Chapter Fourteen #2
He probably could have skated by on the same excuse he gave Gray, but he’d rather not take the chance he’d be forced to confess to Lucy that he couldn’t bring himself to leave her.
“The cake was amazing,” Lucy said, setting her empty plate on the table with a sigh. “As was the ice cream. I don’t think I’ve ever had vanilla ice cream that was so creamy.”
The rich chocolate cake with raspberry filling and frosting, as well as the ice cream, were excellent.
And Nick was glad they’d had big servings because as he was taking his first bite, he realized his hasty plan for getting Lucy to the party hadn’t included getting supper into her first. He’d gotten hung up on the jobsite and was running late, but cake and ice cream was a good supper.
“Making ice cream is one of Carson’s hobbies,” Taylor said. “He loves to try fun flavors that people wouldn’t expect, but vanilla’s always best for a party.”
“Okay, we have to do presents before Mattie has to go,” Willow said, clapping her hands. “Mine first!”
“Presents?” Lucy sounded as if she was going to cry. “This is too much.”
Willow scoffed as she pulled a stack of gifts from behind the counter.
Nick recognized his gift as the one on the bottom, making the base of the stack.
He’d dropped it off that morning on his way to work because he didn’t see any way to smuggle it in with Lucy in tow. And he hadn’t wanted to forget it.
She opened Willow’s first because Willow was handing them out and she thrust it into Lucy’s hands. Inside the wrapped box was a photo frame, and both women got a little weepy.
Nick didn’t think to bring a pocket pack of tissues to a birthday party but, knowing Lucy, he probably should have.
The photo showed two girls, maybe twelve or thirteen, holding hands as they leaped off a floating dock into the water. Judging by the cloud of red hair in the photo and the way the two women hugged now, it was them, back during one of Lucy’s visits to town.
When they’d used napkins to mop their faces, Willow tried to hand her the next gift, but Taylor snatched it away, startling all of them.
“No,” she said, clutching it to her chest. “I changed my mind. It’s too corny, but I’ll get you something else tomorrow.”
“I love corny gifts,” Lucy said. “Please?”
Taylor tipped her head back and heaved such a dramatic sigh, Nick had a flashback to middle school when she was a Drama Club darling. “Fine.”
Lucy took her time with the ribbons and paper, clearly enjoying Taylor’s suffering. They all craned their necks to see when she lifted the lid, but the elegant gold bangle bracelet didn’t look all that corny to Nick.
“It’s gorgeous,” Lucy said, clearly as confused as everybody else.
Taylor sighed again. “There’s an inscription on the inside.”
Lucy lifted out the bracelet and held it to the light so she could read the words inside. “It says Little Sister.”
Taylor held up her wrist, showing off an identical bracelet. “Mine say Big Sister.”
The ribbons, paper and jeweler’s box fell to the floor when Lucy stood to wrap her arms around her sister.
“What if—” Lucy couldn’t even bring herself to say it.
“I was giving it to you no matter what.”
Yeah, he really should have brought tissues.
Everybody laughed, though, when Mattie took her gift from Willow to hand it off to Lucy. “I hate to follow these two, but this is from Sasha and me. And Billy, too, I guess. I’ll tell you right up front, you’re not going to cry.”
Lucy pushed the bracelet from Taylor onto her wrist and took the present from Mattie. Inside was a frosted glass with the logo for the Uneven Keel etched into it—the same logo that was on the sign and the aprons.
“I’ve never seen one of these,” Lucy said, holding it up so everybody could see.
“Those were the original glasses, but Billy went to generic, plain glasses sometime when Sasha was a teenager because those were too expensive to replace when they got broken. But he’s got a couple of boxes tucked away, and sometimes we’ll give one to somebody who’s pretty special.”
Lucy held the glass to her face, and Nick could tell by the sniffling and the way her shoulders shook that she was crying again.
“Crap,” Mattie said. “Why is there so much crying at this party?”
Everybody laughed, including Lucy, but Nick knew. Six weeks or so ago, Lucy felt alone in the world. Hell, she was alone in the world, except for a grandmother she hadn’t seen in a decade and a half. And now here she was, surrounded by friends and a sister who obviously cared about her.
Then Willow handed Lucy the gift from him, and on one hand, he hoped she wasn’t going to cry again. But on the other, he knew there was a chance he might feel bad if his was the only gift that didn’t make her cry.
She smiled at him before she opened it, the wetness of her eyes doing nothing to dim the sparkle.
And she looked so damn happy, he couldn’t help but smile back at her.
Their gazes were locked, and he could have looked into her blue eyes all night, if somebody—probably Willow—hadn’t given a dreamy sigh.
“I’m feeling some pressure here,” he told her and was rewarded with her laugh.
She tore the paper from his gift, flinging it away.
And then she went still, looking at the notebook he’d chosen for her for a few moments before flipping through the pages to the middle.
Then she ran her hand over the paper, feeling the creamy blank pages for sketching cocktails and notes.
It had a soft cover, in graduated hues from tan at the bottom to beige to light blue to a darker blue, like sand, sea and sky.
“This is beautiful,” she whispered.
“I was watching you write in yours recently and it looked almost full. And the cover looks like the shots you made for that party, which is what you really want in life.”
Tears trickled down her cheeks as she skimmed her fingers over the cover. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
“Happy birthday, Lucy.”
The other guests started moving around, picking up wrapping paper and gathering the cake plates, but because Nick was still watching Lucy, he saw her open the notebook and run her hand over the creamy paper again and smile.
She was going to fill that notebook with ideas that would make her dreams come true. And he was going to be happy for her, even if it killed him.