Chapter 19 — The Seven Stay
The Seven Stay
By the end of June, the kitchen was the most honest room in the house.
You could stand in it with your eyes closed and know who had been there, because six different women had left six different kinds of evidence all over everything I owned.
Except that wasn't right anymore. Owned was the wrong word.
Mine was the wrong word. The house had stopped asking me for definitions sometime between Kiki claiming the blue mug with the chipped handle and Tatum leaving a yoga mat beside the pantry like it had grown there naturally.
I stood at the stove with a pan of garlic butter going for the salmon, and the evidence kept crowding in around me.
Kiki's mug sat in the drying rack, lip gloss faint on the rim, promoted to daily use with the quiet certainty of a woman who could make a thing belong by loving it consistently.
Shay's sports bra hung from the oven handle, black Lycra dangling in my way every time I reached for a pot, because Shay Hollis believed flat surfaces and appliance handles existed to support the temporary chaos of her life.
Three bottles of sunscreen lined the windowsill.
One smelled like coconut, one was expensive enough to require financing, and one had Tatum's fingerprints in white smears down the side.
Penny's grocery list was taped to the refrigerator with a pen clipped to it.
Not a casual list. A Rourke list. Vegetables were grouped by temperature sensitivity.
Steak options had price notes. Somebody had written Pop-Tarts under Pantry in a different hand, and Penny had crossed it out so cleanly the line looked surgical.
Reese's honey-scented tea mug waited beside the sink.
A paperback lay open on the counter facedown, spine up, because Reese had been reading three pages at a time between helping me prep and wandering outside to check whether the light on the lake had gone gold yet.
Eden's wine glass sat near the sliding door, half full, exactly where she'd abandoned it after checking the grill and deciding my technique was "emotionally brave.
" Her phone was beside it, screen down, which meant she was either relaxed or plotting.
Both were possible.
I was cooking for seven people. My kitchen looked like seven people had been living in it for weeks, because they had.
Kiki came in from the side door with a bowl of tomatoes she had picked from the Bishop garden and brought over because mine were, apparently, "trying their best but in a very male way."
"Your sauce is getting ambitious," she said, peering into the pan.
"That's a compliment?"
"It's a warning." She set the tomatoes down, slid in beside me, and took the spoon out of my hand with the soft confidence of a woman who had touched every part of me and therefore had no hesitation about correcting my butter technique. Her hip bumped mine. "You need lower heat."
"People keep telling me that."
Her mouth curved. "Not me."
The look she gave me was quick. Warm. Dirty enough to make my grip tighten on the spatula.
I leaned down and kissed her temple because I could now. Because she was here, in my kitchen, barefoot and golden and completely at home. Because she had been first. Because sometimes the first miracle kept standing beside the stove and telling you your garlic was about to burn.
Shay breezed in behind her carrying a stack of napkins, my phone, and zero signs of remorse.
"Good news," she said. "I fixed the playlist."
"It wasn't broken."
"It was emotionally beige."
Kiki looked at my phone. "Did you put on the boat-party mix again?"
"Define again."
"Shay."
"Fine. Yes." Shay dropped the napkins on the island, hopped up beside them, and stole a tomato wedge from Kiki's bowl. "But in my defense, this is an end-of-June dinner. It requires musical commitment."
She bit into the tomato and watched me watch her eat it.
That was Shay. Even stealing produce became an act of controlled demolition.
Tatum arrived the way Tatum usually arrived, which was by attaching herself to my back without warning.
"Kitchen smells like a five-star restaurant," she said, arms wrapping around my waist. Her chin landed on my shoulder. Her hair was still damp from the pool, copper strands cool against my neck. "Or like you got nervous and used too much garlic."
"I did both."
"That's hot."
"Garlic anxiety?"
"Competence under pressure." She squeezed me tighter, then kissed the side of my throat. "Also your ass in those shorts."
"Dinner," Penny said from the hallway, "will be served before or after Tatum commits a crime?"
Tatum didn't let go. "During."
Penny stepped into the kitchen in a pale sleeveless top that made her platinum hair look brighter and her eyes sharper. She clocked the pan, the tomatoes, the napkins, the playlist, the table outside, and the knife situation in one sweep.
"We need serving spoons," she said.
"Hello to you too," I said.
She came over, rose on her toes, and kissed me at the corner of my mouth. Not enough to derail dinner. Enough to remind me she could. "Hello. We need serving spoons."
Reese followed with glasses in both hands, barefoot and smiling like she'd walked in from a memory I had not known I was allowed to keep. She set them down by the sliding door and looked around the kitchen, her eyes warm and a little bright.
"It looks good in here," she said.
"It's a disaster," Penny said.
"A loved disaster."
Penny glanced at the sunscreen, the sports bra, the grocery list, the mugs, the tomatoes, the women moving through my kitchen like choreography no one had practiced and everyone somehow knew. Her expression softened before she could hide it.
"Fine," she said. "A loved disaster with inadequate serving spoons."
Eden appeared last, leaning in the doorway with her wine glass recovered and one shoulder against the frame.
Her dark hair was up in a loose knot. She wore one of my old shirts over shorts so tiny I had to remind myself salmon needed attention and my house was full of women who could sense weakness.
"The grill is fine," she said.
"Thank God," Shay said. "Eden Archer has cleared the grill emotionally."
Eden ignored her and looked at me. "You're pretending not to panic."
"I'm not panicking."
"You counted plates three times."
"That's hosting."
"That's fear with flatware."
I looked past her to the deck. The outdoor table was already set under the string lights, seven places, linen napkins, plates, water glasses, silverware, flowers from somewhere.
Probably Reese. Or Kiki. Or all of them together while I had been distracted by butter and the dangerous geometry of Penny's shirt.
Seven places.
Not six plus mine.
Seven.
The number landed harder than it should have. Or maybe exactly as hard as it needed to.
Dinner was loud in the best way. The salmon came off the grill without humiliating me.
Kiki's tomatoes turned into something with basil and salt that made Tatum make an inappropriate sound at the table.
Shay narrated my plating like a sporting event until Penny threatened to revoke her fork.
Reese made sure everyone had what they wanted before sitting down, then pretended she had not.
Eden criticized the wine and drank it anyway.
The lake went gold, then blue. The air cooled. The house glowed behind us through the sliding glass doors, warm and full and cluttered with the life they had brought into it.
Kiki sat to my right. Shay was beside her, one bare foot hooked around the leg of my chair under the table.
Tatum sat on my left, knee pressed hard to mine, because Tatum Bell considered personal space a legal fiction.
Penny sat across from me, elegant even with a smear of butter on her thumb, watching everything like she was cataloging the architecture of the moment.
Reese had one elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, smiling at nothing and everything.
Eden sat angled toward me as if her body had made the decision before her pride could file an objection.
They talked over each other. They stole bites off each other's plates.
Shay made Kiki laugh so hard she had to set down her fork.
Tatum tried to convince Penny that cobbler counted as a breakfast food if you believed in yourself.
Reese touched Eden's wrist when Eden went quiet for half a second. Eden let her.
I looked around the table and felt something in my chest go still.
This wasn't a party.
This wasn't a rotation.
This wasn't six separate secrets balanced on the edge of getting caught.
It was a family table.
The thought should have scared the hell out of me.
It did.
But fear wasn't the only thing in my chest anymore. It had company. Want. Gratitude. A kind of stunned happiness so big it felt like pressure behind my ribs.
After dessert, Kiki's peach cobbler because of course Kiki had made peach cobbler, I went inside and came back with the bottle of champagne I had been saving and seven flutes.
Conversation slowed as I set the glasses on the table one by one.
Penny noticed first. Her eyes moved from the bottle to my face.
Kiki's hand stilled on her napkin.
Shay leaned back in her chair, all humor still there but sharpened now, alert.
Tatum's knee pressed harder against mine.
Reese sat up.
Eden's expression went smooth in the way that meant she felt too much and had decided to make her face someone else's problem.
I opened the bottle. The cork gave a soft pop into the evening. Champagne foamed pale gold into the first glass, then the next, then the next, until seven flutes caught the string lights and held them.
I picked up mine.
Nobody moved.
"I want to say something."
The lake kept breathing behind us. The table went quiet. And for once, quiet didn't feel like distance.
It felt like everyone leaning in.
***
I had not rehearsed it.