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Abby spread her palms out in front of her. “Well, duh! Since I already know the basics, there’s no harm in giving me the details, right?”
As she spoke, Grace Dobrevsi, one half of the married couple who owned Main Street Eats, approached the table with her order pad poised. Gen tried to shush Abby as subtly as she could.
Grace and her husband Serge had been married since God was a boy. Most people in town considered them the ideal couple, the perfect example of #RelationshipGoals since way back when people were still referring to hashtags as number signs.
Someone of Grace’s generation, not to mention one half of an iconic loving and committed couple, would never understand Genevieve and Gavin’s long-term hook-up arrangement. There was just no way.
“What are you two girls talking about? Sounds juicy.”
Abby looked to Gen to take the lead on that question, and Gen waved her hand as if it couldn’t matter less. “Oh, nothing. Just stupid gossip. So, what’s the special today?”
But, unfortunately, Grace had little apparent interest in talking about the menu. “Oh, goodness, are you talking about Gavin Valentine? I heard that you two have been a closed-door item for a while now.”
“Oh, come on.” Gen groaned in defeat, then turned to Abby. “I thought you said not everyone knew. That ‘not’ is kind of a key word in the sentence. Some would say the key word.”
Abby laughed and put her hands up in protest. “I didn’t know, I swear!”
Gen sighed, then asked Grace, her voice as defeated as she’d ever heard it, “How did you find out?”
“Oh, hon, I didn’t know it was a secret. Not now, anyway. Serge told me about it.”
Gen’s eyes flew wide. “Serge knows?”
She didn’t know what was more shocking: the idea of the stoic man taking an interest in local gossip or the idea of him regaling his wife with the tale. Gen, in the entire two decades plus that she’d known the man, didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak more than two or three words at a time.
Grace glanced back toward the kitchen where her husband was busy at the grill. “If you want to know how he heard, I can go ask him.”
Gen put a hand on her arm, heading that idea off at the pass as fast as she could. The last thing she wanted was to spend one more minute discussing her sex life with the sweet old couple who owned the local diner. Who, incidentally, she’d known since she was born.
“Oh, no, Grace. Please don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
Grace’s brows drew down, and she patted Gen’s shoulder. “If you’re sure, hon.”
“Oh, I am. I definitely am.” There weren’t many things she was sure of lately, but that was definitely one of them.
Her stomach growled, reminding her of the reason they were there. She and Abby placed their orders, and Gen noted that Abby’s eyes never lost that little gleam of amusement. She couldn’t blame her friend for finding the whole situation funny.
Hell, if the tables were turned, she’d be doing a lot more than just sitting there in quiet amusement. She’d be busting Abby’s balls, and she wouldn’t be subtle about it. She loved a good opportunity to break out her internal sarcasm machine, and this would be a great one.
She cast a resigned gaze across the table at her friend. “All right. Level with me. How many people know?”
Abby put a hand over her heart. “I don’t know, I swear! If you would’ve asked me five minutes ago, I would’ve sworn it was only me.”
Gen’s stomach swirled. All of this was moving way too fast. For well over a decade, things had been one way: she and Gavin had a nice little no-strings, no-feelings private arrangement– emphasis on private – that worked out very nicely for both of them. No fuss, no muss.
Now everything was changing. They might still have no strings, but it was starting to look like having no feelings was going to be a thing of the past.
As was the whole thing being private.
She’d heard the expression that the only constant in life was change, but in Valentine Bay, that had never seemed to be the case. There wasn’t much that was different in the sleepy oceanside hamlet now from when Gen was a kid.
But, dammit, at present, things were definitely turning upside down. And she didn’t know what to do about it except fasten her seatbelt and hold on for the ride.
