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The future felt full and bright and I would be damned if anything would ruin my good mood.
Certainly not a man I did not care about in the slightest.
Nope, not one little bit.
**
“I really enjoyed the speaker. She was very passionate,” Mom said politely, covering her salad in dressing. Dad nodded in agreement, though he did so with a smirk. Dad usually went along with whatever Mom said. It was easier that way.
“Except for the dozen or so times she blew her nose,” I added, twirling pasta around my fork. My family, plus Hannah and Jenna, were sat around a large circular table at my favorite restaurant in the city. Lorenzo’s had the best seafood alfredo I had ever eaten. It was full of butter and a million carbs. I wasn’t the type of girl to give two shits about calories. I ate what I wanted. Life was too short to freak out about my waist size.
Jenna was my exact opposite. She sat on my left, poking at a wilted looking salad while stealing longing glances at my pasta. She worked in Pittsburg as a nutritionist and it seemed she took all that schooling a little too literally. She had a boatload of anxiety around the food she ate and the “poisons” she was ingesting. She drove Hannah and me more than a little crazy with her endless lectures about good and bad fats and the dangers of too much processed food. The problem was, Jenna made herself miserable more than anyone else. By being so rigid, she tended to push away most people in her life. Except for Hannah and me.
Finally, I put the woman out of her misery and scooped a pile onto her plate.
“I can’t eat that,” she protested weakly.
“Just shove it in your face already.” I tapped her plate with my fork. She didn’t take much encouragement, she dug into the calorific food with relish. She must have been hungry. There was nary a word about the effects of butter on the system or whatever. Hannah rolled her eyes. She never had any patience for Jenna’s constant dieting that never had any effect, mostly because she couldn't give up beer.
Meg, my soon to be sister-in-law, laughed beside me. “It was hard to pay attention to what she was saying through the snot running down her face. Poor woman. I almost ran up there and handed her a tissue.” She made a face and reached for the garlic bread.
“I wish you had,” Hannah bemoaned, cutting into her chicken parmigiana.
“I had to tell you to stop laughing a half a dozen times, babe,” Adam said, kissing his fiancé on the cheek. He was sitting so close to her he was practically in her lap. It filled me with happiness to see the two of them together after years of animosity and miscommunication. I had grown up with Meg and her sister Whitney. They had been like family and Adam and Meg had been the best of friends. Then my doofus of a brother had gotten involved with his horrible ex, Chelsea, and the two had stopped talking. Now here they were, all these years later, so in love it made your teeth ache to look at them.
Meg gave me a sheepish grin. “Sorry, Lena. It was a great ceremony.”
“It’s cool. I was laughing too,” I assured her. “It’s a shame Robert couldn’t join us for dinner,’ I said to Adam, my mouth full.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Marlena,” Mom scolded. She was the only person on the planet who could get away with calling me Marlena. If anyone else dared to use my given name, I’d be compelled to take a finger or two.
Well, most everyone knew not to use my full name. One particular person liked using it for the sole purpose of pissing me off.
Nope. I wouldn’t think about him tonight. It would only put me in a bad mood. And tonight was about good moods. And booze. And lots of laughter and fun with my favorite people.
And Jeremy Wyatt was not one of my favorite people. Not even close.
I swallowed pointedly and took a long drink of the white wine I had ordered. Damn, it was good. I was already feeling a little buzzy. Adam gave me a conspiratorial smile and filled my glass. He was the best brother in the whole wide world.
“He sends his regrets, but you know Rob, prolonged social gatherings make him break out into hives.” Adam whispered something into Meg’s ear, and she smacked his leg, her cheeks turning red. I did not want to know what that was about. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other, so I had a good idea.
“That’s a shame. He’s some serious eye candy,” Hannah piped up, giving me an eyebrow waggle.
I rolled my eyes. Hannah Quinn had been my best friend since elementary school. She now worked as a third-grade teacher in the town we grew up in. She was happily single and a shameless flirt. “Did you scare the poor man off, Han?” I asked.
