42. Lottie
Lottie
“ T ime to place your bets,” Carson’s mom, Natalie, calls out. She pulls out the pencil holding her red hair up to write on the notepad in her hand.
“Thirty minutes,” I guess.
Natalie nods her head. “I’ve got forty-five minutes. It’ll take them a bit to come up with a plan to make it look like they don’t want to join our pampering.”
Everyone laughs at Natalie’s explanation. She’s not wrong. The pictures Noah showed me of the last spa night made it pretty clear they enjoyed themselves.
The rest of the girls call out their guesses. Mom and Lilly say an hour. Gia and her mom, Lucy, guess two. Michael’s mom, Megan, guesses an hour and a half while Aunt Hope and her two girls say an hour and fifteen minutes.
We don’t win a prize for being right. It’s more for bragging rights than anything else. Girls’ night has always gotten crashed by the boys. It doesn’t seem to matter what we do, they eventually show up wherever we are.
Betting brings me a new emotion this time.
Normally, it always felt silly to guess when the guys would crash our party.
Now, I have a stake in the game. Teddy will be with them.
I’ll have a guy who can’t stand to wait any longer than necessary to see me.
And I have no doubt that Teddy will push to come here early, if not just to see me, to avoid the punishment he’s imagined my dad will dole out.
If I truly believed Dad would hurt Teddy, I’d never have encouraged him to go out with the guys. This evening is more about bringing Teddy into the fold, not pushing him out. They wouldn’t have invited him in the first place if they didn’t want him there.
I help Mom and Natalie lay out our spa supplies. We’ve got headbands, face masks, manicure tools, and even a special humidifier that’s pumping out essential oils into my parents’ basement.
“I wish Ginny was here,” Gia murmurs next to me. We’re cuddled on the massive grey sectional, sipping our cucumber water.
Her sad tone has me wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Me too. We’ll find a way to get her to come home.”
“I thought our mystery would do the trick. She used to love going on treasure hunts.”
“She still does. You heard how excited she was when you told her about the letters,” I remind Gia.
She filled Ginny in on the letters I found at Noah and Lilly’s house.
She’s been begging us to start researching them for the past few weeks, but we’ve been holding out, hoping she’d make the trip home to be with us.
“It’s not enough, though. Why aren’t we enough?”
My heart is breaking for Gia. I’ve never heard her sound so defeated. “We are enough, but you know life is crazy for Ginny. The day her album released and the entire country went nuts over it, we knew nothing would be the same for her.”
“Do you think she’s embarrassed of us? ”
“Absolutely not. That’s not the Ginny we know.”
Gia sighs. “You’re right. But something’s going on, Lottie. Something she won’t talk about, and I’m scared to push her too hard because I don’t want to lose her.”
“You’re not going to lose her. No matter what happens, Ginny knows she can always come to us.
” My brain is spinning, trying to come up with a way to talk to Ginny.
She needs us now more than ever, yet she’s only distanced herself further.
I don’t want to think the worst, but what if Wesley isn’t the all-American boy we think he is?
The boys come crashing down the stairs, as loud as elephants in the jungle. I look at my watch. Forty minutes on the dot. Damn, Aunt Natalie is good.
“You said they weren’t going to do spa stuff for very long,” Carson groans at Uncle Levi.
“Well, how am I supposed to know how long this shit takes?” he argues back.
I catch Teddy’s gaze. He’s smirking at me as if he’s not mad in the slightest they’re here early. In fact, looking at all of them, I’d say they’re awfully smug for men who act like they don’t want to join spa night.
“Are you going to make us do this again?” Dad asks Mom as he leans over the back of the couch to kiss her hello.
“Only if you want to this time. We wouldn’t want to make you do something you’re uncomfortable with.” She smirks at him.
Her statement stops him short. He opens his mouth, clearly unsure about how to respond. He looks to the other guys for help, but they’re all at a loss.
Natalie cackles. “I called it from the beginning.” She pulls out a second basket full of self-care items geared toward men.
“How did you know we’d crash early?” Tucker asks indignantly.
Natalie just gives her husband a look that says everything. These women know their husbands better than anyone. Of course, she’d guess their intentions.
Teddy squeezes my shoulders, gently massaging the muscles. I tilt my head back, looking up into his handsome face. The frown lines that were deeply etched onto his face have softened substantially since I saw him this morning.
I raise my eyebrows at him in question. He nods in response, pressing a kiss to my forehead. Good. His talk with Dad went well. Now, he doesn’t have to worry about my family kicking him out. Not that they’d ever do that, but Teddy was worried they would.
“How about this,” I suggest. “The guys have to give the girls massages, and the girls won’t say a word to anyone that you like to wear face masks and get pampered every now and then.”
“You make us sound like we’re fragile men who don’t want anyone to know we like the softer things in life,” Todd protests.
I make a face, knowing the rest of the girls are reacting similarly.
“Yeah, okay, it does come across that way,” Todd acquiesces. The whole room erupts into laughter, and everyone settles in. The guys join in wholeheartedly, digging through the basket Natalie brought for them.
The girls help the guys slather on moisturizers and whatever else they decide to try, while the guys use their muscles for massages.
Teddy and Levi finally schedule a walk-through to plan the renovations for Teddy’s house. I get some quality time with Mom, and we both wish Caroline could be here. She left in her converted van after the fair to finish some paintings people had commissioned. I already miss her a ton.
The whole family, minus a few, is gathered together, laughing and loving each other to the fullest. It’s everything I never let myself dream of having.
Teddy was always the man I wanted in this scene but didn’t believe would ever be here.
Letting my imagination run away with that fantasy only ever left me in heartbreak.
To be able to look across the room and see the love of my life standing there, laughing with my dad, is still hard to believe.
When Teddy catches my gaze, his whole face softens. I mouth I love you to him, and he says it back, a happy little smile tilting up the side of his mouth. It seems I’m not the only one having a hard time accepting that this is real life.
While there are many unknowns ahead of us, I’ll never question his devotion to me. He’ll stand by my side, steadfast and strong, until the day we die. I couldn’t have gotten any luckier.