Chapter 16 #2
My eyes drift to Nash without permission. He's at the wall, arms at his sides, watching the room. Watching me. The stories about these women falling for impossible men are landing in places I can't protect, and the man standing ten feet away is the reason.
I look away before he catches me.
"Darla?" I say.
Darla goes quiet for a second, her hand circling her belly.
"East and I never really had a first date.
It was complicated. Declan was his best friend, and I was Declan's sister.
For a long time, that was a line neither of us could cross.
" She pauses. "I wanted to go to prom with him.
I did go with him and Declan. It was perfect and messy.
Nothing was simple." Her mouth softens. "Then Declan was gone, and East spent a long time running from me because wanting me felt like betraying his best friend.
And I spent a long time letting him." She rubs her belly.
"Now I'm carrying his twins. So either I won or I lost, depending on how you look at it. "
"You won," Maggie says. Quiet. Definitive. Darla's eyes go bright for a second.
At seven-thirty exactly, Candace lifts her glass. "The ban is lifted. Men are now allowed in conversation."
Frankie looks up from the floor. "We've been talking about men for the last twenty minutes."
"We've been talking about pregnancies and bad dates," Candace says. "That's different."
"Every story had a man in it," Frankie says.
"Technicality," Candace says.
Frankie's mouth curves. "Sloane's story was about Knox. Darla's was about East. Yours was about Malachi."
"Those were stories about US that happened to INVOLVE men," Candace says. "The men were supporting characters."
"The men were the whole plot." Frankie is grinning now, which on Frankie is devastating.
"We made it two minutes," I say. "Honestly I'm proud of us."
Candace points at her. "The ban is lifted. Moving on. Before Frankie audits the entire conversation."
"Thank god," Darla says. "I've been holding in a complaint about East's snoring for twenty-eight minutes. Allegedly."
"His snoring?" Sloane asks.
"It's structural. Load-bearing. I'm convinced it supports the foundation of the house."
The conversation opens up. Sloane talks about Knox's inability to admit he likes the goat. Candace tells a story about Malachi singing in the shower that makes Amelia choke on her wine.
"Maggie." I pull my legs up under me on the couch. "How did you and James meet? You never tell the story."
Maggie looks at her cake like it holds the answer.
"I was working the front desk at the VA clinic in Oxford.
He came in for a follow-up. Sat in the waiting room for two hours without saying a word.
Read the same magazine three times." She pauses.
"I finally walked over and said, 'Sir, that's a six-month-old copy of Better Homes and Gardens.
Either you're very interested in fall centerpieces or you're stalling. '"
"What did he do?" Amelia asks.
"He looked at me over the top of the magazine and said, 'I was waiting for you to come talk to me.'"
Darla makes a sound like she's been shot. Candace grabs her arm.
"After that, he started bringing me hydrangeas. Every Tuesday. Same flowers. Same time. He never said why." Maggie smiles. "On the seventh month, I opened the door and said, 'James, either ask me to dinner or stop wasting good hydrangeas.'"
"What did he say?" Amelia asks.
"He said, 'I was going to ask on month twelve. You're impatient.'"
The room holds for a beat. Then Darla's chin wobbles. Her eyes fill. She presses both hands over her mouth, and the sob that comes out is loud enough to startle the goat outside.
"Darla," Candace says, laughing.
"I'm not crying. I'm HORMONAL. That's the most romantic thing I've ever heard, and I'm going to KILL East for not bringing me hydrangeas for twelve months."
"He brought you cold spaghetti in chocolate syrup," Sloane says.
"IT'S NOT THE SAME, SLOANE."
Sloane grabs a pillow and throws it at Darla. Darla catches it, holds it against her belly, and keeps crying into it. Candace is doubled over. Amelia is wiping her eyes. Frankie lifts her glass in Maggie's direction.
"Twelve months of hydrangeas," Frankie says. "James doesn't do anything halfway."
"He does not," Maggie says, and the quiet pride in her voice makes my chest ache.
"We got married eleven months later." Maggie smooths her hands over her knees.
The room goes quiet. When she speaks again, her voice is softer.
"We always wanted kids. Tried for years.
It just didn't happen for us." She looks around the room.
At Candace. At Darla with her belly. Then Sloane with her hand resting on her own.
Me. Amelia. At Frankie on the floor with her wine.
"Then James brought me here. And I got all of you. "
The silence holds. My eyes sting.
Darla reaches across the couch and takes Maggie's hand. "You're going to be a grandma soon. You know that, right?"
Sloane puts her hand on her own belly, barely showing. "Twice over."
Maggie's chin trembles. Just once. She presses her lips together and looks across the room to the bar side where James is sitting with his tea.
He's already looking at her. The look that passes between them carries thirty years of Tuesday hydrangeas, empty nurseries, and a house that filled up anyway.
James lifts his mug. Maggie lifts her wineglass. They drink at the same time without saying a word.
Amelia is laughing now. Her whole face open, her shoulders down, leaning into Candace's side. She belongs here. She just didn't know it yet.
Candace catches my eye across the room. Her gaze holds mine, steady, quiet, the kind of look that says everything without opening her mouth.
"Ruby. Come help me get more ice."
We walk to the kitchen, around the corner from the main room. Close enough to hear the laughter, far enough that our voices won't carry. Candace leans against the counter and crosses her arms.
"Talk to me."
"About what? The ice? It's in the freezer. Mystery solved."
"Ruby."
"I'm fine."
"You've been fine for a week. You've been so fine that Frankie texted me, which means Frankie is worried. Which means you're not fine because Frankie doesn't worry about people who are actually fine."
I open the freezer. Pull out the ice tray. Focus on cracking the cubes.
"It's Nash," Candace says.
The ice tray cracks. My hands are still.
"I can see it. You stopped leaning into him on the bike. Stopped stealing his food. You stopped aiming the jokes at him." She pauses. "He's walking around like a man who lost something and can't figure out where he put it."
"He didn't lose anything. He made a choice."
"What choice?"
The ice cubes sit in the tray, cracked but not falling. I press one with my thumb.
"He kissed me." The words come out quiet. "A week ago. In my hallway. And it was—" I stop. Breathe. "It was everything, Candace. The kind of kiss that rewrites your whole operating system. Then he pulled back. Three days of nothing. Like it didn't happen."
"Did you ask him why?"
"I didn't need to. I saw—" My throat tightens. "I saw him with someone. At the fight circuit. A woman. Naya. The headband on his wrist is hers, and he was standing with her in a back hallway pressing it while he looked at her. She touched his arm like she's done it a thousand times."
Candace is quiet for a long moment.
"Ruby." Her voice is careful. "Do you know who Naya is?"
"I know she's beautiful. She fights. He goes to see her. The headband belongs to her. He pulled back from me because of her."
"That's what you think happened?"
"That's what I saw."
Candace opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. The look on her face is the one she wears when she's deciding how much to say, weighing loyalty against truth, measuring what will help and what will shatter.
"I think you should talk to East," she says.
"East? Why East?"
"Because East knows things about Nash that Nash won't tell you himself. And because I love you too much to let you build a case on evidence you don't have all of."
"Candace—"
"Talk to East. Before you close the file."
She picks up the ice bucket and walks back to the couches. I stand in the kitchen, my thumb pressing a crack in an ice cube, Candace's voice in my head.
Evidence you don't have all of.
The sound of laughter carries from the main room. I follow it.
By nine, the girls' night has been infiltrated.
It starts with Kyle. He crosses from the bar side with a plate of nachos and a look of complete innocence.
"I come in peace," he says. "And with cheese."
"This is a girls' night, Kyle," I say.
"I'm aware. I'm here as a neutral party delivering provisions. Think of me as the Red Cross." He sets the nachos on the coffee table. His eyes find Amelia. "Hey."
"Hey." Amelia tucks her hair behind her ear.
Kyle hovers approximately four seconds too long before Candace clears her throat and he retreats to the bar side.
Ten minutes later, East appears around the half wall.
"Darla. You need anything?"
"I need you to leave. This is girls' night."
"I know. I respect that. Just checking." He doesn't leave. He leans against the frame. "The nachos look good."
"Kyle brought them."
"Kyle got to come in?"
"Kyle brought cheese. What did you bring?"
East disappears. Returns with a bowl of Maggie's banana pudding.
"That's bribery," Sloane says.
"That's strategy," East says, settling onto the floor beside Darla's end of the couch. Darla rolls her eyes, but her hand finds the back of his neck.
Knox appears next, leaning against the half wall with his arms crossed, watching Sloane laugh at something Darla said. He doesn't come over. He just watches. Sloane catches him.
"You can come over if you stop looking like a bouncer."
"I'm not looking like a bouncer."
"You're literally leaning against a wall with your arms crossed."
He unfolds his arms. Steps inside. Sits on the floor next to Sloane's legs. She drops her hand to his shoulder without looking down.
James and Maggie are already in the hall. James has a mug of tea. Maggie has the rest of the cake. They settle into the corner as if they've always been there. Maggie leans against James' chest with his arm around her, both of them watching the room fill.
Rider appears with a guitar nobody knew he played. He sits on the floor by the window and picks something quiet while the conversations layer.
Malachi is last. He rounds the half wall the way Malachi enters every space, filling it.
Candace looks up at him. He looks at her.
The whole conversation happens in the space of two seconds, then he sits on the arm of the couch beside her and pulls her into his side.
She settles against his chest like she's been waiting for him to show up.
Nash is at the wall on our side, where he's been all night.
Knox is on the floor with Sloane's hand on his shoulder. East is beside Darla, her fingers in his hair. Malachi has Candace tucked against his chest. James and Maggie are in the corner, her head against his shoulder.
Every man in this room crossed to their woman. Sat down beside her. Closed the distance.
Nash stays at the wall.
My eyes find him. His eyes are already on me. The room is warm, full, every couple paired. The space between his wall and my couch is ten feet and a week of silence.
I want him to cross it. To sit beside me, put his hand on my knee, and pull me into his side the way Malachi pulled Candace. I want it so badly my chest aches with it.
He holds my gaze. The look on his face is open, warm. The version of him that surfaces when the control slips. For a second, the distance collapses.
I look away first.
Candace's voice echoes in my head. Talk to East. Before you close the file.