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Chapter
Seven
“Wait, wait,” LaurenKeller yelled, hating these group video chats.Everyone talked over one another, and well, she couldn’t handle not having her voice heard.She should just sit back the way Bessie and Joy did, then send a text on the chat feature and call it good.
That was so far outside of her personality, and she couldn’t bring herself to be that person.Shewasn’tthat person, and she told herself as much as Cass finally stopped talking.
“Go ahead, Lauren.I’ve just been waiting for you to chime in.”Bea said it with some level of sarcasm, but Lauren also knew Bea appreciated her advice.
“Let me get this straight,” she said.“Yesterday was a terrible, no-good day because of some travel setbacks.”
“Mm.”
“But you did make it to the house, starving, sure.Frustrated at your lack of directional ability, fine.Then a hot guy shows up with your favorite ice cream and soda pop, and we’re all into him?”
“Iordered the ice cream and soda,” Cass said.“He isn’t clairvoyant.”
“It’s still romantic,” Sage said.
“Is it?”Lauren asked, wondering if the romantic bones in her body had gone brittle.“He’s the rental manager, doing his job.He didn’t think—oh, there’s this lonely divorcée in my beach cottage.I know.I’ll take her some mint chocolate chip and a two-liter of…whatever he brought.”
“You don’t know my favorite soda,” Bea said, sitting up and leaning closer to her computer screen.“Do you?”
“Of course I do,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes.“That’s not the point.The point is, this Gary guy shouldn’t get points for that.”
“Grant,” no less than three women said, correcting her.
Lauren had said the wrong name on purpose.She loved getting her friends riled up by singing the wrong lyrics and driving Cass to the brink of sanity before she’d start correcting her.
“Grant, Gary, Gillmore,” Lauren said dismissively.“He gets zero points for the soda and ice cream.”
“I’m giving him a couple,” Sage said.“She started sobbing, and he didn’t run away.”
“It was notsobbing,” Bea said.“Maybe one sob.I got myself together really quickly.”
“So what would you give him points for?”Cass asked, and all eyes came back to Lauren.
“He gets points for a great dinner,” she said, wishing she didn’t have an important meeting on Thursday.Then she could fly to South Carolina tonight and assess this Grant fellow in person.“And a couple for coming so fast to fix the water heater.But even that—” She threw up a hand as Cass drew in a breath to speak.“Eventhat’sbecause of his job, not because he was there to do something nice for Bea.”
“So he doesn’t get points for doing his job?”Joy asked.
“No,” Lauren said, shaking her head.“He doesn’t.So no points for the ice cream.No points for the water heater.He’s at maybe two for a good dinner.”
“Wow,” Bea said, grinning at Lauren.“But okay.Two points from Lauren.Bessie?”
“I’m going to give him four,” Bessie said.“One for not freaking out when you cried.Two for the dinner.One for making you laugh over coffee and then offering to take you to lunch.”
“Oh, honey,” Cass said.“That wasn’t an offer.He was asking her out.”
“Was he?”Bessie asked, and it seemed the five of them in Texas held their breath while they waited for Bea to answer.Lauren was, she knew that.She suddenly had the urge to get out of the chat and claim her Internet had gone down.
She wanted Bea to be happy.Yes, of course she did.It had been a terrible year, watching her suffer through so much, and yet she’d done so with grace.Now that everything was settled and done, she definitely deserved this amazing beach vacation.
But Lauren would be lying if she said she didn’t find the whole thing—life, work, marriage, family, all of it—a tad unfair.
Very unfair.
Wholly unfair.
