AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“See what?” I asked.
And then I saw it, too.
My phone was sitting on the counter, screen side up, with Kendall’s latest photo on full display. It was a full-body selfie taken in Owen and Sarah’s bathroom mirror, I assumed—and she was wearing nothing but lacy, black lingerie. The picture showed her entire face, so there was no denying who she was.
I scrambled to pick the phone up and held it against my chest. “Ah, no—you weren’t meant to see that. But you didn’t recognize her, right?”
Owen peeked at me from behind his fingers. “I wish I could say that I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Panic shot through my veins as I searched for some way to explain this. It was fine if he merely suspected Kendall and I were involved—there was no risk there—but I’d just given him solid proof. “Not your fault.”
The door swung open behind me and an older man nodded at us before stepping into a stall. Owen stood with his eyes clenched shut like he was trying to erase what he’d just seen from his memory.
With a heavy sigh, I said, “Let’s head back out there, I guess.” I opened the door for him so I could follow him out to ensure he made it back to the table without any other mishaps.
“Was David Bowie in there with a kidnapped baby?” Xander asked when we sat down.
It took a few seconds for the Labyrinth reference to make sense. “No,” I said, reaching for my glass. “What occurred in that bathroom was even scarier.” I didn’t elaborate, and neither did Owen.
chapter thirty-seven
kendall
I was no stranger to posing in my lingerie.
I would need all of my fingers and some of my toes to count the men in Woodvale who had laid eyes on my nudes. Maybe I was a little too eager to share them, especially for a teacher, but I enjoyed taking them as much as they liked receiving them. It was freeing. Empowering.
So when Alex, the boudoir photographer Sarah hired, encouraged us all to disrobe and get comfy, I was the first to shed my clothes. I was wearing a lacy black bodysuit and four-inch heels, and I wasn’t exactly feeling shy about it. Half the women in Sarah’s living room were strangers when I walked in, but we were about to get to know each other a lot better. Sarah’s sister, Samantha, cast a lingering stare in my direction, and I couldn’t determine whether it stemmed from annoyance or admiration. I didn’t know her well enough yet.
“You guys don’t want to see my mom pouch,” Vicki Santiago said, holding her robe shut. She and I weren’t close, but we’d worked on a few projects together over the past couple of years at Grissom. I didn’t know a lot about her personal life except that she had a lot of kids and always knew about the best sales.
“Wrong,” I said, putting a hand on my hip. “That’s like a badge of honor, girl. And I have a pouch, too, but mine’s just from… carbs.” I laughed at myself, hoping it would put her at ease.
Alex looked up from the light she was assembling. “Okay, I love this girl already,” she said, nodding toward me. “That’s the kind of energy we need!”
And that was the kind of energy that followed for the entirety of the night. We all had our turn posing for Alex’s camera, starting with Sarah, who looked radiant in her white bridal lingerie and veil. Alex instructed her how to pose in the leather chair in front of the fireplace. Sarah was a little stiff at first, but after ten minutes of the rest of us hyping her up, she was draping herself across that chair like Leonardo DiCaprio was sketching her.
“Owen’s going to shit when he sees these pictures,” Samantha whispered to the rest of us, holding her wine glass against her chest.
“I still haven’t even met Owen.” Jenny—an old friend of Sarah’s—had just flown into town for the week leading up to the wedding. “But it seems like he’s a step up from Eli.”
“They’re soulmates if I ever saw any,” Vicki said, shaking her head. “He was after her for years before she finally opened her eyes. I was there the night they first got together. It was at a conference up in—”
Sarah cleared her throat, shifting her eyes to me as she arched her back the way the photographer showed her. “You guys are talking about me like I’m not right here.” She let out a nervous laugh, trying to hold her pose.
“It’s not like we’re saying anything bad,” Jenny said, adjusting the straps of her bralette. “I want to hear the story of how the two of you got together.” She turned back to Vicki. “What’s this about a conference?”
“They kissed on an elevator at a teacher convention. She said he just grabbed her and went for it. I didn’t think he had it in him, really. Everybody at the school knew he carried a flame for her for such a long time.”
She glanced my direction like she expected me to comment in agreement, so I nodded. It wasn’t news to me that Owen hooked up with Sarah 24 hours after I ended things with him—Heath heard them going at it through the wall, apparently, and he didn’t exactly keep that information to himself. It became common teacher’s lounge fodder for the rest of that school year. It was almost funny to watch the two of them scramble to get people to hush about it when I was in the room.
“I mean, you saw it—didn’t you?” Vicki asked, clueless.
I forced a laugh. “We all did,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. Some of us were just a little more in denial than others. Noticing how Sarah had gone rigid for the photographer again, I made every attempt to sound as casual as possible when I said, “You’re so right about the soulmate thing, too. I mean, have you guys heard the way he talks about her on the podcast? It’s adorable.”
I hoped Sarah could hear the sincerity in my voice. We were never going to get past this awkwardness if we couldn’t openly talk about it, right?
Thankfully, the conversation shifted to STEM for the Win and Owen’s rising popularity as a science influencer, so I picked up my phone to check on the guys.
