole. Knowing how reserved Elijah can be, I had hoped it’d be a low-key event with a few champagne toasts, subtle music, and a reasonable guest list. Unfortunately, it seems to be the complete opposite of that. Loud pop music from two decades ago is booming from the sound system and party-goers’ hands are full of beer bottles and red plastic cups. There’s a nostalgic tinge to it all, as if I’m stepping back in time to a younger, wilder world.
I just need to make an appearance. Long enough to give my congratulations to the bride and groom, to sip maybe half a beer on the fringes of the crowd, and then I can disappear back to my cottage for the rest of the evening.
Satisfied with my game plan, I take a deep breath and enter the Siren & Sword. Instantly, I can barely hear myself think. The music is loud, causing the crowd to half-shout to be heard over it as they laugh and chatter and gossip with each other. A few glances are tossed my way from people I don’t know, but I ignore them as I politely push my way to the bar.
The bartender, a burly guy with a chiseled jaw who must be only a few years older than me, has been joined behind the bar by one of the blonde twins I saw moments ago. The young woman smiles at me like I’m an old friend as I approach.
“Open bar tonight!” she bellows at me in order to be heard over the raucous celebration. “What can I get you?”
“Anything,” I reply. “Literally anything at all.”
She snorts and hands me what looks like a dark lager in a brown bottle. I nod in thanks, noticing a streak of purple paint on her forearm, but she’s already twirled away to serve someone else.
I take a swig of the drink and then aim for a secluded corner of the room. Before I can make it more than three steps, however, the music cuts and a cheerful voice echoes from the speakers positioned near the ceiling.
“Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Josieandelijah Bachelor-Bachelorette Bash! Or, as I like to call it, the J-and-E B-B-B!”
I whirl around, shocked by how familiar the voice is.
Sure enough, standing atop one of the tables near the front of the room is none other than Lucy, her espresso-brown hair flowing thick and long around her shoulders. She grins and gestures to a couple standing beside the table. Even with my height advantage, I can just barely see their faces through the crowd. I recognize Elijah right away and make a mental note to beeline for him as soon as possible so I can get my greetings and congratulations over with before this chaos gives me a migraine.
The woman beside Elijah is most definitely the Josephine Montgomery whose name was scrawled in elegant calligraphy on the wedding invitations. Elijah’s bride, Josie. With her mane of dark waves and big brown eyes, she looks oddly familiar.
No… not familiar . She looks almost exactly like Lucy.
I stumble slightly, my back hitting the wall as several realizations click into place.
Lucy M. That’s what was on her name tag at Camp Hannefort all those years ago. M for Montgomery . Yes, I remember now. Are they sisters? I don’t remember Lucy ever mentioning—
“I’ll keep this short and sweet so you can all get back to your revelry,” Lucy says into the mic in her hand, smiling brightly as if she’s never felt more at ease than when sixty to seventy pairs of adoring eyes are upon her.
I scoff under my breath. Clearly, she hasn’t changed at all.
“First and foremost, I want to extend a massive congratulations to my cousin, Josie, and her soon-to-be husband, Elijah. I think I speak for everyone when I say I’ve been waiting for this wedding for, like, half my life.”
Several cheers erupt from the crowd. Elijah lowers his face bashfully while his bride beams, her cheeks pink either from the attention or the alcohol.
“I also want to thank Liam Moore for generously offering an open bar tonight,” Lucy continues, gesturing to the broad-shouldered man behind the bar. “And also, a huge thanks to his wife Amy, Mermaid Shores’ internationally-acclaimed artist, for stepping back into her old bartending shoes for tonight. Metaphorically, of course, because I know for a fact you’re wearing Jimmy Choos right now, Amy.”
The blonde woman behind the bar throws her head back with laughter.
Suddenly, a hand reaches up from the crowd and wraps around the microphone. It takes me a second to realize that the hand belongs to Josie, who climbs atop a chair beside the table and gently pries the mic from her cousin.
“And I want to thank my wonderful, amazing, vaguely insane maid of honor for planning all of these wedding festivities,” Josie says to the crowd.
Maid of honor. Oh no .
It keeps getting worse. Earlier, when I bumped into Lucy, I assumed that it would be easy enough to avoid her for the rest of my time in town, given how busy it is. I never imagined that she might also be a guest at Elijah’s wedding, let alone the woman responsible for organizing it.
Clearly, there’s no hope of avoiding her. My best bet is to stick to the edges of the crowd, ever the masculine wallflower and darn proud of it, and have faith in the fact that Lucy never deigns to flutter at the shadowy perimeter. And if our paths happen to cross by pure accident over the next few days, I can lean on my earlier plan of pretending that I don’t recognize her and pray that she plays along.
While my mind spins in circles, the girls—who genuinely look more like sisters than cousins—finish their shared speech. The crowd lifts their cups and bottles in a toast that I numbly attempt to mimic, and then Lucy and Josie are gracefully lowered down from the table with the help of the crowd.
I remain leaning against the wall, taking occasional sips of my drink as the music starts up again. Over the years, I’ve become extremely skilled at becoming invisible, so it’s easy enough to avoid being dragged into a conversation by anyone nearby. I become one with the wallpaper, unseen and unheard in the way that I have always preferred but have so rarely been able to enjoy thanks to my mother’s fame.
I try to keep my eyes on the happy couple, waiting for the ideal opportunity to make my way over to them. But it’s hard to keep my gaze off Lucy. As always, everything about her demands attention. She is a force of nature among the throngs, flitting here and there like a butterfly. Wherever she lands, there is laughter and smiles in her wake, as if she’s some kind of fairy princess sprinkling happiness all over the place. I try not to wrinkle my nose at the thought.
She’s ridiculous. Utterly, completely ridiculous.
And yet, I can’t deny that it’s difficult to take my eyes off her. She’s wearing yellow tonight—a fluttery dress with a low neckline that compliments her sun-tanned skin and dark hair. As she flits closer to this side of the bar, I notice that there are tiny pearls pinned in her wild hair, making her look even more like a mythical creature than a real person.
That’s what I always used to think of her—that there was no way Lucy Montgomery was a real person. She had to be an alien or a mirage or something impossible. There was no way that she could be so full of light and optimism, and still be an ordinary human. I’d never met anyone like her before. It drove me crazy how little sense she made to me.
I move positions subtly, slipping behind a particularly thick tangle of guests in hopes of avoiding her as she continues to mingle through the crowd with glittering ease. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that she’s been handing out something to everyone. Disposable cameras, I think. The cheap, plastic things that were more common when we were teenagers.
At one point, she gets close enough to my hiding place for me to hear her.
“Take as many stupid and terrible photos as you can,” Lucy tells a group of people as she passes out the cameras. “Then drop it off in the bin by the exit at the end of the night. I’ll be putting together an album of the photos on the wedding website.”
“How cute!”
“Great idea, Lucy!”
“So vintage!”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
Ever so carefully, I move farther away.
And yet, as if she can teleport, she’s suddenly right in front of me.
I freeze, hand gripping my beer a little too tightly all of a sudden. The breath whooshes out of my lungs and I tell myself it’s only because she surprised me, not because she’s glowing like the sun and has actually managed to take my breath away.
“Do you really think I didn’t notice you standing there, Theo Danvers?” she asks me.
I open my mouth to instantly deny that I know her, to concoct some sort of lie that would convincingly protest any familiarity between us, but I know that I’m doomed the moment her eyebrow quirks up in a silent question.
She knows that I know her. If I pretend that she’s a stranger to me, I’ll just look like a jerk.
Then again, she already thinks I’m a jerk.
“Pardon?” I reply, raising my voice to be heard, even though we’re in a slightly quieter corner of the bar.
Lucy purses her lips, unimpressed by my display of nonchalance. She lifts a disposable camera to her face, winks one eye closed, and snaps a photo without warning. The bright flash blinds me for half a second, causing my heart to stutter for a moment. Annoyance rips through me. Without thinking, I reach forward and snatch the camera out of her hand.
“Hey!” she protests.
“You shouldn’t take photos of people without their permission.”
Lucy rolls her eyes. “Get over yourself, Theo. It’s for the wedding website.”
“I don’t want to be on the website.”
“Why not?”
I clench my jaw, familiar frustration that I haven’t felt in years boiling to the surface. “Because I don’t want to, Lucy Montgomery.”
Her eyes flash at the admission—my usage of her name the final proof that I recognize her.
But I won’t explain this to her. I won’t stand here and tell her about what it was like to grow up as the son of Daphne Shay, constantly in the spotlight. Even the kids at school used to sneak pictures of me in the hallways, and I remember that one photograph of me sitting alone in the cafeteria during my senior year, right after the divorce became public, made it into several tabloids. Never mind how much effort my own mother tried to put into thrusting me into the spotlight, no matter how many times I protested.
Lucy sighs dramatically, tossing a lock of hair over her shoulder. She has shimmery gold makeup on her eyelids, a detail that I can’t help latching onto even in the heat of my annoyance.
“What are you even doing here?” Lucy asks. “I created the guest list. I would have remembered your name showing up on it.”
“Would you have? Truly? It’s been ten years.”
She sniffs. “Twelve years, actually.”
For some stupid reason, my stomach flips when she corrects me. As if there is some part of me that is pleased she remembers the details.
Idiot, I chastise myself.
“Well, I’m not a wedding crasher,” I tell her, brushing an invisible piece of lint off my sleeve. “I went to Caltech with Elijah. I received an invitation. It’s not my fault if you’re not as detail-oriented as you think you are.”
Lucy’s eyes narrow. “You haven’t changed a bit, Theo.”
“Likewise.”
She scoffs. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t one.”
As she takes a threatening step closer to me, it suddenly feels like no time at all has passed between now and then. Our gut reaction was always to be contrarian with each other, always snipping at one another during group therapy at camp. Always bickering whenever our paths crossed during group activities. Always tossing vicious glares at each other from afar.
Without warning, a partygoer nearby steps backward and accidentally knocks into Lucy’s shoulder. They don’t notice the touch, but it causes Lucy to stumble forward another step.
Just like that, we’re practically chest to chest. Or rather, we would be if I wasn’t so much taller than her. Which is really saying something, considering that Lucy has always been tall for a woman.
We’ve been pushed close to each other. Closer than we have been since…
I forcefully shove that memory away.
For a moment, we glare at each other wordlessly. Lucy’s inner light is as blinding as ever, even when she’s frowning at me. I seem to be the only one capable of making such an expression appear on her face, which is a feat that I should probably be proud of. However, it’s difficult to feel anything other than supremely annoyed at the moment.
Lucy’s lips part. My gaze drifts down to them, noting the rosy-pink lip gloss she’s wearing and how it makes her look so… kissable.
As the unwanted thought drifts through my mind like an unpredictable storm cloud, I reel backwards. The movement causes my back to hit the wall for a second time that night, but it puts enough distance between me and Lucy that the tense silence snaps.
“Enjoy the party,” Lucy snarls, not sounding at all like she means it.
Then she turns on her heel and flits away.