Chapter 4
FOUR
Seeing Preston had been bad, but it hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected. The anticipation was always somehow worse, something I needed to remind myself of more often.
The next two weeks were spent getting to know Bree and Hayley. They adopted me without prompting, gave me tours of Savannah, and took me to the best restaurants. Neither of them asked about Preston, even though they were clearly curious.
That changed the day we went shopping for clothes. We had a better picture of what we’d be dealing with this summer, and I had no idea how I was supposed to dress for mingling with authors and readers on a regular basis.
“So the retreat thing is new?” I asked as we perused a boho shop with wild leggings and themed shirts.
“Yup.” Bree nodded. “Last year, we just had a bar event every two weeks. It went well.”
“Except Bree picked up two stalkers,” Hayley offered matter-of-factly.
I frowned at Bree. We hadn’t had a chance to discuss this before Preston interrupted the night we met. “Stalkers?”
“It’s not as bad as she makes it out to be,” Bree assured me.
“How was it not bad?” Hayley gave Bree a hard look. “One guy kept showing up to sexually harass you week after week, and a woman went to your house because she was jealous of your relationship with Brody. She wanted to kill you.”
“She didn’t really want to kill me.” Bree vehemently shook her head. “She was just having a rough time of it.”
I blinked, multiple times, as I absorbed this information. Finally, when I spoke, my words came with a softness I hadn’t expected. “You seem pretty upbeat for somebody who was stalked multiple times.”
She laughed at my response. “The guy who kept showing up didn’t technically sexually harass me.”
“He did,” Hayley argued. “Stop making excuses. He would try to block her way in hallways when it was just her and invade her personal space.”
“He’s been banned from events for being a creeper,” Bree said calmly. “As for the woman, last time I checked, she’s in a hospital getting the help she needs.”
“And she went after you because she loved Brody?”
“She thought she could help him write better. It was a whole thing. Really, she was just a sad woman who needed mental help. Now she’s getting it.” Bree held out her hands in a “what are you going to do” motion. “I’m fine. I came through the whole thing unscathed.”
“And now you and Brody are getting married.”
“Yup.” Her smile could have blinded the sun. “Everything worked out how it was supposed to work out.”
“Except you guys are still living in two different houses,” Hayley pointed out.
“We’re going to fix that.” Bree’s tone was breezy.
“They’re not,” Hayley said to me. “They’re going to live separately forever. Their kids are going to be so confused.”
Bree scalded her with a look. “Stop. We’ve got it figured out. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Even though the conversation seemed serious, I grinned. The way Bree and Hayley got along reminded me of my mother and her friends. Nobody walked on eggshells, and nobody melted down at simple teasing. I wanted that kind of friendship for myself. Hopefully, I was close.
“Speaking of psycho stalkers,” Hayley interjected, making me realize she’d been sharing a long, meaningful stare with Bree that I’d missed until it was too late. “What’s the deal with Preston Micropenis Charles III?”
Surprise rocketed through me before I could calm it. “Oh, well, I guess you’ve figured out we know one another.”
“Yes, we’re not blind,” Bree agreed blandly.
I laughed, but it was hollow. “We used to date. For years, actually. It started during college and lasted until about two years ago.”
“You dated that guy?” Bree made a face. “I don’t want to tell you your business, but…”
This time when I laughed, there was real emotion behind it. “He’s a jerk. I know it. I just didn’t see it back then.” Even that felt disingenuous. “Actually, I saw it, but I kept telling myself it would get better.”
“Did he hurt you?” Hayley asked. “Because I know people. I grew up on a farm, and I have a lot of brothers. You might not believe it, but they can get in and out like ninjas. They’re surprisingly stealthy for guys who live in flannel.”
“He never hurt me in that way.” I held up a pair of leggings and smiled at the design, which boasted red lips with fangs everywhere. “This seems to fit my niche.” I held them up for approval.
“You’re teeny tiny and will look adorable in them,” Bree agreed, grabbing the leggings. “We’ll get them. You can wear them to the first restaurant event, which I mistakenly thought wasn’t happening thanks to this stupid retreat thing, but I was wrong. We want to know more about this Preston guy.”
I had zero intention of keeping information from them. I really did want to forge bonds. “Okay, but let’s do it over lunch. I’m starving.”
“I think we’re going to need cocktails too.” Bree started for the counter. “Let’s go big. I know just the spot.”
brEE CHOSE brOKEN KEEL, WHICH HAD seating on the water. I got the Mojito Mariner. Hayley went for the Tybee Island Sunset, and Bree for the Spicy Sailor. We ordered the Riverside Seafood Nachos, Southern Style Crab Cakes, and Firecracker Shrimp to split amongst us.
Talk turned serious as soon as we had our cocktails.
“So, what was the problem with Preston?” Bree asked. She smiled, but she was clearly ready to throttle him for my benefit. I appreciated it, even if I was embarrassed about how bad things had gotten between us.
“It’s important to know how I grew up to understand,” I started on a sigh.
“In Salem, one of the best places on earth,” Bree prodded.
“Salem isn’t perfect,” I cautioned. “It has good things about it and bad things.”
“That’s life,” Hayley said. “There’s no town that’s absolutely perfect.”
“I loved growing up in Salem.” I sipped my cocktail.
It was good, but I momentarily missed my mother and the way she mixed a pumpkin martini.
“My mother and her friends were a family unto themselves. I didn’t have any siblings, but I grew up with kids who I treated like siblings. They loved me the same way.”
“What about your dad?” Bree asked.
I shrugged. “He took off when I was three. I saw him periodically until I was about eight or so. That’s to say, he would blow into town once a year to try to get money from my mother and pretend he cared about me.
Then he ghosted us until I was about sixteen.
I saw him once that year, and he swore he wanted to make amends. I haven’t seen him since.”
Bree was grim. “I get that. Trust me. I do.” She jerked her thumb at Hayley. “She grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting, but I didn’t. I had kind of a similar experience, except your mother sounds great, and mine was a flake.”
Laughter burbled up. “My mother could be described as flaky, but she has the best heart of anybody I know. My whole upbringing was very… witchy. She loves all the kitsch in Salem.
“We went on tours all the time—that’s what she does, she’s a tour guide—and her friends had picnics in the summer and bonfires in the fall,” I continued. “I assumed everybody was raised like me because all of my friends had the same upbringing.”
“That upbringing sounds like the dream to me.” Bree took on a far-off expression. “We moved around a lot. Did you live in the same house the whole time?”
“We had an apartment before my dad left then moved into a house a few years later. My mother still lives there.”
“So, get to the part about Preston,” Hayley prompted.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” Bree said dryly. “She has zero patience for anything that doesn’t revolve around her.”
“Hey.” Hayley bristled. “I listen to you go on and on about how perfect Brody is on a regular basis. How is that me not listening?”
“And you never say anything snarky when I’m doing it, either,” Bree teased.
I sipped my cocktail again. Then I got to the heart of the matter.
“In college, I realized that not everyone had been raised like me. I met Preston my senior year, and his stories about his family, about all the money they had and the fundraisers they went to with celebrities, well, they wowed me. I had stars in my eyes.”
“I think anybody would,” Bree said. “I know I would have been wowed too.”
“He was good looking and always so together,” I continued. “I had never known anybody so together. Since he was young, I figured that meant he was going to do great things.”
I paused as I collected my thoughts. “It started as subtle digs. He liked my clothes, but he was curious what I would wear when I got a real job. He thought my hair—it was much longer then—looked good wild, but wouldn’t it be more pragmatic to cut it a little bit so it was easier to put up in a corporate setting? ”
Bree’s mouth was a hard, firm line.
“Mind you, I went to school to be a writer,” I explained. “My mother saved up as much as she could, and I had loans and scholarships. I knew better than going to school just for writing, because that wouldn’t pay any bills. My actual major was in public relations, with a creative writing minor.”
“That’s smart,” Hayley said. “I did a similar thing, only my major was in accounting. What?” she challenged when Bree gave her a weird look. “I like numbers. Sue me.”
“I stopped writing when I was with Preston because he said that it was a waste of time. No author actually makes a living from writing books unless they’re James Patterson,” I explained.
“I showed him the first few books I’d written.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with them.
As you know, the first few books are always a mess. You learn by doing.”
“My first book was genius,” Bree countered. “It’s still genius, locked away on my computer somewhere. I will never look at it again so it can remain a genius work of art.”
Hayley snickered, and I nodded.
“I wrote through college, and then Preston got me a job for his father. It was a secretarial position.”
Bree made a sound like a furious cat.