Circle of Friends Complete Collection

by Susan Mallery

  Good advice, Noelle thought, hoping she was able to take it. “I’m sorry I lied about everything.”

  “I’m sorry you felt you had to. I’d say next time trust me enough to tell me the truth, but I don’t think there’s going to be a next time.”

  Noelle smiled. “I promise I’ll never get into a situation like this again. Are you going to tell Dad?”

  Her mother nodded. “But not the girls. They don’t need to know the details of your unusual arrangement.”

  “Thanks. Do you think we have a chance?”

  “Yes. Don’t give up on him. I like Dev and you know I think you’re wonderful. Be patient and trust your heart.”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Noelle said with a sigh. “I love him and I need to be with him.”

  “Then you have your answer.”

  * * *

  DEV GOT HOME from work at his usual time. He braced himself for the auditory onslaught, but the house was quiet. Oddly enough, that made him uneasy. Where was everyone?

  He walked into the kitchen, but it was empty and dark. While he wasn’t worried that Noelle had run off, he would feel better if she were home. Had something happened?

  He glanced at the answering machine, but the light wasn’t blinking. No messages. If something had happened, she would have called. So she was at study group or the grocery store or with a friend. Maybe she and Tiffany had gone shopping.

  He crossed to the refrigerator and pulled it open. The shelves were filled with leftovers, his favorite soda, snacks, ingredients for meals. Before Noelle, he could have stored his winter coat in the space and had plenty of room to spare.

  She’d made changes, and not just in the kitchen. She wanted to make more changes, and that’s what he couldn’t let happen.

  She insisted on wearing her feelings like a badge of honor. She wanted too much from him. Didn’t she understand that love made a person weak?

  He took a soda and popped open the can, then walked toward the bedroom to get changed. As he passed the family room, he heard an odd sound and saw Tiffany curled up on the sofa, obviously crying.

  His first instinct was to run. So were his second and third. But she’d already seen him and as much as he didn’t want to deal with her tears, he couldn’t be so heartless as to walk away now.

  Great, he thought. This was just great. Where was Noelle? Shouldn’t she be handling this?

  He moved into the family room and stopped on the far side of the coffee table. “So, ah, how was your day?”

  Tiffany hiccupped a sob and waved her hand.

  “I can see you’re upset. Do you, ah, want to talk about it?”

  To his horror, she nodded.

  Dev swore under his breath and sank into one of the overstuffed chairs opposite the sofa. He set down his briefcase and his drink and forced himself to lean forward to show interest when he would really rather be going through some kind of surgery without being put under.

  “You were at camp today, right?” he asked. “Did something happen there?”

  Tiffany blew her nose. “There’s a boy and I really like him. He’s been talking to me and he even asked for my number, but today I saw him kissing Amber.”

  The last word came out as more of a high-pitched wail. Tiffany covered her face with her hands and began to sob anew.

  Dev looked around for someone to rescue him, but even the pool house looked dark and unoccupied. Just his luck that the one time he needed him, his father was gone. No, wait. His father had always been gone.

  Different crisis, he thought, staring at Tiffany and knowing he was the last person to be helping her. Still, he couldn’t make himself say “Why don’t you wait until your sister gets home.”

  “What’s his name?” Dev asked, stalling for time.

  “Justin. He’s really cute and nice and funny. I hate him and I hate Amber.”

  The need to bolt was so strong, Dev felt his muscles tense in anticipation. Why him? Why now?

  He had no idea what to say. What could possibly comfort Tiffany? Except maybe the truth.

  “How old is Justin?”

  “Sixteen. He didn’t really want to work in the camp this summer, he wanted to get a job. His parents said he had to for one more year, so they’re paying for the insurance and stuff on his car.” She drew in a shaky breath. “He talked about us driving to the beach but now I bet he’s going to do that with Amber.”

  There were more sobs and tears.

  “Look, Tiffany,” he said slowly. “All teenage guys are idiots. You wake up one morning and suddenly there are girls in the world. Sure, they were always there but until that moment, you didn’t care. Overnight they became beautiful and mysterious and they smell good.”

  She looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “This is a tough time for you, right? You’re changing, you’re waiting to grow up, you have to make decisions about what to do with your life and you don’t have a clue.”

  She nodded. “Why do I have to decide now? What if I pick wrong? Noelle always knew, but she’s perfect.”

  He ignored the sullen tone and the dig at Noelle. “Justin is feeling all that, too. Plus, he’s the guy. He’s expected to make the first move, which means he has to risk being rejected.”

  “But I’d never reject him!”

  “He doesn’t know that. No guy knows what’s going to happen. The more special the girl, the more nervous the guy gets. A lot of times, we start with what’s easy and work our way up to the hard stuff. So maybe we ask out a girl who isn’t the one we’re dreaming of, because it won’t hurt so bad if she says no.”

  “You think Justin’s working his way up to me?” Tiffany asked, obviously confused.

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s just a guy who likes leading girls on.”

  “No! Justin is amazing. He’d never do that.”

  Dev groaned. “Tiffany, do you really know this guy? Have you spent time with him? Or are you taking one look at him and realizing you know deep in your soul exactly what he’s like?”

  “I just know,” she breathed.

  He wondered if pounding his head against a wall would make any of this easier.

  “You don’t know,” he said as gently as he could. “You’re imagining what you want him to be, but you don’t know anything about him. His favorite music, his hobbies, how he treats his friends.”

  “But we’re meant to be together. I can feel it. I love him.”

  “You love what you want him to be. The guy in your mind has nothing to do with Justin in real life. They may have some things in common and they may not.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “You’re being mean on purpose.”

  “I’m not, Tiffany. I’m telling you the truth. If Justin flirted with you and asked for your number and now he’s kissing someone else, then he’s a jerk. He likes getting girls interested in him. He doesn’t care about the girl, he wants the attention. You’re too special for that. You deserve a guy who’s interested in you, not the chase. Wouldn’t you like to be with someone who thinks you’re as great as you imagine Justin to be?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. “What?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be with someone who thinks you’re amazing instead of some jerk who spends his time kissing Amber?”

  “There’s someone who thinks I’m special?” she asked quietly.

  Dev didn’t doubt that Tiffany was a teenage boy’s idea of paradise. She was pretty, funny, caring and outgoing. He had a feeling that once she went back to school, she was going to be swimming in potential boyfriends. “Sure. The problem is finding him and figuring out if you’re interested in him.”

  Tiffany threw herself into his arms. “Thanks, Dev. You’re right. Justin’s stupid. Plus, Amber’s breath always smells. Why would he want t
o kiss her? I like this other guy a lot better, whoever he is.”

  He patted her back, then hastily stood. “Glad I could help. I’m going to get changed.”

  “Okay.” She grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. A music video blasted through the room.

  Dev walked toward the hallway and was surprised to find Noelle hovering just out of sight.

  “When did you get home?” he asked.

  “Right around the time you asked the boy’s name.”

  “You could have stepped in and saved me.”

  She smiled. “You did just fine. Why do you worry about being a good parent? You have excellent instincts.”

  “Right. Instincts that got my brother killed.”

  “You’re not to blame,” she said earnestly. “Dev, Jimmy made his own choices. You offered guidance and rules and consequences. He wasn’t willing to learn the easy way, so he had to learn the hard way. Eventually, we all have to come to terms with what we’ve done.”

  “He didn’t deserve to die,” he told her. “If I’d spent more time with him or hadn’t been so strict...”

  “You don’t know that anything would have been different. Jimmy was in trouble from the time he could walk. Maybe it was just his nature.”

  “Telling myself that means taking the easy way out.”

  “You want to take the hard way?”

  “I want to do what’s right. You said yourself that we all have to take responsibility for our choices. I’m taking responsibility for mine. Jimmy’s death is on my hands and I can’t rationalize that truth away.”

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW TOO many people,” Rachel said under her breath as she passed yet another package.

  Noelle looked at the women crowding in her parents’ living room. “I kind of have to agree. I made a list for my mom, but she kept hounding me for more names. I think she invited everyone I ever met and they all said yes.”

  What had started out as a small postwedding shower had turned into a giant girl fest with cookies, a big mock wedding cake, fudge and, of course, diet soda.

  “I’m glad I got here early,” Crissy said from her spot on Noelle’s other side. “I think the latecomers will be parking a mile away.”

  “The good news is,” Rachel said with a grin, “you’ll never fit all the presents in your car. That’s pretty cool.”

  “Dev’s coming over later to help me cart everything back.”

  Noelle couldn’t believe her “haul,” as Tiffany called it. Not only had every female she’d ever met come to the party, they’d all brought presents. There were mountains of boxes containing everything from place settings to flatware to crystal to a very sexy nightgown from Katherine, her former boss.

  “You haven’t said anything about the wedding,” Kelly, a friend from high school, said. “Come on. You ran off. That’s romantic. So what happened. You were hanging out one night and realized you just couldn’t wait another second to be married?”

  Noelle had known there would be questions and she hadn’t figured out how to answer them. “Dev and I—” she began, only to be interrupted by her mother.

  “There are pictures,” her mom said, waving several photos in the air. “From the wedding. I confess, I’m torn. On the one hand, I missed my firstborn getting married. On the other, I didn’t have to go buy a mother-of-the-bride dress and deal with caterers.”

  Everyone laughed and the pictures were passed around.

  “Your mom knows?” Crissy asked in a low voice.

  Noelle nodded. “I confessed all a few days ago. She’s been great about everything.”

  “Including the distractions,” Crissy muttered. “Okay, I’ll take the next one, and Rachel, you’re in charge after that.”

  “Thanks,” Noelle told her, then forced herself to smile as Summer pointed out she hadn’t opened the present she was holding.

  “Oh, look,” somebody said as Noelle ripped open more wrapping paper. “They’re so in love. You can tell by how they’re looking at each other.”

  Noelle smiled in response to the chorus of “ahh” and was grateful the picture wasn’t a close-up. No doubt then the fear would be visible in her eyes. As it was, she didn’t even remember posing for pictures after the short ceremony.

  She hated lying to everyone, but under the circumstances, standing up and announcing the truth didn’t seem like such a good idea, either. Her mother had put together the shower before she’d found out why Noelle had married Dev, and once she knew, it was too late to cancel without a lot of awkward explanations.

  With help from her friends, she continued opening presents and smiling. An hour or so later, Dev arrived and was instantly surrounded by women eager to congratulate him on his recent marriage and to ask him if he had any single friends.

  Noelle escaped to the kitchen on the pretext of getting more cookies. When she reached for one of the trays, she found Dev next to her.

  “How are you holding up?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look upset.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t like lying to everyone. They think we ran off because we were wildly in love. I even thought about telling them the truth, but I don’t want that information out there. Eventually we’ll have to tell the baby what really happened, but that’s a conversation that we should have when we’re ready. Not because the local gossips are hinting at it.”

  “Do their opinions really matter?” he asked.

  “I don’t like feeling like a fraud. It wouldn’t be so bad if we could admit what we did and why, but then tell everyone that it’s okay now, because we fell in love with each other. But we didn’t, did we? You don’t.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I’ve explained.”

  “No, you haven’t. Not in any way I can understand. So here’s another question in my long list of them. How long, Dev? How long will it take for you to give in? I know it’s a mountain and I’m willing to make the climb. I’m just curious. Is it a beginning level and I just have to walk for a few weeks, or are we talking Mount Everest and I’m not even at base camp?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  She picked up a tray of cookies. “I disagree. I think you know exactly what I’m up against, but you don’t want to tell me.”

  * * *

  BY THE TIME they’d unloaded all the presents from both cars, they’d filled the entire living room with boxes and bags of gifts.

  “You’re gonna be writing thank-you notes for days,” Tiffany said, sounding awed by the bounty. “Where are you going to put everything?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Dev wasn’t sure, either. “We’ll have to clear out a few closets. Maybe some in the hall. I think the buffet in the dining room is empty. We could put the china in there.”

  “We got service for sixteen,” Noelle said, sounding shell-shocked by the concept. “I don’t know how to cook for sixteen.”

  “We don’t have to have that many over. Or anyone.”

  “I’m going to bed,” Tiffany said. “‘Night.”

  She walked down the hall. It wasn’t that late. Dev wondered if she were trying to make sure she didn’t get stuck unpacking.

  Noelle looked at all the boxes. “I can’t deal with this now. How about we work on this in the morning?”

  “Fine with me.”

  “I need something to eat,” she said. “Something that doesn’t have sugar in it.”

  Once in the kitchen she got out bread and sliced meat. “Want anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  She moved with a familiarity that told him how thoroughly she’d become a part of his life and how much he’d changed hers. While the former was a good thing, the later was less easily defined.


  “I did all this to make things easier,” he said. “That was always my goal.”

  She pulled a jar of mustard from the refrigerator. “I know,” she told him, not pretending to misunderstand. “You’re good about doing the right thing.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You don’t.”

  How was that possible? If she loved him, didn’t his inability to return the emotion cause her pain?

  “You don’t hurt me,” she insisted quietly. “Not in the way you mean. You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re following the rules as you wrote them. I went my own way and these are the consequences. It hurts, but I don’t see you as the cause.”

  That surprised him. How could she let him off so easily?

  But she wasn’t finished.

  “What I do blame you for,” she continued, “is trying to make things easier for yourself rather than me. Marrying me is a by-product of what you want. You made the safe choice. You always make the safe choice.”

  “Wait a minute. How is marrying you safe?”

  Her blue eyes darkened with emotion. “You thought you could have it all. A wife, a child, a marriage and nothing messy. You spelled out all possibilities and dealt with them. When this ended, I was supposed to go my way and you would go yours. Neither of us would look back. You got to have it all and never risk your heart.”

  “I married you because of the baby,” he said, doing his best to keep his temper in check. She didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “You’re afraid to love,” she said. “With all that’s happened to you, I can see why, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a coward.”

  “I see,” he said icily. “So working my ass off, raising my brother the best I can, cleaning up his messes even after he’s dead makes me a coward.”

  Her face paled. Instantly he realized what he’d said and how she would have felt about it. Guilt sliced through him.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her sincerely. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out. You know I didn’t.”

  “It’s fine.” Her voice was thick with pain. “It’s good to know where I stand. Just another of Jimmy’s messes.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I take it back, Dev. You have hurt me.”