Chapter 1 #2
Also, if Emma’s considering calling off this wedding because she’s attracted to one of the hotel staff, I will defend Chandler to the end.
Marrying Chandler is what she wants.
She’s said so approximately forty-three billion times since their first date in high school.
We forgave him for not proposing then—we were all way too young, and then they broke up in college—but since they got back together after college seven years ago, the rest of us have gotten pretty tired of waiting too.
In my opinionated opinion, he should’ve popped the question at least four years ago. It’s not like there was ever any doubt where their relationship was going. Even during that little break-up three years ago. And I know Emma dropped hints. Might’ve even proposed to him once or twice.
But much like he didn’t listen to any hints or outright frank discussions until about this time last year, she’s not listening to me right now. She’s charging ahead with getting everything out, which means she’s fixated.
I’ll ask questions later.
“And then there was that thing on the plane ride here,” she’s saying, “and now Chandler’s all hung up on what happened at Thanksgiving, and I hate to ask this.
I know it’s awful. But we’re this close to getting married, and I know he doesn’t mean to put that in danger, but I feel like he is, and can you just…
God, I can’t believe I’m saying these words, but can you babysit him? ”
I gape at her.
I know she’s not talking about Chandler.
“Okay, babysit is a harsh word. More like…be a buffer. Yes. Can you be a buffer between him and Chandler? Just for a couple days?”
“You need me to babysit the pool boy?”
She finally looks at me, and her whole face crinkles in confusion. “The pool boy?”
I point to the guy in the ride-on flamingo costume, who’s clearly telling Claire something hilarious because she’s doubled over laughing and fawning all over him at the same time.
I can’t blame her.
He’s hot. And undeniably funny. Who wears a costume like that to work at a resort?
“That’s who you’re talking about? The drink server?”
Emma squeaks, and when I look back at her, I realize her face has gone three shades past horrified. “Laney. That’s—that’s—that’s not a drink server . That’s Theo .”
I gape across the breezeway at the pool again while the server turns his head so I can see his wide grin, and oh my god .
She’s right.
That’s her brother.
I mean, of course she knows her brother.
But that does not look like her brother .
Not the version of him I’ve known and been irritated by most of my life.
But I look closer, and oh my god again.
Theo Monroe, the boy who nicknamed me, Emma, and our friend Sabrina the ugly heiresses in third grade, who once got suspended from high school for recreating a scene from Braveheart in the school kitchen with a bunch of their dad’s taxidermy animals, who nearly took out the town’s prized statue of our founder on a dare a few months after high school graduation, and who ordered something so obscene I can’t even talk about it from my family’s print-on-demand company and then wore it all over Snaggletooth Creek not long after I got back to town after getting my master’s degree, accidentally made me drool over him.
Ew.
Ew .
This is jet lag. Or the humidity. Or something .
How did I not see that that’s Theo ?
Snaggletooth Creek— the Tooth to us locals—is small, but it’s not so small that you run into everyone every time you turn around.
Especially when I live on the east side of town, where my family’s company’s world headquarters are located, and last I heard, Theo lives in a single-wide at the edge of his dad’s property just beyond the western boundaries of our little mountain town.
While I’ll go have lunch or coffee downtown, Theo spends his off-time rock climbing or snowboarding or kayaking anywhere but the heart of the Tooth.
Or so I gather from hearing Emma talk about him occasionally.
I don’t think I’ve seen him in person in four or five years.
And definitely not shirtless. And definitely not grinning at me the way he’s grinning at Claire.
Ew .
This is mortifying.
“Oh, god, Laney, you were my last hope,” Emma whispers. “Please don’t fall for the Theo glow-up.”
I blink, shake my head, and school my expression while I look back at her. “Does he still have the same personality?”
She cracks up, and this is such a real, genuine amusement that my shoulders relax.
“Yes,” she says firmly. “ So much yes .”
“I think we’re clear then.” Except as I’m saying it, the rest of our conversation catches up with me and clicks into place.
Oh, no.
Oh, no no no.
“So you’ll do it?” she says. “You’ll baby—erm, be the wall between Chandler and Theo?”
I’m all the way around the pool from Chandler, where he’s sitting with his triplet cousins who are serving as his groomsmen.
They’re at a far table with a great view of the sunset, and even from here, I can see his lip curl in irritation while he, too, watches Theo.
He’s tapping something that looks like a tennis racket against the edge of the table while he scowls.
This wedding? A week of sun, fun, and being a tourist with her family and best friends while everything’s cold and snowy in the mountains back home?
This is Emma’s dream .
She grew up in a crumbling cabin just outside of town limits. When we were little, my parents ran a local T-shirt shop and her dad owned a small taxidermy business.
With the internet age, our families’ businesses have both expanded.
But hers doesn’t have quite the same level of respectability around town that mine does.
Never has. Not even when her mom was alive and driving our bus to school.
And I know it bothers her that she’s celebrated back home as that Monroe girl who overcame her humble beginnings to make something of herself .
Making something of herself was coming home with an accounting degree and starting an accounting firm that now does taxes for half the town. And she loves it.
Marrying Chandler and starting a family?
This is the final cherry on Emma’s dream life sundae.
“Of course I’ll do it,” I say with what I hope is all the conviction I need to believe myself too.
Theo can be a dick, and he wouldn’t know responsibility if it did a striptease for him on top of Ol’ Snaggletooth, the gold miner statue in front of city hall back home.
Emma’s quit fretting that she’ll have to support him in old age, but I suspect it’s more out of loyalty to family and not wanting to talk bad about him to anyone than it is that she no longer worries about him. But he is known for having fun.
So the flamingo costume? The flirting? The drinks?
It’s all perfectly Theo .
“I’d ask Sabrina, but she’s been making these faces at him—” Emma starts.
“Awesome,” I sigh before I can stop myself.
“—and I’m sure it’s just loyalty to Chandler since he’s her cousin and they work together and everything, and Chandler was really mad this afternoon because he’s stressed?—”
“Everyone wants everything to go right the week of your wedding.”
“And as for Claire—” She drops her head in her hands and sighs, smearing the last bite of cookies and cream protein bar over her forehead as she mumbles something.
I take the bar from her and wipe her forehead. “What was that, sweetie?”
“He’d seduce her before the night’s over, and then I’d have to deal with her broken heart too because she doesn’t know he’s totally a love-’em-and-leave-’em guy,” she whispers.
“And any other time, that would be absolutely fine, but she’s super vulnerable right now after a horrible break-up and I just don’t want to put this on her and leave her worse than she got here. ”
I don’t think she’s wrong.
Theo’s drawing Claire’s attention like he’s a sea nymph and she’s a love-starved sailor who’s been lost for weeks, which isn’t exactly the Claire I remember.
The Claire I remember is fun and put-together and wouldn’t flirt with Theo .
And she’s not the only woman at the pool giving him their undivided attention.
Although Chandler’s Great-Aunt Brenda might be glaring. Hard to tell the difference between her glare face and her swoon face sometimes.
I swallow hard. “Don’t worry, Em. I’m on it.”
“It’s just for a couple days. I swear, once Chandler has some space from Theo and gets to just hang out on the beach and play a round or two of golf, he’ll be fine, and Theo being Theo won’t bother him so much anymore.”
“Absolutely. No problem.”
“And maybe talk to Sabrina and find out why she’s mad at him too?”
“ Emma . Bare minimum here. Of course. I’ve got this.”
“And there’s one more thing.”
I look at her.
She doesn’t look back at me. “We’re short one bungalow so I put you in his,” she says on a rush.
Don’t twitch, Delaney. You are a Kingston. You are one of Emma’s very best friends. You are here for her. This is her week. This is for her wedding. The wedding of her dreams. Do. Not. Twitch .
It’s not working.
I’m twitching.
And then I think about what my parents will say—they are not fans of Theo and would have an absolute fit if they saw me going into his bungalow—and I twitch all over again.
They’ve also made subtle comments about how lovely it is that Emma is getting married when I declined a proposal from their perfect choice for me a year ago, and they’re concerned that I’ll end up a lonely old maid without any good prospects if I don’t start considering the men my mother keeps introducing me to.