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Wayne crossed and uncrossed his muscular arms. “Good to see you, Connell. Elise tells me that Alex Swartz broke into her room today.”
Connell furrowed his brow and took another chip. “I don’t know why he would have done something like that. Alex and Dean don’t like to check in here very often. They tell me I have the whole thing working as a tight ship.”
“Yeah. Well, it happened,” Wayne said.
There was a darkness behind his eyes, one that captured Elise’s fancy. She could have watched him stand up for her forever.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Connell said. Shadows grew beneath his eyes.
“I’d just like it if you kept a better watch over the front desk,” Wayne continued. “Because Elise doesn’t need to be as frightened as she was earlier today. Not when she’s on vacation. Heck, not ever.”
Wayne sat on her bed and stared at the wall while Elise changed into the green dress, styled her hair, and redid her makeup in the bathroom. All the while, her heart banged away like a drum. She felt like a teenager preparing to go to her first dance. When she emerged again, Wayne’s eyes did an up-down thing, the kind of thing Elise’s high school boyfriend’s eyes had done, too.
“Does this work?” she asked him, suddenly sheepish.
“You look great,” he said. “I guess the word is beautiful, although I don’t want to be too cheesy.”
“Yes. What a cheeseball,” Elise said. “Cheeseball Wayne.”
“They don’t call Brave Wayne that,” he told her.
Elise and Wayne walked side-by-side down Main Street. If Elise had been an outsider, she might have thought,Hey. That couple is attractive.But instead, she had to live in the reality that thiswasn’ther reality. Wayne and Elise were only friends, and they were on the strangest mission of her life.
“Are you going to tell her?” Wayne asked, as they stood outside the restaurant, peering in through the window.
“That I’m maybe her sister?”
“Yeah.”
Elise heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to bring it up. Especially tonight—at her best friend’s wedding.”
Wayne clucked his tongue in apparent agreement.
“What happened, by the way?” Elise asked.
“With what?”
“With you and Anna?”
“Oh.”
Elise caught sight of the slightest of crimson coloring across his upper cheeks. He cleared his throat and said, “You know, I bet we both have different answers to that.”
“Why didn’t it work for you, then?”
Wayne considered this. “It was two summers ago, but it could have been eight million years ago.”
“That’s about as vague as can be.”
“I know. But I don’t have a good answer. I think she’s a great person. Beautiful, considerate. I think she got together with Roger about two months after we broke things off, and I’ve never seen her happier.” Wayne cleared his throat again and added, “We fought a lot. There was a lot of crying on both sides. But, if I’m not mistaken, I think today has changed something. She’s happy, and I’m here. And I’m so happy for her.”
Elise and Wayne stepped into the restaurant. Anna waved a hand and gestured toward the drink table to say, “Drink as much as you can. I insist. Up here on Mackinac Island, we’re professionals at that sort of thing.”
Elise laughed and grabbed a glass of wine. Wayne nabbed a beer from a cooler filled with ice. The speaker system played a song Elise had once known, although she couldn’t place it.
Elise found it very easy to dance, sing, laugh, and eat with these people. Someone handed her a plate of cake, and, after two glasses of wine, she found reason enough to smear a bit of icing on Wayne’s nose as a joke. Everyone hollered with laughter. Elise couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.
Sometime that evening, Wayne received a call from one of the baristas at The Grind. “Apparently, there’s a problem with the oven,” Wayne said. “Which is a problem, because they have to bake scones and croissants in the morning.” He bit hard on his lower lip, trying to drum up an appropriate text. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just run down the block, check on the oven, and then come back?”
