by Lili Valente
My enthusiasm level drops a degree or two. The thought of spending the evening with Aria glaring at me across the picnic table in the March’s backyard isn’t the most appealing thing I’ve imagined today. She was civil this morning, but it’s obvious she still isn’t a fan.
“Aria will be nice, I promise,” she says, reading my thoughts. “We had a long talk last night.”
“A long talk about what?” I ask as the waitress stops next to our table, her pad and pen in hand.
“Y’all decided?” she asks in a chipper voice.
“Yes,” Lark says. “We’ll have two pancakes, one waffle, an order of scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, a bowl of grits, also with cheese, but American on that, a side order of sausage, and two biscuits. All to share, so could you also bring an extra plate, please?”
“Of course.” The waitress tops off our coffees before hustling over to the computer to type in the order.
“That was hot,” I murmur beneath my breath.
“The way I order food?” Lark asks, her smile widening when I nod. “What can I say? I know what I want, Mason, and I’m not afraid to ask for it.”
“And that was even hotter.” I lean forward, elbows propped on the table to add in a whisper, “Am I going to be allowed to kiss you today?”
“Very possibly.” She shoots me a look that makes my pulse pick up all over again. “Now, what were we talking about?” She takes my hand, sending a hum of pleasure shooting up my arm.
“I don’t remember,” I say, grinning. “Probably wasn’t important. Not as important as my plans for us for tomorrow.”
“And what are those?”
“I got tickets for the musical playing at the Lyric in Atlanta. The matinee.”
“You didn’t!” She laughs. “You hate musical theater.”
“But I lo…” I swallow the word, not wanting the first time I say it to her to be so casual. “I really like you, and you really like musical theater. And I like happy hour at Damon’s after the show.”
“Sounds like a heavenly fifth date.” Lark threads her fingers through mine with a sigh. “I’m going to be so spoiled after this week. I won’t ever want to go back to work.”
“Well, maybe you could take a few more days off,” I say, wheels turning. “We could go somewhere. Camping, or to Hilton Head if you don’t mind a long drive.”
Her brow furrows. “Both sound amazing, but I can’t. I have five weddings coming up in June, two corporate parties that want a big spread, and three baby showers. I’m going to be working like a dog until the middle of July, and I just added another wedding in August. Not that I’m complaining,” she hurries to add. “I’d rather have too much work than not enough, but it would be nice to have a few more days with you.”
“We have as many days as you’ll give me,” I say, squeezing her hand. “We’ll find time to be together. I don’t start work until next month and when I do I’m one of five doctors at the practice. We share rounds and take turns being on call, so the hours shouldn’t be nearly as deadly as med school or residency. And Bliss River’s only an hour from the city. I could be at your place by six thirty or so most nights.”
She shakes her head slowly back and forth.
“What? What’s wrong?” I ask. “Has traffic gotten worse since I left? I used to be able to make it home from Atlanta in fifty minutes, an hour tops, but—”
“No, it’s not that,” Lark cuts in, shaking her head. “It’s just…this. Us. It’s blowing my mind a little.”
My ribs tighten. “Me too. But in the best way.”
She nods, easing the pressure in my chest. “Definitely. I can’t remember the last time I felt so—”
“Lark? Lark March, is that you?” The voice is so high-pitched it’s nearly a squeal and loud enough that the entire front section of the diner turns to stare as a vaguely familiar brunette wearing a t-shirt that reads “Soccer Mom and Proud of It!” wiggles up to our table and my stomach drops.
This woman is grinning at Lark with one eye, but shooting daggers at me with the other.
Chapter 15
Mason
Lark detangles her hand from mine with a guilty expression. “Vicky! What’s up? How are you?” She stands, moving to embrace the other woman, who shoots me another not-so-nice glance over Lark’s shoulder.
“I’m fine,” Vicky says as she hugs Lark. “Just meeting some girls from my old Baby and Me class for breakfast while the kids are at school.”
“You’re kidding.” Lark pulls away, but remains standing next to our booth, her back turned just enough to exclude me from the conversation. “Is Braxton already in school?”
“And Braden, too. He started kindergarten last year.”
“That’s so crazy! It seems like your wedding was like, what? Two minutes ago?”
“We’re celebrating our tenth anniversary this year.” Vicky beams the smug beam of the happily married, the beam that used to make me want to vomit when I was in New York and wondering if winning Lark back was nothing but a pipe dream.
“I heard Aria was back in town,” Vicky continues. “You remember she was one of my bridesmaids.”
“I do,” Lark says. “I’ll tell her you said hi.”
“Do that, and tell her to call me! We need to do some catching up. I can’t wait to hear all her news and see that new baby of hers. I’m dying to hold a real baby.” She sighs. “All mine are getting too big to want to snuggle with Mama. I keep telling Brent we should have another—I’m only twenty-nine, for goodness sakes, it’s not like we have to close up shop—but he can’t stand the diaper years. He’s so excited now that the boys are old enough to play soccer and go fishing with him on Sunday afternoons.”
“That must be nice. Well…I’ll tell Aria to give you a call,” Lark says, edging one leg slowly back into our booth in the universal sign for “I’m ready to return to my meal now, please go away,” but Vicky continues to linger.
“And how are you doing?” Vicky asks, with a pointed look in my direction. As soon as her gaze connects with mine, the warmth vanishes from her expression.
Well, if this woman is going to hate me, we might as well be properly introduced.
“Hi, I’m Mason Stewart.” I stand and extend my hand.
“Oh, I know who you are. I sat behind you in Algebra II junior year,” Vicky says, her lips pruning. “But even if I hadn’t, I would know Mason Stewart. Everyone in Bliss River knows who you are…and what you did.”
“Vicky, please,” Lark murmurs beneath her breath.
“You know I’m not one to keep my mouth shut, Lark. You’re like a little sister to me,” she says. “And I wouldn’t consider myself much of a friend to you, or Aria, if I didn’t look this one right in the eye and say shame on you.” She wags a finger in my direction, like I’m a dog who just peed on the carpet. “Shame! On you!”
Lark sighs. “Vicky—”
“You’re right,” I say, cutting her off before she’s forced to defend me again. “What I did to Lark was shameful. Not to mention the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. Luckily, she’s been good enough to give me another chance, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving she made the right call.”
Vicky sniffs, looking somewhat mollified. “Well, at least you know you’re a rat.”
“Was a rat,” I correct with my most charming smile. “And thanks for being such a good friend to Lark. I’m glad she has people who love her enough to finger wag me in public.”
Vicky’s mouth twitches on one side. “Well,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “He always was too smooth and good looking for his own good, but you keep him in line, honey. And make sure that engagement ring is big enough to blind people from fifty feet away.” She leans in, hugging Lark one last time. “See you later, sugar! Don’t forget to tell your sister to call me.”
By the time Vicky finally hustles away to the opposite corner of the restaurant, Lark’s cheeks are bright pink with embarrassment.
“I am so so
rry,” she whispers, sliding back into the booth, clutching her coffee like a lifeline.
“Why are you sorry? I’m the rat.”
She shakes her head, keeping her eyes on her cup. “It’s this town. Everybody knows everything about everyone else. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t called all my friends the night you proposed, but—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I cut in. “I did. And I have to deal with the fallout.”
“But you shouldn’t have to put up with people calling you a rat every time we’re out together,” she says. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not so bad.” I shrug. “And it can’t last forever. Within a few months, we should run into everyone who hates me on your behalf. Eventually I’ll have apologized to all of them and we can move on with our lives.”
“I don’t know.” She lifts a dubious brow. “Between the three of us, the March sisters have a lot of friends.”
I smile. “Not surprising. You’re fun people. Even Aria,” I add with a wink.
Lark laughs softly. “Poor Aria. But she’s smart, you know? She’s refused to tell anyone what happened with her and Liam after they moved to Nashville. Not even Mom or Dad. No one’s going to be talking about her behind her back.”
“Of course they will. If they can’t find any factual dirt, they’ll just make something up,” I say. “The gossips in this town don’t have anything better to do. You know that.”
She lifts one shoulder. “Maybe, but at least she has her pride. Everyone won’t be thinking she’s an idiot for going back to the man who made her the most pitied girl in Cobb County.”
I frown, a sour feeling flashing in my chest for the first time this morning.
The waitress chooses that moment to return with our order, and soon the table is covered with hot, greasy, delicious diner food. But when Lark begins to scoop out eggs and grits, I sit with my hands braced on either side of my empty plate.
“What’s wrong?” she asks after a moment.
“Nothing.” I fiddle with my fork.
“Doesn’t look like nothing. You’ve got your curtains face on.”
When I need to, I’m good at keeping my emotions concealed, another skill learned when I was young and had to be careful not to make any of the volatile grown-ups in my house angry. But most people don’t realize that I’ve gone underground. Only Lark has ever noticed when the curtains are drawn.
I shrug. “It’s not a big deal, I just…” I put the fork down and look her straight in the eye. There are people I don’t mind hiding from, but Lark isn’t one of them. “You’re not an idiot, and I don’t want you to feel like one.”
“I don’t.” Her brows furrow in confusion for a moment before she realizes what I’m talking about and her forehead smoothes. “Oh, you mean what I said before. It doesn’t matter, Mason. Really. Let the gossips and Aria’s friends and my friends think whatever they want. I don’t care. I know I’m making the decision that’s right for me.”
“You do?”
“I do. You’re right for me,” she says in a soft voice. “And I would rather live through a hundred embarrassing moments than live without you in my life.”
“I love you,” I say, not caring if this isn’t the perfect, romantic moment. It’s the truth, my most important truth, and I want her to know it.
“I…I love you, too,” she says, with a nervous rush of breath.
“Scary?”
She nods. “Yeah, but good. And true. No sense pretending that it’s not.”
“I don’t want you to pretend.” I find a path between the waffle plate and grits bowl and take her hand again. “And as soon as I can afford it, I’m getting you a blinding engagement ring.”
Lark’s eyes go wide.
“Too soon?” I ask, arching a brow. “Too scary?”
“Maybe. A little,” she says, pulling her hand gently away. “Let’s take things slow for a while, okay? Just being with you, being happy together…it’s enough to process right now. You know?”
I bite my lip. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,”
“No, I do. I don’t want to mess this up, and—”
“Relax, Mason,” she says with a laugh. “There’s only one way you can mess this up, and we both know you’re not going to do anything like that again. Now hurry up and grab some eggs before they get cold.”
“Nothing worse than cold eggs.”
“Unless it’s cold grits. Better grab some of them, too, before they turn to concrete.”
And just like that, our perfect morning is perfect once more.
Because we’re Lark and Mason again, and Lark and Mason don’t let the little things get us down.
Never have, and never will.
We tuck into our breakfast with our usual abandon, then take a long walk around downtown, window-shopping and discussing how we want to spend the day. We decide to take the boat out again and head over to the state park with the island in the middle of the lake. It has hiking trails and picnic tables, and we can spend the entire afternoon outside enjoying the perfect weather.
We stop inside the bookstore to pick out something for Lark to read, and then the sub shop to grab sandwiches, before heading over to my friend, Nash’s, house to fetch the boat.
On the way to Nash’s, a plan begins to take shape in my conflict-avoidant brain…
What better way to keep Aria off my case, than to give her someone more interesting than me to engage with?
“Do you think it would be okay to invite Nash over for dinner tonight?” I ask Lark. “He seemed lonely the other day when I dropped off the boat. His girlfriend moved out not too long ago.”
“Nash…” She chews on her lip for a minute. “Why is that name familiar? He isn’t one of your old basketball friends, is he?”
“No, Nash and I worked construction together in the summers. I might have mentioned him.”
“Maybe,” she says in a noncommittal tone.
“He left Bliss River to go to the police academy in Atlanta and worked in a precinct there for a while, but he’s been back for a few years.” I turn onto Nash’s street, adding casually, “I think he’s around Aria’s age. Maybe a year or two older?”
She hums beneath her breath. “Ahhh. I see.”
“See what?”
“Don’t play innocent,” she says, with a laugh. “I think it’s a great idea. Something to distract her from trying to prove our second chance is made of fail.”
“She thinks our second chance is made of fail?” I ask, disappointed though I already knew Aria wasn’t a fan. “Complete fail?”
She rests a hand on my shoulder. “Right now, she thinks all relationships are made of fail. She hasn’t looked sideways at a man in five months, and that’s got to be some kind of record for her. When we were younger, she was the social butterfly, not Melody or me. She had a different boyfriend every semester.” Lark laughs again. “It got to the point that there were so many I couldn’t keep their names straight. I just started calling every guy who called for her ‘dude’.”
“Dude?”
“Yeah, like, Aria, dude is on the phone!’” She shakes her head. “Only way I could keep from calling them by the wrong name.”
“She and Nash should get along just fine, then. Back before this last girl, he was good at casual relationships. Maybe he and Aria can remind each other how to have fun again.”
“Good. We’ll invite him,” she says. “But we won’t tell Aria. I think it’s better if it’s a surprise.”
“That way she can’t yell at us until after it’s over?”
“Absolutely,” Lark says with a wicked grin.
“Maybe I like this devilish side of you, after all.”
She giggles. “A little salt makes the caramel taste sweeter. That reminds me, there’s a new breakfast place near the highway that makes Dutch baby pancakes with caramel sauce on Saturdays. We should hit it up some weekend. But we’ll have to get there early
. Otherwise, you end up waiting hours for a table.”
“Sounds amazing,” I murmur.
“Waiting hours for a table?”
“Making plans for the future with you.”
She sighs and relaxes back into her seat. “Yeah, that is pretty amazing.”
It really is, I think, and getting better with every passing day.
Chapter 16
Lark
The day grows hot, but not too hot, and Mason and I spend every minute of it outside, hiking, skipping rocks on the beach, and driving the boat around the lake until the sun begins to slide lower in the sky.
By the time Mason drops me at my parents’ house to take a shower and runs back to his hotel to do the same, it’s nearly five o’clock. I’m sad to see him go, but less than forty minutes later, I hear a car pulling up to the curb out front.
I push the curtains aside and peek out the second story window to see Mason emerging from the Audie, proving he’s every bit as eager to get back to me as I am to have him by my side. Grinning, I swing out of my room and race down the stairs in my bare feet. “It’s for me! I’ll get it,” I shout as I throw open the door, fighting the urge to leap into Mason’s arms and kiss him until we’re both breathless.
He looks…gorgeous.
His damp hair swoops low on his forehead, stopping just above magnetic blue eyes that practically beg me to drag him to my bedroom, lock the door, and show him just how happy I am to see him. His fitted jeans cling to his strong legs and his black button-down shirt, rolled up on his forearms, emphasizes the sexy scruff on his cheeks.
He looks good enough to eat, good enough to devour inch by delicious inch. I don’t want to share this man. I want to be alone with him, now, preferably with both of us wearing as little clothing as possible.
But that’s exactly why I planned this cookout.
If I don’t surround myself with people, I’m not going to make it another day without pouncing on Mason like a she-cat after a man-sized hunk of catnip, and that doesn’t seem like the smartest idea four dates into our second chance.