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Stewart the mattress salesman, who at the last meeting shared that he was dating someone new, nudges me with his elbow.
“Careful, man—talk like that’s almost a dare. Then when you least expect it, love smacks you over the head and makes you its bitch.”
“From your lips to God’s ear, Stew,” Delilah says.
“There’s actually something to that,” Dr. Laura says. “Sometimes it’s referred to as the not-looking-for-love phenomenon. It applies not just to relationships but efforts to get pregnant, sports performances. Essentially, it states that by attempting to find love or conceive or hit a baseball, we put too much pressure on ourselves, which keeps at bay the things we want most. But if we let go, release the pressure, if we stop swinging so hard for the ball and just have fun . . . those things we want end up coming to us.”
“So you’re saying I should go with the ‘I’m destined to be alone until I die’ line of thought?” I ask.
Dr. Laura holds out her hands, shrugging.
“It can’t hurt.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Violet
Raising my brother and sisters while going to nursing school wasn’t easy—or cheap. Life is expensive. When you don’t have a lot of pennies coming in, every one counts.
One day, when I was walking my sister home from school, we passed a yard sale with an almost-new-looking sewing machine and a how-to booklet for five bucks. I scooped it up, thinking I could save some cash mending the kids’ clothes or buying oversized clothes that I could take in, then let back out, so they’d last longer.
But the sewing machine also turned into an unexpected money maker. Once word got around that I had sewing skills, I was tailoring clothes, making custom curtains and Halloween costumes for the neighbors.
I remember sitting beside my mom on one of those endless, rough nights as the steady hum of the sewing machine seemed to soothe her. Not lulling her to sleep—in the end, she was never able to sink into a full sleep—but the sound settled her into a quiet calm that I was grateful for.
Sewing is also I how I found one of my friend groups in Lakeside: Lainey Burrows’s sewing circle.
Lainey Burrows is a social media influencer with a blog called Life With Lainey. The whole reason she moved to Lakeside was to renovate and redecorate a lake house for Facebook. That’s how she met her fiancé, Dean Walker—who was her teenage son’s math teacher at Lakeside High School.
Dean and Lainey are getting married in two weeks in their backyard, beside their lake. She’s doing all the decorating and planning herself and showing her followers how she’s doing it without breaking the bank. The sewing circle sewed the little pink and silver roses on all the table linens.
Lainey put together all the festivities for her bachelorette party too, here at the local bar, Chubby’s.
“Hey, Vi!” Effie, one of the nurses from Labor and Delivery, pushes through the crowd, greeting me with a hug and a shout above the music. “How are you doing?”
Effie’s about my age and in the sewing circle too. She was one of Lainey’s nurses when she gave birth to her and Dean’s daughter, Ava, last year. It was a natural delivery—God bless Lainey’s little masochistic heart.
“I’m good. This place looks amazing!”
Silver ribbons hang down from rose-colored balloons that cover the ceiling, and a huge Congratulations, Lainey banner is draped above the shaded windows. The movie Father of the Bride plays with subtitles from all four of the big-screen corner televisions and “It’s Raining Men” pours from the speakers—even though there aren’t actually any men, raining or otherwise. Lainey and Dean agreed to separate stripper-free parties. Outside, four chauffeur-driven, white stretch limos wait to drive the soon-to-be-plastered guests home.
“Gurl, you haven’t seen the half of it! Lainey went all out! Come on, I’ll show you.”
After doing a lap of the large room, I can tell Effie told no lies. It’s the ultimate girls’ night extravaganza.
There’s a neck masseuse in one corner and two manicurists doing mani-pedis in cushioned, throne-like chairs in the other. There’s a straight-out-of-Candy-Land candy table, and trays of cupcakes and vegetable platters within reaching distance no matter where you’re standing. The cupcakes are white with pink wrappers, and pink chocolate penises stick up from them like birthday candles. The carrots, cucumbers, and zucchinis on the vegetable platters have been carved into bite-sized penises too. There’s Never Have I Ever bingo cards with homemade fruity-scented body scrubs for prizes, a Truth or Dare champagne fountain, and a Wheel of Fortune-Teller shot glass table near the back door.
Two hours later I’m convinced Lainey should quit Influencing and become an event planner—she’d conquer the industry in her very first year.
When Effie and a few of the other girls head off to the bathroom, I walk up to the shot glass table. Small glasses filled with every color of the rainbow pack the table in front of a tall, elegant woman in a black dress and jade scarf. Long, sparkling emeralds dangle from her ears. Behind her is a big wheel—like one of the games on the boardwalk—sectioned off by large words: MONEY, HEALTH, LOVE, ADVENTURE.
