“Did you even hear him come in?” I ask.
“He hasn’t been home the whole time?”
“Nope. I’ve been here alone all week.”
Oakleigh winces and I immediately adjust my sentence. “I just mean that Wren’s been away all week so I’ve had the house to myself.”
“Ah.”
“You want a drink?” I open the fridge and pull out a jug of lemonade.
Oakleigh eyes the jug. “Is that Simone’s lemonade?”
“You’re damn right it is.”
“Then do you even need to ask?”
I laugh as I grab two glasses, filling each one with lemonade before passing one to her. She takes a big gulp and groans. “How does she make it so good?”
“I think she adds in a tiny bit of mandarin.”
“She told you?”
I wave my hands in front of me. “Hell no, she likes me, but not that much. That recipe is a close-guarded secret that I don’t even think Nigel knows.”
For a while now, ever since our friendship group pretty much migrated over to Eaglewood, even Oakleigh has gotten in touch with who is who and what is what. She visits Nigel regularly whenever she’s in town and even stops by the bakery for a lemon and elderflower tart which I think is one of the key ingredients to happiness. So, she knows that if Simone makes you a jug of her famous lemonade, you better enjoy that shit while it lasts.
We drink our lemonades in silence, the quiet actually kind of therapeutic. A part of me wants to ask Oakleigh why she was so surprised by my apology. She’d looked as if the expression of regret was so misplaced that it had thrown her off completely.
At the same time, however, another part of me wants to just savor the moment; avoid large conversations and just go back to the kind of atmosphere we had during our date before I blew it. If we had a do-over button, I would press it.
“Why did you apologize to me?” Oakleigh asks as she places her empty glass on the kitchen island.
So much for avoiding heavy conversations.
“Why wouldn’t I apologize?” I ask.
She twirls the empty glass around. “I don’t know. Maybe, let’s say, hypothetically, you didn’t do anything wrong. Why would you apologize?”
“Hold on,” I lean forward. “Are you really struggling to simply say that you think I was in theright?”
“I’m not struggling to say shit!”
“Really? So then try and ask me that whole thing without using the word, ‘hypothetically.’”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because I will ask my questions how I damn well please!”
God, I’ve missed this woman’s stubbornness.
“You seriously hate the idea of you needing to apologize to me, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!”
I cross my arms across my chest and a sense of satisfaction weaves its way into my veins as I see her follow the action with a heated gaze.
