Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The tug-of-war rope was ordered.
Maddy clicked through. The supplier’s confirmation page loaded. Triple-braided, twenty-five feet, highly rated, routed to Aspen’s address. Item six of fourteen.
She moved to items seven, eight, nine.
Set of eight cornhole bean bag sets, red and blue, regulation weight: ordered. A beach volleyball net to replace the one with the hole in it: ordered. Fifteen course markers, pending color review.
The line-by-line march down the binder’s left-hand column was the only thing fully under Maddy’s control this morning.
She was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, her laptop open, phone face up beside it. The coffee at her elbow had gone tepid an hour ago, and she forced herself to take a sip whenever her mind started to stray from the task at hand.
Through the wall, Aspen’s voice came through in a low, even rhythm. “Good, now I want you to tilt your pelvis toward my hand.”
Maddy took a sip of coffee and winced.
Per the kitchen clock, Bunny’s PT session had been running forty-seven minutes.
Aspen's voice carried through the wall. “Tilt, Bunny. Those are your glutes.”
“I am tilting!” Bunny’s muffled voice grunted.
Aspen's voice came again. “You’re clenching. Relax your buttcheeks.”
Maddy fought against the smile trying to form on her lips despite no one being in the room to see it. She had heard Aspen give Bunny some version of that same correction perhaps two dozen times over the past ten days.
Sunday at the storage unit had been productive.
The trip had been bearable. The collaboration had been efficient. The overflow boxes had been safely stored at Aspen’s bungalow.
Overall, it had been the most successful event Maddy had experienced since she returned.
She had told herself this on Monday morning, when the day before kept playing on a loop in her mind. She had told herself this again yesterday afternoon, when Aspen had sent her a series of texts with an update on the potluck assignments that had made her smile.
Aspen: Potluck intake, end of Monday report…
Aspen: My dad—all the grilled meats…grilled fish for Coastal Taco Bar night, grilled chicken for All-American BBQ night, grilled lamb for Mediterranean Victory Feast night
Aspen: The Howells—unclear but I’m pretty sure it involves several varieties of beans and brats. Questionable on whether they understood the assignment…
Aspen: The Reyes’—appropriately themed salads and homemade beverages
Aspen: Aunt Marion—a Nicoise platter for Mediterranean night but insists we call it a salad platter around Bunny so she doesn’t have to explain the pronunciation 17 times
Aspen: Grace—healthy alternatives that most people won’t eat but I think you’d actually like
Aspen: My boss and her daughters—themed desserts
Aspen: Peepin’ G’s—suspiciously cryptic about their plans but claim each dish will be a showstopper
Aspen: I had this all written on a legal pad, but my handwriting peaked in the 7th grade, so my text transcription is an act of pure unadulterated generosity on my part. You’re welcome.
Aspen had run six of these intakes for different stages of Cup planning and coordination. She was keeping records. Maybe not in a spreadsheet like Maddy preferred, but the records were clean and trackable nonetheless.
Every time Maddy got a new intake, she felt a little flutter in her stomach.
Which was a perfectly logical and professional response to have, she reminded herself, for the second time this morning. Maddy loved clean record-keeping. She loved organized updates showing progress. She loved being kept in the loop. Perfectly, and completely, logical.
Her mind drifted to the coconut-scented bottle of lotion on Aspen’s bathroom counter. The bedroom threshold she had not crossed. The closet wall that had once been deeper. My ex hated it.
Enough. Maddy reached for her coffee. Drank a cold mouthful. Re-focused on her computer screen. Swatch fourteen.
In the living room, Aspen’s voice shifted into the wrap-up cadence Maddy had heard through the wall every weekday since she’d been back. She listened to the now-familiar sounds of Aspen folding her treatment table, loading her equipment bag, and zipping it closed.
“Thanks again, dear! See you tomorrow!” She heard Bunny call out.
Maddy listened, briefly. Waiting for Aspen’s head to pop into the kitchen doorway to say bye Maddy the way she had done the previous two days on her way out.
The front door opened. Closed. Maddy frowned.
Her phone buzzed on the counter and she scooped it up at an embarrassing speed.
Jake: Hey! Still on for Friday? The Huxley, 7:30?
Maddy’s shoulders dropped. Jake. She shook her head at herself. She was being ridiculous.
She re-read Jake’s text. She had not made a decision about whether they were still on for Friday.
But Maddy needed information. She did not operate well under incomplete facts.
The facts she knew were: Jake had been at Nicky’s with Aspen last week, and Jake and Aspen had built some kind of bond over the past fifteen years.
But the shape of said bond was still unspecified.
Dinner with Jake was the most efficient solution to complete the facts. That was all.
Maddy: Yes. See you there.
It was simple recon, she told herself. Besides, having dinner with Jake after fifteen years of silence was the least she could do.
She looked at the course marker swatch that had been sitting on her screen for the past five minutes and slammed her laptop shut.
* * *
Maddy met Jake out front of The Huxley at 6:59 p.m. and watched him come down the sidewalk in dark jeans and a gray button-down.
He saw her, lifted a hand, and smiled. “Hey, Mads.”
“Hi.” She had rehearsed a whole greeting to push past any initial awkwardness, but none of it made it past her lips. It didn’t seem to be needed. He pulled her into a hug. Her jaw, which she had been holding at a forty-percent clench all week, relaxed.
Jake stepped back with a warm smile. “You look good,” he said as he opened the door for her.
Aspen had used the same line on her twelve days ago, in Bunny’s kitchen, and Maddy had been replaying that sentence at irregular intervals ever since trying to decipher what exactly she meant by it.
Jake said it and she knew he meant the words exactly as he’d said them, with no subtext.
With Aspen, there was always subtext. And it drove Maddy crazy that she couldn’t read what it was.
But now was not the time to be thinking about Aspen St. Claire.
Maddy was here to catch up with someone who she once cared about and make things right.
Then, when the moment naturally arose, she would very casually inquire about Jake’s love life and whether a certain infuriating brunette had happened to steal his heart.
Aspen had always loved to steal things that belonged to Maddy, after all. Not that Jake belonged to her anymore, nor did she want him to. But if Aspen was running a long game on Jake to prove she could take another thing Maddy had once loved, well, Jake had the right to know.
The Huxley was warm-lit and full. Hanging greenery and brass pendant lights ran the length of the central bar, three deep with people having drinks.
Charred meat met the bread basket somewhere in the middle of the room.
Leather banquettes lined one wall. The hostess walked them past a glass-paneled wine cellar that reflected the golden lighting from the open kitchen beyond it, then through a stretch of two-tops set close enough to encourage discreet lean-ins.
The room hummed under the smooth jazz playing over the speakers: glassware clinking, a server snapping a check folder closed, the muted thrum of intimate conversations.
“When did this place open?” Maddy stepped around a table where someone was laughing way too loudly and she forced herself not to visibly wince.
Jake, a step ahead of her, glanced back. “2019. Became sorta the go-to date night spot on the island.”
Maddy’s eyebrow lifted. “For you?” Maybe she would get her answer sooner than expected. That would probably be best anyway. Complete the facts and move on.
Jake gave her a half-grin in profile, slowed his stride to let a server pass with a tray of crab cakes. “Not exactly. I’m a public school teacher, remember?”
Her mouth twitched. “You have been here before though?”
The hostess led them deeper into the dining room.
“Yeah, a couple times.” Jake’s voice came back over his shoulder. “Last time was December, I think. The Wagyu burger had just landed on the menu. We had to try it.”
We. The pronoun arrived with a person attached. Maddy did not need to run a long list of candidates. She had one.
She angled around a table where someone had ordered a filet mignon that looked delicious. “We? As in you and—?”
“Aspen!” Jake stopped walking. Maddy did not. The back of his shoulder met the front of her face.
Jake turned with a laugh. “Shit. Sorry.” His hand caught her elbow to help balance her.
Maddy stepped around Jake, still processing what had just happened. Had Jake just confirmed he and Aspen were—
That’s when she saw it.
The dark hair glowing in the candlelight. The flash of olive skin. The annoyingly slender fingers lightly pinching the stem of a wineglass. Aspen. Her pulse spiked. The forty-percent jaw clench from earlier reset to ninety.
“Jake! What are you—” Aspen had been looking up at Jake, a smile forming on her lips. Then her gaze shifted as Maddy stepped into view, and the smile dropped. “Maddy.” She looked back and forth between them.
Maddy held her gaze for a moment before it dropped to Aspen’s outfit.
She had spent the past twelve days seeing Aspen in leggings and t-shirts and, on Friday, denim and a crop top.
This was not either. Silk blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers.
Three-inch heels. Hair styled in a more intentional curl than her usual beach wave.
It looked like someone copied and pasted Marion’s exact style onto Aspen.