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I should have argued, but I closed my eyes. My stomach lurched when I felt Paisley move, and then—a rattling from behind me, the clinking of cans, and then Paisley laughing maniacally as she jumped off my lap. My eyes shot open, and I scowled at where she was opening a can of shandy—the cans I’d kept behind me specifically so Paisley wouldn’t walk in and grab them. I was going to break her like a twig.
And… pretend I wasn’t getting this sinking feeling like rejection.
“Thanks, Harps,” she said, doing a terrible job suppressing laughter. I sighed.
“You’re very lucky there’s too many witnesses here for me to murder you.”
“You wouldn’t. You love me.” She winked, taking a swig from the can, and I thought most likely I would murder her because I unfortunatelydidlove her.
It didn’t make any sense. She’d never done anything but annoy me. We butted heads constantly. She wasn’t even my type. At least… she shouldn’t have been. She was a scrawny thing with wild, unkempt brown hair and big round glasses, wearing a Harvard sweatshirt that was about six sizes too big and out of place given she had definitely never gone to Harvard, and—even though everyone in Bayview loved her as the chaotic gremlin creature she was, myself included, it was really her I had to fall in love with?Her?
I didn’t even know how it had happened, but I wanted to take it all back. Maybe that was why I’d agreed when Susanna Holcomb had asked me to leave Bayview.
Of course, it was probably for other reasons. Bigger reasons. But I didn’t go near that.
“You sure took your sweet time showing up,” I said. “Too busy getting bubble tea and kidnapping employees?”
Next to her, Kay laughed, eyes sparkling. “I owe her one. I’d have been standing there staring sadly off into the distance in an empty shop for hours otherwise…”
Paisley shrugged, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Now it’s just Dani who’s going to be doing that. You know—staring into infinity pining over Annabel.”
Priscilla put her hands up. “I’m sure Annabel would be interested. She should just ask.”
I shoved down the messy tangle of feelings I got hearing her say that. She was just so… comfortable in the situation, had so much trust in their relationship. Annabel and I had broken up specifically because of that—because I couldn’t handle Annabel still being attracted to other women—but there was Priscilla, as relaxed as could be and loving what they had.
I think I was afraid it would be a jealous feeling. And maybe it was, but not quite like I’d expected. Just… it was nice knowing Annabel and Priscilla had found something so happy together. And maybe part of me just wished I could, too.
But I wasn’t the kind of person who could be with somebody. That was for other people. People who weren’t like me.
“That’s what I told her,” Paisley said, throwing a hand in the air. “Like, hello. She didn’t even know you two have an open relationship. She looked like she’d seen the gates of heaven when I told her. So… probably expect her coming around shooting her shot.”
Priscilla laughed, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. “I’ll give Annabel the heads-up.”
The park was getting livelier by the minute, the start time just a minute or two away and the guests all showing, squeezing into the space by the birchwood pavilion and the lattice draped in its romantic white netting for the spring. Past Paisley and Kay, I caught a glimpse of Emberlynn and Aria moving through all the guests, greeting them warmly in the way both of them were natural geniuses at, before Emberlynn broke off and came up behind Paisley, snatching the shandy out of her hand from behind. Paisley whirled on her with a scandalized gasp.
“Emby! Oh my god, this is grand larceny.”
“Uh-huh, sure. And my next crime is going to be battery when I throw the drink on you, you dork. Can you at least wait until the event starts before you go stealing all the drinks Harper brought?”
Paisley put a hand on her hip. “Um, evidently not.”
I stood up, stretching my arms out, avoiding looking at Paisley. “We getting started?”
“Yup.” Emberlynn nodded back to the picnic table she and Aria had covered in food, my cake sitting in the middle. “Help yourself. Gwen’s getting the sound system to work.”
Kay bit down on the biggest smile, the kind she always got when someone so much as mentioned Gwen. I was honestly obsessed with the two of them. Everyone else in town thought they were the strangest couple, but I couldn’t get enough of how ridiculously in love they were. “I’m gonna go… say hi to her,” Kay said. “I’m sure I can help her figure out the sound system.”
Paisley sighed melodramatically, watching her all but skip away towards the pavilion where the sound system was set up. “We’re never getting sound. Kay’s gonna make out with her over the stereo for ages.”
Emberlynn wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I should disconnect the speakers. I wouldn’t want them to accidentally connect the microphone while they’re going at it.”
Luckily, though, they didn’t start going at it over the microphone. The music came on after only a short delay, and we all gathered around the table grabbing drinks, sandwiches and chips on paper plates. I managed to avoid too much of either Priscilla or Paisley, chatting with friends I hadn’t seen in a minute—I didn’t leave the house much in winter, and I’d missed more than one social event because of seasonal affective disorder. Plenty to catch up on.
Not that I knew why I was putting so much effort into catching up if I knew I was leaving.
It wore me down somewhere after we’d all gone through the sandwiches and moved to cake, once I’d finished listening to a dozen people compliment the cupcakes, and I found myself coming down into a cool, numb sensation. My feet led me away from it all, and I ended up leaning against the cold metal railing over where the stream was running high right now, swelling on last night’s rainstorm. Tucked in here behind the pale green blooms of spring’s first flowers and the trees starting to get their color back, it was peaceful, quiet, breathing in the fresh, clean air, but I didn’t get much peace.
Footsteps along the earth behind me pulled my attention back to where Priscilla gave me a soft smile, leaning against the railing with me. She didn’t say anything—probably figured out just by looking how much I was wound up. She probably knew why, even though I didn’t.
