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“Just having a good weekend,” I said.
“Mmm,” he said, but he kept glancing at me.
Part of me wanted to throw myself in the pool, but then it would be really obvious that I was hiding something, so I just sat there and pretended to be chill. Inside I was not chill.
Could people tell I’d been making out with Honor? Had I changed that much since last night? Did I have kissing cooties or something? Was I, a grown woman, considering that I’d been infected by cooties?
One of the kids did a cannonball into the pool, making me jump.
Get a grip, Layne.
* * *
As I’d promised,I did end up texting Honor a bunch of times as the night wore on.
I couldn’t help it. There were so many random things that I needed to tell her about.
I asked her which book she voted on for book club and that opened up a whole door about our favorite books, and what we’d felt when we’d read our first queer romance and which book characters had definitely made us gay.
My cheeks were sore from smiling.
Riley flopped down in the chair next to me and Zoey took the other.
“Are you in love?” Riley asked me when I looked up from my phone.
“What?” I said, almost sliding off my chair. “What are you talking about?”
“You just have a grin on your face, and you seem really happy, so we wanted to know if you were in love,” Zoey said matter-of-factly.
“No, I’m not in love,” I choked out. I definitely wasn’t. Love didn’t happen like it did in their favorite animated movies.
Riley and Zoey looked at each other and shrugged. “Okay.”
The good thing about them being so young was that they tended to move on from things pretty quickly.
They hopped back in the pool and I was left to my chaotic thoughts.
* * *
There wereno incidents during the night, and everyone commented on how good the vegan breakfast was before I sent the other kids back to their parents and told Mark I was “clocking out” to enjoy what I had left of the weekend.
I met Joy and Sydney at their apartment so we could just chill and have dinner. I brought the caprese salad I’d made with the heirloom tomatoes and the basil.
Joy had made baked eggplant, and the minute I walked in she was already ranting about her family.
“I just…I’ve had it! They’re all up my ass because I’m not in a relationship and I don’t know how much more I can take.”
I waved and set the tray down with the salad in it. Sydney gave me a look that said Joy was just getting started. She always got going when she cooked for some reason. Under normal circumstances, Joy was a sweet little ball of sunshine, but her family knew how to push every single one of her buttons.
“What did they do now?” I asked and Sydney glared at me for getting Joy going. I told her that Joy needed to talk this shit out so she didn’t bottle it up, but Sydney thought that talking about it just made things worse.
“The usual,” Joy said, making a lot of clattering noises that seemed excessive for the cooking process. She took on a mocking tone, pretending to be her mom or one of her sisters. “Joy, we just love and care about you and we don’t want you to be alone. Someday you’re going to wake up and realize that you don’t have anyone to share your life with.”
She let out a growl and finally stopped moving. I saw that Sydney had already taken the knives away. Good thinking.
“And they act like I don’t have anyone, just because I’m not dating anyone. Oh, and don’t even get them started on bugging me about my wedding date.”
“We’ve already said that one of us will go with you,” Sydney said carefully.
