15. Fifteen
FIFTEEN
Our next reader event was at a restaurant I’d been dying to visit.
I’d considered taking Wylie — something told me she would be thrilled to pretend she had a peg leg — but we just hadn’t managed it yet.
We’d only been eating dinner together for a week and a half, and we were careful to space out our non-date dates.
That meant a visit to The Pirates’ House hadn’t happened yet.
“This is fun,” I mused, looking around. There was a statue of a pirate in one corner and what looked like a scary dungeon fenced off in another.
“We’ve been here before,” Brody replied. “It is fun. The food is good, too.”
“Cool.” I didn’t realize I was holding a chair out for Wylie until multiple sets of eyes snapped to me.
“Um …” Suddenly, I felt as if I was a zoo animal on display, and I had no idea what I should do.
It had felt natural to pull out a chair for Wylie so we could sit together.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that we had yet to sit next to one another at any of the author dinners. We’d been careful … until now.
“Thank you,” Wylie said brightly as she sat. She pretended it wasn’t a big deal, but obviously, she was feeling the strain because her eyes looked as if they were going to bug out of her head. She was trying to look natural, but it wasn’t going well.
“I …” What was I supposed to say here?
“Oh, don’t have an aneurysm,” Bree chided. She was already seated next to Brody, and she didn’t look particularly PG this evening. She didn’t even look PG-13. No, she was rolling up to a hard R. It was frightening to anticipate. “We already know you two are dating.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“I already told you we’re not dating,” Wylie fired back. She sounded tired. “Just because you have some spy who saw us together at The Olde Pink House — a spy you won’t identify by the way — that doesn’t mean that we’re dating. We had dinner and went ghost hunting. That’s not a date.”
“I think it depends on how you do it,” Nathan argued.
He didn’t look nearly as invested in this conversation as Bree.
“Personally, Bella and I love a good ghost tour night. We haven’t had a lot of them since Sidney joined the family, but I can’t remember a single ghost tour that didn’t lead to nookie. ”
Bella shot her husband a scandalized look. “You did not just call it nookie.”
His smile turned lascivious. “Yes, I did.”
“That’s such a weird word.” Bella buried her face in her hands.
“Don’t worry, Bellarina.” Nathan patted her wrist. “I’ll make you feel better about the nookie with some nookie later.” He focused his attention on me. “The tours can be dates. I think you need to boast a specific personality type to consider them dates, though. I can see why you wouldn’t.”
He almost said it as if it were an insult, and I had to give it some serious reflection. I was fun, right? I was the type of guy who could turn a ghost tour into a date. That’s what a fun guy would do.
I didn’t realize I was obsessing over it until Wylie gave me an odd look. “Sit,” she hissed. “You’re making it awkward.” She might have thought that she said it so only I could hear. That wasn’t the case, though.
Laughter bubbled up from the others, and I shook my head as I sat. “It’s not a big deal,” I said to everybody at the table, recovering relatively quickly. “Wylie and I have been reminiscing about when we were kids. It’s harmless.”
“Yes.” Wylie bobbed her head. “His mother was like an aunt to me — a really fun aunt — so that kind of makes him my brother.”
I didn’t realize I was frowning until I snagged gazes with Bree. She was watching me far too closely. It was just … she didn’t really think of me like a brother, did she? It wasn’t that I wanted something else — of course, I didn’t — but we didn’t have a brother and sister vibe. Just no.
“Have you read Game of Thrones?” Bree asked. “Cersei and Jamie were brother and sister.”
I snapped my eyes back to her. “Can you not take it to a weird place?” I was horrified at the picture she was painting.
“Yeah. I’m going to have nightmares,” Wylie agreed.
Nightmares because of the brother and sister thing, I hoped. Not because the mere thought of being near me when I was naked was enough to traumatize her for life.
Ugh. I wanted to smack myself. Why had my head even gone there? What was wrong with me?
“We spent a lot of time together as kids,” Wylie volunteered.
“We kind of fell out of the habit when we went to college, but I always thought, in the back of my head, we would have a chance to see each other again after college. Then the incident happened, and we lost that chance. We’re just hanging out and making up for lost time. ”
“The incident you won’t give us the dirt on,” Bree pressed.
Now it was my turn to be frustrated. “I’ve already told you that I don’t know what really happened between our mothers. My mother won’t talk about it.”
Wylie’s eyes were curious when they landed on me. “I thought it was just my mother who wouldn’t talk about it.”
I held out my hands and shrugged. “No. We just don’t talk about it when we’re together, and I know better than asking.”
“I stopped asking a long time ago, too,” Wylie said. “I only asked twice. I was shot down twice. Then I let it go because … well, just because.” She offered Bree a rueful smile. “I’m sorry that we’re such a disappointment to you, but we don’t have the dirt you’re looking for.”
Bree opened her mouth, but I shut her down before she could get a full head of steam. “There’s no salacious romance gossip either.”
“Definitely not,” Wylie agreed. She was focused on her menu. “Men and women can be friends without it turning into romance. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Nathan agreed. “Look at Hayley and me. We’re besties, and we never got romantic.”
Hayley gave him a dry look. “I’m not sure that our lack of relationship is the best argument you’ve got on that topic.”
“Especially since she finds penises to be nightmare fuel,” Bree agreed. “Also, I’m not saying that men and women can’t be friends — I would never say that — but I’m not sure you guys can be friends.”
I tried not to take offense to that and failed. “What is that supposed to mean?” I barked, surprising even myself with my vehemence. Yup. I was definitely offended.
She held up her hands in surrender. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you, so pipe down. I’m just saying that you guys spark too much to ever be friends.”
I gave Wylie a sidelong look. Spark? We didn’t spark. The second I met her gaze; I felt the zing. It coursed through me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. That would be the spark that Bree was referring to.
“There’s no spark,” Wylie insisted. She didn’t look at me when she said it, making me believe that she was lying.
Or perhaps I just hoped that. “Let it go.” She held out her menu for me to look at.
“I’m thinking of getting the Mardi Gras Pasta, but I want the fried green tomatoes, too.
I’m afraid that will be too much. Do you want to split them with me? ”
I had to force myself to focus on her for what felt like a really long time. “Um … yeah,” I said finally, nodding. She wanted the fried green tomatoes. She was going to get the fried green tomatoes.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, a little line appearing between her eyebrows as she looked me over. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I promised her, meaning it. “Everything is great.”
She leaned over and patted my knee under the table, sending an electric jolt through me. “Don’t let Bree get to you,” she whispered. “That’s what she wants. She’s not happy unless she’s torturing others.”
“I heard that,” Bree groused.
“Yeah, I know.” Wylie smiled at her. “That’s why I said it as loud as I did.”
I smiled because everybody else at the table was smiling. Inside, though, my emotions were a whirl. Maybe Bree was on to something. Maybe the spark was more than I was allowing myself to believe.
Deep down, I’d known the spark would consume me if I thought about it too much. Now, Bree had thrown it in my face. There was no escaping it now. I realized that and had no idea what to do with my feelings.
What if this was about to blow up and burn us all?
DINNER WAS GOOD. THE ATMOSPHERE at the table finally settled, although I could feel Bree’s suspicious eyes on me the whole time.
Everybody chatted about what they were working on.
The proud parents updated everybody on how their babies were doing as well, which allowed me to mentally check out of the conversation.
It wasn’t as if I had anything against babies — they were fine — but I couldn’t work up a lot of interest in other people’s babies.
Maybe if I had a baby of my own, with Wylie, of course.
With Wylie? I was clearly losing my head.
Now I was considering having babies with Wylie?
That was ridiculous. I didn’t even know if she wanted babies.
Heck, for all I knew, she didn’t want kids because she’d been forced to parent Lucy even though she hadn’t given birth to her. That might sour anybody on kids. Plus, I couldn’t be with Wylie. It just wasn’t possible. Our mothers hated one another.
Not that I wanted to date Wylie, of course.
Everything I was feeling — the rage, sickness, and hope — was because Bree had never met an opinion she didn’t want to share with everybody.
It was frustrating to the nth degree. Bree should have kept her mouth shut.
I wouldn’t have even felt the spark if she hadn’t pointed it out.
My inner voice begged to differ.
You’ve been feeling the spark since the start. That’s why you keep coming back for more.