Chapter 20
The porch light spills a warm glow across the steps as Constance gets to her feet, a blue gift bag hanging from her left hand, green tissue poking out the top.
She hooks a thumb in her pocket. “I can go. I didn’t mean to do…whatever I did.”
“You’re fine.” I laugh, the sound thin against the quiet night, and grip the railing tighter. “What you did was save him. The man practically tripped over himself trying to get away from me.”
I just wish I knew why.
“Shit, Mags. I’m sorry,” she says. “I brought you a gift, which—let’s be real—is a pretty crappy consolation prize compared to Holden Shaw.” Her gaze cuts to the carriage house. “He’s staying here? When did that happen?”
“This morning.”
“I guess we’ve got some catching up to do.” She hands me the bag. “Happy birthday, Maggie.”
“This is sweet. Thank you.” I part the tissue paper and smile when I see what’s inside.
“I can’t believe they still make these.” I pull out one of four brightly colored Vera Bradley notebooks, their quilted covers as loud as I remember.
“I was obsessed with these in high school. I swore they had some kind of literary magic.”
“Yeah, I remember. And I thought you were insane because they were so expensive back then.”
The image of a teenaged Constance flits through my mind, heels dug in on the tile floor of my favorite Barnes & Noble.
You do realize you can get ten comp books for the price of one of these, right?
she used to say. But on the way out, we’d stop at Starbucks for two Godiva hot chocolates—her treat, always—because by then, I’d already spent my allowance.
“I probably owe you a thousand dollars for all the times you spotted me.” I punch the code into the keypad and push the door open. The faint smell of last night’s pancakes lingers in the air, and my stomach knots. “Excuse the disaster. Haven’t had time to clean up yet.”
Only because I spent all morning overthinking things to death.
“No worries,” she says, pausing at the vase of hydrangeas. “Holden?”
I laugh a little too loud. “Aunt Z. They’re my favorites.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Good.” I bend to smell my flowers out of habit, even though they don’t have much of a scent. “I talked to her this morning. They’re in Portland this week, but they’ll be back for Ben’s graduation.”
“I’d love to see her.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
In the kitchen, I drop the bags on the island and nudge the chicken toward her. “It’s not the thousand dollars I owe you, but maybe it’s a start?”
Her face lights up. “Clucker Joe’s? Holden turned down Clucker Joe’s?”
Only so he could turn me down.
I shrug. “Poor thing doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“His loss.” She pulls out a thigh and picks at the crust. “So, Maggie…can we talk about why your hair’s wet?”
The fridge hums in the quiet as I grab the TX stashed on top.
“We went swimming,” I say, heat crawling up my neck. “At Blue Hole. Bourbon?”
“And don’t think I didn’t notice that,” she goes on, finger aimed at the UCLA sweatshirt I have on. “What were you wearing in the water, exactly?”
My lips twist, and her eyes go comically wide.
“Magnolia May! You went skinny-dipping with Holden Shaw?”
“Skinny-dipping? For Pete’s sake, Constance, I had my underwear on—very unsexy cotton boy shorts and a full-coverage bra, if you must know. With polka dots.” I set the bourbon in front of her. “You in?”
“Yeah, what the hell.”
For the next hour, we sit cross-legged on the living-room floor, TV on but muted, working our way through fried chicken and bourbon. Constance mostly avoids Wade, sticking to safe ground: being back home, crashing with her parents, helping out with Loretta.
She finishes up and sets her empty plate on the coffee table. “Thank you so much for telling the director about her. She absolutely loves it, and Holden’s been a dream come true.”
“Huh.” I frown. “She hasn’t mentioned anything…off about him?”
“Off?”
“It’s just…when I brought her up earlier, he got a little weird.”
“What did he say?”
“It was more how he reacted. Like he stiffened up.” I shake my head. “Ignore me. I’m sure it’s nothing. Loretta’s the sweetest.”
Constance takes a sip of her bourbon. “So what happened tonight that makes you think he couldn’t wait to get away from you?”
Besides the speed at which he bolted from the truck?
“Well,” I say, my mouth twisting, “we kind of…kissed.”
Her glass clatters against the table. “You kind of what?”
I toy with the hem of his sweatshirt, the memory making me smile, even now. “It was perfect, or at least I thought it was. For a minute there, I swear he felt it too. We even held hands on the way back.”
“You held hands?”
“Just until we got to the gate,” I say. “Then it was like he was looking for an out.”
“And I gave him one.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I totally cockblocked you, didn’t I?”
I take a long pull that burns all the way down. “Guess he changed his mind.”
The words come out easy enough, but inside I feel raw, like something sharp is caught behind my ribs.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Constance says. “He kissed you.”
“He did. Then he stopped kissing me, so I kissed him back.”
“Still, he was obviously into you or there wouldn’t have been any kissing at all.”
Was. Past tense.
“Maybe it was just the setting. Blue Hole’s pretty romantic at night.”
“True fact. I swear half of Fisher Springs High lost their virginity there. I know I did.” She leans back on her hands, stretching her legs out in front of her.
“This is nice. Not the rejection part—which has an explanation, I’m sure of it.
The girl talk part. By the time we were old enough to actually do the things with boys we used to daydream about, I did what I did, and well, you know the rest.”
“Constance,” I say, setting my glass on the table, “we were kids. What you did was cruel and stupid, but you tried to fix it, and I wouldn’t let you.” I meet her gaze, the light from the lamp catching in her eyes. “That’s on me.”
A swallow bobs in her throat.
“I’m through being angry. It hasn’t done me a bit of good.” I rest my hand on her shin. “And believe it or not, I forgave you a long time ago. Maybe it’s time you forgive yourself?”
“Okay.”
I bump her leg with my foot. “Really? You lost it to Wade Russo at Blue Hole? That’s so cliché.”
She falls back on her elbows. “I was sixteen! Nothing’s cliché at sixteen. So where did you lose it?”
I pick up my bourbon and take another sip. “Total honesty?”
“No way!” Constance says. “We haven’t done this since high school. Total honesty.”
Her hand comes up, and I hook my pinky with hers, just like when we were kids.
“I sort of…haven’t yet.”
She scrambles upright. “Oh my God, Mags, seriously? By choice?”
“Not exactly.”
“But why? How? You could’ve—until I…” She twists an imaginary key at her lips. “Never mind.”
“There weren’t a whole lot of options. Boys my age were practically nonexistent around here. Still are.” I give her a sheepish smile. “But there was this one time…”
Constance leans forward, eyes sparking with interest. “I’m listening.”
“I was eighteen, and it was March. Right at the start of the big flood.”
She nods. “I wasn’t here, but I saw pictures.”
“The B&B was closed. Aunt Z and Uncle Charlie were off somewhere, so it’s just Ben and me here when this group of spring breakers shows up. Their camp got rained out, and everything else was booked solid. My brother, shrewd as ever, looks at them and goes, ‘If you’ve got cash, you can crash.’”
Constance snorts. “I’m assuming y’all didn’t run that by Aunt Z first.”
“I was more or less in charge by that point, but no. We did not.”
She tucks a strand of chin-length hair behind her ear. “How big of a group?”
“Just five,” I say. “Two couples and a twenty-year-old philosophy major named Liam. He and I—”
“Wait…” She holds up a hand. “Philosophy? At twenty?”
“I think he may have fudged that part, but eighteen-year-old me ate it up. Anyway, he and I hit it off, and I started hanging out with them. Ben wasn’t thrilled, but I didn’t care.
It was just nice being around kids my own age for once.
Or at least close to my age. I guess two years is kind of a lot when one of you is in college and the other… ”
Constance taps a nonexistent watch, and I roll my eyes.
“At night,” I say, shooting her a smirk, “as soon as everyone else went to bed, Liam and I would sneak out to the barn to talk and fool around.”
“Please define ‘fool around.’”
“Uh, second base? Venturing into third? He wasn’t my first kiss, but—”
“No, that was Justin Moreno at Courtney Hubbard’s fourteenth birthday party,” she says without missing a beat. “Go on.”
“Actually, it was the week before, behind the gym during midmorning break. But nobody knew about that.”
Constance’s mouth falls open, but I plow ahead before she can speak.
“On their last night, Liam says he wants to do something special, so he plans a romantic picnic.” I throw in air quotes.
“I wasn’t naive. He was a junior in college and the kind of good-looking that makes smart girls do stupid things.
I knew what would happen if I met him at the barn, and I still went.
He had my panties off in record time and was seconds from taking my virginity when Ben busted in.
” I groan. “We had a blanket over us, but still. Not exactly something you want seared into your brother’s memory. ”
“Jesus, Mags. Why would he do that? Ben’s protective, but not to that degree. At least, not that I’ve ever seen.”
I trace my finger around the edge of my glass, not meeting her eyes. “He’d sort of overheard the others betting on how far Liam would get with me—and the hundred bucks he’d get if he came back with my underwear.”
“Okay, I take it back. That’s terrible, Maggie,” she says, her tone softening. “Good for Ben.”