AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I was going for one of those puns, like on a candy wrapper, but I got there, and—”
“It ghosted you?” I offered helpfully. The pact we’d made was a ridiculous one anyway. It wasn’t like people got married because there was nothing else to do.
Evie grinned. “There’s my pun. Thank you and you win.” Her glee was natural. Bright in the dark night.
No, people got married because they thought they were in love and planned to have kids, but not until Grace finished school. And then there had been late nights and early mornings and grad school and residency, and I’d been fine with that. I wanted to see Grace achieve her dream. “Go me. What do I win?”
“I hear the ghost theater needs a new headliner.” Evie sounded thoughtful. “But I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“I hear the audition is murder.” Evie laughed.
I joined her. Bad joke, but I’d started it and it felt good to release the happy sound into the night.
When thirty hit, when we blew past it, Grace had realized she tied herself to me and wasn’t sure she wanted to. That was what she’d told me five years ago. She said I didn’t understand what she was going through.
“Someone else’s murder or mine?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“Papa always said I killed it when I was in the school musicals.”
Evie straightened and leaned her weight against her wrists instead of slouching in on herself. “Was that when you played the tree or townsman number seven?” The light slipping into her tone brightened my mood.
“I was the best fucking tree there ever was. And I was also townsman eight, not seven. What are we actually doing out here?” Not that I was complaining. Evie’s company was one of the best parts of my life.
That had been part of the problem with Grace. Not Evie, but the fact that once Grace’s schedule shifted, once she finally had a moment to breathe after years of school and residencies and finding her place in the medical world, she and I realized we hadn’t spent any time together since we got married. We didn’t know each other as adults, and we didn’t really like each other as lovers.
There was that and the whole she’d-been-fucking-a-colleague thing.
“I’m feeling my age,” Evie said. “Thinking of better times.”
“Which better times? Puberty? The bullying that came with it? Living on someone else’s schedule?” Way to be a downer, me.
She didn’t look bothered by the commentary, though. “We run businesses. That require customers in order to survive. We still live on someone else’s schedule.”
I couldn’t argue that. “So you’re basically pondering mortality.”
“Basically.”
Yeah. Me too. Since I returned to town, I’d poured myself into restoring my business. Gage was my grandfather’s name too, which was why it was on the sign—Gage’s Grub. Like it was meant to be mine all along.
I wanted to be here for Evie the way she had been for me over the past several months. I wasn’t sure I could be, but I wanted to try. The last few months I’d been climbing more and more out of the bitter haze of the way my marriage ended, and seeing more and more what she’d done for me while I was a grumpy bastard.
I also remembered how many times she’d cringed over the last year whenever I said it should’ve been you. Because in a lot of ways I felt like that—I should’ve married Evie instead of Grace—but I was also hurt and pissed off and Evie deserved better than to be treated like an afterthought to my divorce.
“When’s The Nerd Herd taking you out for the big four-oh?” If we were talking mortality, I might as well bring up our birthdays directly, and she and her girlfriends always celebrated their birthdays together.
Evie rolled her eyes. “We don’t call ourselves that anymore.”
Uh-huh. “Does Aubrey know that?”
Evie twisted her mouth, but it didn’t hide her amusement. “We’re voting on a new name next weekend, and I figured we’d tell her then.” Teasing lined her voice. “And they’re taking me out on Monday. Alys said it doesn’t count if it’s not my actual birthday.”
“Your friends are dorks.” I meant it with all the affection.
Evie’s grin was back. “Takes one to know one.”
