Chapter 1
PIPPA
When I was growing up, my favorite thing to do was to play dress-up. My sister, Phoebe, and I would sneak into our mother’s closet and try on her gowns and high heels.
Ah, to be a kid again.
Teetering around, we’d call each other darling and I would try to get our brother to pretend to be Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty so we could dance, but he’d always refuse. It may have had something to do with how we’d call him Felipe with the French pronunciation, like fell plus leap.
If that weren’t bad enough, invariably, we’d argue because even though we understood it was make-believe, he thought it was dumb for someone named Phillipa (me) to marry a guy named Phillip.
He probably thought we were making fun of him because it was around that time when he insisted that we call him Freddie instead of his given name, Phillip.
He and I are twins, and yes, our parents named us Phillip and Phillipa, respectively.
He’s Phillip Frederick Thompson, aka Freddie, and I’m Phillipa Grace Thompson, aka Pippa. Or, Princess Calliope Avington Twinklebelle. What can I say? I was five.
Suffice it to say, Phillip became Freddie and was the cool kid.
Everyone calls me Pippa for reasons unknown and I’m the awkward one.
And then there’s Phoebe, the third Thompson sibling, whom I’m debating whether to call in for backup.
She’s the one you want in your corner, whether you’re going into battle or playing a board game.
Even though Freddie is about a minute older than me and Phoebe is the baby, technically making me the middle child, she’s the most mature of the three of us.
She’s our nursemaid, St. Bernard from Peter Pan, making sure the Darling little Lost Boys, erm, boy and girl, don’t stray too far off the beaten track.
Once, while on holiday in Qatar, I met a man who claimed to be Captain Hook. Let’s just say that after that incident, Phoebe made sure I didn’t wander away while we were shopping in the souq.
Invisible glue holds me to the edge of the bed in my childhood room, which Mum has kept largely the same after I moved out. While here visiting, I went through an old box and found my journal, containing many of my original rules and lists, most notably, The Crush List.
I experience that same little internal quake I always did when thinking about my crush. Seeing him in person routinely caused a full-on temblor. Thankfully, it’s been years since I last made a fool of myself in front of The Crush.
Then realization spikes my inner seismograph.
Referring to one of my rules, I dial the worrisome thought back because there’s no sense in jumping ahead when I already have a more imminent social situation to deal with that requires my sister’s immediate help.
Biting my lip, I press call on my cell phone.
Phoebe reliably answers by the second ring. “Do you need bail money? The number of a dating coach? Or a cookie recipe?”
“Ha ha,” I say dryly, though a dating coach isn’t the worst idea. “I need you to convince me to attend a soiree hosted by one of Mum and Dad’s friends.”
“In that case, go meet Mum and Dad. Wait. Where? Why? Are you home, or are they in Concordia?”
I give her the rundown about how I made a quick trip to London because I needed to visit the dentist.
“Dr. Gundry? He’s still—?”
“He’s alive, well, and still has the hairiest hands of anyone I’ve ever seen. But he also does great work and a girl with a fake tooth needs the best.”
“Oh, Pippa. Not another one.”
“No, the same one.”
If you’re wondering why I have a fake tooth, ask Freddie to explain what possessed him to drive the metal locomotive of a toy train into my mouth at a high rate of speed.
We were eight years old, and I had only finally stopped singing the All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth song.
Okay, I didn’t lose the entire tooth, but a chunk of it flew across the room and landed in Dad’s tea. Thankfully, the others remained in my mouth, fully intact.
“Is Freddie there?” Phoebe asks.
“No. I think he’s in Marrakech.”
“Still globetrotting before he and Aimme say I do?”
“They’re calling it their pre-honeymoon.” The thought that struck moments ago comes at me with a shake-inducing aftershock.
“They’ve been abroad for months. If you ask me, he’s trying to put off the wedding. Can’t say she’s my first choice for a sister-in-law,” Phoebe mutters.
I agree, but for reasons of my own. A tall, handsome reason who, more than likely, is Freddie’s best man.
Also, I’m not entirely convinced Aimme is the one, but telling my brother would break some of my rules about remembering to be sensitive, avoiding being overly honest, and taking care not to over-share my thoughts.
I didn’t come with a factory-installed filter, so I’ve had to make up rules and lists to live by.
“If Freddie were there, he could go with you and commiserate about how snooty everyone is at the party and then he’ll pay damages from his youthful missteps of breaking your tooth by being your wingman. Scratch that, I think being engaged disqualifies him from wingmanship.” She has a point.
“The real question is, what does Aimme see in him? What did any of the girls back in high school and all the women since see in Sir Frederick Dorkingsworth?”
Phoebe chuckles at the name we used to tease our brother with. I prefer not to think about how my dorky brother grew up to be what is commonly referred to as a stud. Gag. Ew. Ladies, I’ve seen him pick his nose. I won’t tell you what he did with the booger.
“Are Mum and Dad waiting for you?” Phoebe asks.
“No, I’m having anticipatory nerves. It’s tomorrow.”
When I was a kid, my parents’ friends would call me The Shy One.
Not so. Yes, I’m an introvert, but I’m not nervous around people—okay, there’s one person that has the ability to trip me up, sometimes literally, but let’s not talk about him.
It’s more like I need a cheerleading squad consisting of quiet church mice to encourage me to willingly involve myself in gatherings large and small.
“Why don’t you rip the bandage off and convince yourself to do it, get it over with? Then you can retreat to your happy place.”
“You know why,” I mumble.
“Lady Libby the Love Liaison?”
“Lady? Ooh. That’s a new addition.”
“Got to appreciate alliteration.”
“Mum would love the title, Lady.”
“She would,” Phoebe confirms. “But I’m not sure she’d appreciate our name for her.”
After college and moving from England to Concordia, I’ve had a good excuse to miss many of my parents’ fancy functions where Mum tries to play matchmaker.
But since I happen to be in town for this event, I can’t respectfully decline even though I’d prefer to be at home in my jammies making candles or watching my favorite series.
“Give me a status update. Have you done pre-game primping? Spa day? Or are you procrastinating on the sofa with Ted Lasso on pause?”
She knows me so well.
I love the show even though football, or soccer as my US friends call it, reminds me of American football, which makes me think about my stupid, longstanding crush. I contemplate tearing the page with the heading The Crush List out of my journal.
“Pippa...?”
“I have the dress.”
“That’s a start, but let me guess, Mum laid it out for you.”
I don’t deny it.
“Okay, next step, stand up...” Step by step, Phoebe walks me through the prep process we perfected for getting ready for a party. Yes, my reluctance is so strong that I need her to verbally hold my hand.
I’m an introvert born into an extrovert world. When my social battery runs low, it short-circuits. Sure, I work with people at my day job, but that is mostly on my terms. I can go home to recharge. Fill up my senses. Make candles. Watch Ted Lasso and pine over Chase Collins.
I mean, forget that he ever existed.
But I can’t at the moment because he’s going to be at Freddie’s wedding. And because we’re both in the wedding party, that likely means we’ll have to interact. The last time that happened, I spilled milk all over his term paper.
And yes, I cried over it.
While I apply a face mask that promises glowing skin, Phoebe carries on the conversation. “Listen, if Oliver Boxworth is there, don’t mention my name.”
“Ooh. Sounds like a new story. Phoebe and Boxy, sitting in a tree—”
“Phillipa,” my sister says in a stern voice, like I’m testing her patience.
“You know you’ve loved him since third grade.”
“No, I hate him and—”
“And that’s why you refuse to call him Boxy like everyone else?”
“I refuse to call him anything, anytime, anywhere.”
“So Mum is still trying to see you two get married?” I take an educated guess because that is so like our mother.
“Enthusiastically so. But she’s tried a new tactic I should warn you about. It’s like reverse psychology but folded in half, doubled, and then turned inside out.”
While Phoebe outlines a complicated strategy our mother employs and how that brought her and “Bossy Boxy” together at a cricket match, nerves tumble in my belly.
The Crush List sitting on the bed is like a flashing neon sign for another, much bigger, gathering next fall that I have to brace myself for.
The Crush will be there.
Forget the Smythe’s party. With Freddie getting married and Mum targeting Phoebe, she’s likely riding a maternal high of seeing her adult children getting paired off. That leaves me as her quarry.
“You know that Dad goes along with everything Mum says when it comes to her goals for our love lives. Is there such a thing as a hate life because I cannot stand to be in the same room as that—” Phoebe goes on a tangent about Oliver Boxworth. My bets are on them tying the knot.
But back to Mum and Dad.
How do I say this nicely? Libby and Thomas Thompson are characters. Erm, unique? Eccentric? All of the above?