Chapter 2 SUNNY RES #2
Cleo in my arms, I rounded past the house to where they’d all gathered, chatting animatedly.
Well, then. It turned out that a lot could change in two years.
The boys seemed like, well, not like boys any more.
They’d both grown up, filled out. They carried themselves differently, with more surety in Finn’s case, and more gravitas in Noah’s.
Both, I suspected, were finally capable of growing the full beards they’d been obsessed with during junior high.
‘Hey guys,’ I managed, inwardly kicking myself for the embarrassingly casual delivery. It was the sort of delivery a side character in a teen drama managed, to a soundtrack of canned laugher. I tried again. ‘Noah. Finn. It’s so good to see you.’
Oh, good. Now I’d veered over to the astonishingly formal side of the spectrum. I sounded like the heroine of a regency novel about to invite someone for a ‘turn about the room’.
But I wasn’t brave enough to try a third time and hope for Goldilocks perfection.
I swallowed, hoping that Noah and Finn weren’t looking at me and wondering why I hadn’t changed over the past two years – why I was the same old Molly with the same old job and the same old indecisive ways.
Although at least I was snuggling Cleo. That had to count for something.
Noah shot a glance at the studio, as though assessing whether I’d been inside. He always hated it when I spied on his works in progress. Fair – no one needed to read the first drafts of my articles.
But Noah’s art was so luminous. It was hard not to steal a glimpse of the magic he wielded with his brush. Meanwhile, my early drafts suggested that maybe another year in preschool would have benefited me greatly.
Cleo wiggled in my arms, and Noah turned his dark-eyed gaze back to me.
Something in his eyes made me suddenly shy – he was looking at me differently, somehow, as though he were seeing me for the first time.
Blushing, I stooped so Cleo could leap down safely and make her usual figure eights around everyone’s legs, purring happily as they told her over and over how beautiful she was.
‘Molly!’ It was my turn to be grabbed and whirled around in circles.
Finn did so easily, all those hours spent swimming and kicking soccer balls around proving well worth it.
He’d come from the beach: sand coated his tanned skin, and his wavy hair was stiff with salt.
‘Will you be my date to the Summerween Festival tonight, fair maiden?’
He said it lightly, teasingly, the way he said everything.
His blue eyes sparkled, and I was reminded for a moment of the myths of the mermen waiting patiently for their perfect human match to swim alongside them.
I flushed at his touch, realising that in that moment I’d happily let him drag me off to his watery lair.
Instead, I snapped my fingers. The sand cascaded off him, whirling in a light dervish back off to the beach.
‘I promised Lara I’d be on her arm tonight,’ I teased right back.
Finn sighed dramatically. He pulled off the towel draped over his shoulder and whacked it against the ground. ‘As if I can compete with Lara.’
He wasn’t wrong. My best friend since middle school, Lara had even more of a reputation for breaking hearts than Finn did.
She always made an appearance at our Summerween reunions, and definitely did her part in ensuring that our appetite for drama was satiated.
And it was cheaper entertainment than any of the streaming services were currently offering.
‘Where is our lovely Lara?’ asked Finn, glancing around for the famously bubbly blonde who usually showed up with me.
‘She’s riding separately. She had some work stuff to take care of, but she promised she’d see us at the festival.’
Enough work stuff that she’d decided to stay at the Camellia, a B&B in town. Or so she said. I suspected that the real reason was that she wasn’t comfortable staying with a grieving family. Having grown up in a rocky home environment, Lara was sensitive to other families’ pain.
‘She’d better,’ said Finn, a note of faux warning in his voice. ‘Because what’s the Summerween Festival without Lara getting the cops called on us? A Noah type of affair, that’s what.’
‘Very funny, Finn. Good to see you, Mol,’ said Noah, somewhat stiffly.
Although maybe that was because he was laden with beach gear and grocery bags.
His dark eyes were set in their perpetual thoughtful frown, and I had to fight the urge to rub my thumb against his forehead to erase whatever worries lurked there.
Perhaps I’d absently made the gesture while I was thinking about it, because Noah’s gaze dropped to meet mine. There was a heat to it I hadn’t felt before, and I averted my eyes.
Noah had always been good looking. But since I’d last seen him his looks had evolved into what could be fairly described as devastatingly handsome.
But in a quiet, stoic way – the opposite of Finn’s in-your-face good looks and charisma, which habitually sent men and women alike astray.
The rumours surrounding Finn could never be overstated.
Noah, on the other hand, had always been a one-girl kind of guy.
Not even Lara had been able to turn his head, and she’d certainly put on quite the show over the years trying to do just that.
Sometimes I wished I had half of Lara’s shamelessness.
The girl was going to be president one day.
Or at least president of WildLife, the PR firm she worked at.
‘Thanks for shopping, Noah.’ Mom took one of the grocery bags from Noah, sifting approvingly through it. ‘Ooh, my cheese platter is going to be so decadent. And you got the pink lemonade!’
‘We’re going to make a worryingly strong punch,’ whispered Rosie. ‘Just you wait.’
‘Ooh, a punchy punch.’ Finn rubbed his hands together in glee, unleashing a light crackle of magic.
I laughed along with him until I caught the judgemental look on Tiff’s face.
Tiff had long been convinced that I was going to try something on with one of the boys and mess things up between our families.
Which I resented a bit, honestly. The boys had always been like brothers to me, and besides, I clearly wasn’t their type.
Finn certainly would’ve tried something on if so.
And Noah had always had girlfriends – and none of them anything like me at all.
Also, just because I didn’t live the neat and tidy life that my sister thought I should didn’t mean that I was the type to invite drama.
Except for the time in Florida when Lara and I had let ourselves in to the wrong hotel room.
But what happened on spring break stayed on spring break.