Feels Like the First Time

by Marina Adair

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll tell Mom that we are playing something else,” Ali said, dreading that conversation with her mom, but knowing that as the maid of honor, and Bridget’s sister, it was her job to make sure things like this didn’t happen.

  Bridget’s eyes darted between the two of them. Smile at full wattage, she said, “Why would I want to cancel the game? It sounds fun.”

  “Have you seen the questions sheet?” Ali asked, being purposefully vague for Hawk’s sake.

  “Of course,” she laughed. “That’s why I came up to grab you. I couldn’t imagine that walk down memory lane without you guys.”

  Funny, Ali couldn’t imagine playing that game with Hawk, knowing it would dredge up a lot of mixed emotions for him. For all of them.

  He’d worked hard to move forward, and with one lie, Ali had pulled him right back into the past.

  Chapter 8

  As promised, Hawk was true to his word.

  It had been two days since the party and absolutely nothing had changed.

  Gail was back in Seattle. Bridget said not a word about Ali and Hawk, or what she’d witnessed on the roof. And Hawk? Other than telling Ali he was fine after discovering that Bridget, the woman who’d told him she never wanted kids, admitted to wanting four with Hubby 2.0, and was, in fact, a member of the mile-high club, qualifying with an old flame from her past, he’d made zero attempts to contact her. Not even when she’d used the diamond saw on a steel sheet at 4 a.m. With the shop door open.

  He also hadn’t changed his status from In a Relationship back to Single.

  Ali kept her status It’s Complicated, so there was no grand statement for her to make on their relationship—or lack thereof. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t checked his timeline every few hours for confirmation—only to see a post about three other missing kegs. Or obsess over why he hadn’t spent a single night in his apartment above the bar. And if, indeed, he hadn’t, then whose bed had his boots been under?

  The good news was that party had been a success. Bridget was pleased with the turnout, which meant Marty was happy—and Ali could go back to her normal life. The bad news? Nothing about her world felt normal, and she was terrified that Colleen had been right all along. And Ali wasn’t talking about the Facebook poll.

  Bridget was gone, their history brought back to the surface, and Hawk had gone radio silent.

  The old gal-pal Ali would have helped herself to whatever was in his fridge and told him to stop being butthurt. The new I kissed him Ali didn’t want him to think she was the butthurt party, so she’d stolen three kegs and buried herself in her shop.

  But it was a new day, and she was determined to enjoy it. So she decided to drop some groceries by her dad’s house, then go for a run on the beach. Maybe even take the paddleboard out.

  When Ali pulled up, Marty was already down on the dock tinkering with his boat, so she let herself in and headed straight for the kitchen to put the groceries away. And check all of his favorite hiding places for sweets.

  Last month she’d found a half-eaten bag of mini peanut butter cups in the toolbox under the sink. Marty played ignorant, and shrugged it off as leftover Halloween candy.

  Ali asked if the chocolate stain on his shirt was leftover as well. He grumbled something about being a grown-ass man and toddled down to the boat—where Ali was certain there was more leftover Halloween candy.

  Because apparently, grown-ass men needed to have their hand held, so Ali had been doing daily sweeps ever since. He’d gotten better at picking hiding spots, but was still a terrible liar.

  Checking inside the first aid kit on the bookshelf, Ali walked through the kitchen doorway and stopped in surprise.

  The table had been moved away from the wall and into the middle of the room. The window seat, which had been used as a bookshelf, was cleaned off and now had a cozy cushion and a selection of nautical-inspired throw pillows.

  Even more alarming, Loraine stood at the counter in her blue work pants, bright white sneakers, and Marty’s IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE apron, cooking up some eggs and bacon, and moving around the place as if she belonged.

  “What are you doing here?” Ali asked, setting the grocery bags on the counter.

  “Came to make a delivery and saw that Marty ordered some of that fancy farm-to-table bacon I read about in Bon Appétit,” Loraine said. “They say you haven’t tried bacon until you’ve tried Black Pig Company bacon. Now, I’m sixty-six years old. It would be a sin not to be able to say I’ve eaten bacon.”

  “So you’re eating my dad’s?”

  Loraine lowered the spatula and sent Ali a look across the counter. “You want me to tell Marty he has sixty dollars’ worth of bacon up here?”

  Ali thought about what that could do to a man’s system. “Point taken. Eat away.”

  “Save me some,” Bridget said, walking into the kitchen in pink flannel pajamas and sipping from a QUEEN B travel mug. She sat at the table and picked up a magazine.

  “A bacon party and I didn’t get an invite,” Ali deadpanned. “I’m hurt.” She set the groceries on the counter. “When did you get back?”

  “I never left,” Bridget said, licking her finger to flip the page.

  “Well, that’s obvious from the bra drying on the back of the chair and the fact that Dad is hiding on the boat,” Ali pointed out. “Although I really like what you did to Dad’s window seat. The kitchen looks bigger.”

  “It’s an illusion. I raised the ceiling light and added some bright-colored pieces to lighten up the space.” Bridget sipped her coffee. “And he’s not hiding. He was washing down the deck when I woke up.”

  Marty’s favorite pastime. “I thought you would have left with Jamie or gone to see that venue up north that Mom was talking about.”

  “Jamie had an early meeting in Seattle, then had to fly to Florida to see his parents,” Bridget explained. “Rather than hang in an empty house, I figured I’d hang here for a few days. Not that Dad’s been around much. He’s either sleeping, on the boat, or running errands.”

  “Running errands is code for having a cold one with his buddies,” Ali groaned. “You should take him up to see the venue, the drive would be good for him.” And keep him out of trouble.

  “No point.” Bridget took a sip of her coffee. “After the other night, we decided to move the wedding to Florida.”

  “After the other night? What does that even mean?” Ali said, her head spinning from the whiplash of being blindsided. Her heart was suffocating under the weight of her guilt. Because she was pretty sure she knew exactly what it meant.

  “It just wasn’t our kind of scene,” Bridget said, taking a serene sip from her mug and confirming Ali’s fears. Her sister wasn’t moving the wedding to Florida to please Jamie’s parents, she was doing it to get back at Ali because of the kiss.

  Only it wasn’t Ali who would suffer, it would be Marty.

  “Right, because when I think of your dream wedding, I think pink flamingos and muumuus.” Ali took a deep breath, tried to calm the anger surging through her body. It didn’t work. “Wow, in that humidity, your hair will frizz like a Q-tip.”

  “So I’ll wear it up,” Bridget said, smoothing out her cuticle. “It’s closer to our honeymoon destination, and will be easier for Jamie’s family.”

  “But it will be harder on Dad.”

  Bridget’s hands stopped, and Ali saw her hesitate, but as quickly as she’d considered the option, she dismissed it.

  “It’s a six-hour flight,” Bridget said, as if six hours were no big deal for a man who hadn’t so much as driven to Seattle in a year. “He will be fine. Plus Jamie’s parents already offered to let him use one of their guest rooms.”

  “And will they be so accommodating if he has to go to the hospital because he isn’t sleeping well in the heat?”

  “How do you know what is best for him?” Bridget challenged. “Maybe a chance to get away from all of the smothering that goes on here would do him some good. Y
ou’re worse than Mom sometimes.”

  Ali’s heart thumped so hard against her rib cage, it physically forced her to take a step back. Is that really how people saw her…as smothering and controlling?

  Everything she’d done for her dad this past year, done for him since their mom had left, had been out of love. At times, she’d even put her life on hold to make sure their small family remained mighty.

  “I guess I never thought that me loving Dad was holding him back from experiencing other kinds of love,” Ali deadpanned.

  “All I meant is that you don’t have exclusive rights on Dad,” Bridget said, regret softening her words, but it was too late. Softening the truth never softened the blow. “Other people love him, too. I’m not asking you to stop being you, just back off a little so he can share moments with the rest of us.”

  “Well, thank God you aren’t asking me to give up being smothering and controlling, I don’t know if people would recognize me,” Ali said, wondering why she was always the one who had to share. She’d been receiving leftovers for years, and was starting to wonder if maybe, for some people, that was just how life went.

  “I do love to see you two talking and being sisterly, but the chill in the air is making the eggs cold,” Loraine said as if she were a daily domestic goddess and doling out quality family bonding time was her superpower. Then she looked Bridget up and down. “You can have a few slices of my bacon, but don’t get greedy.” Loraine looked at Ali. “It’s the skinny ones you always have to look out for. Now sit. Both of you.”

  “No thanks.” Ali grabbed a single slice and headed toward the fridge. “I think I’ve had enough sisterly bonding for today. I’m just here to bring Dad some groceries and check for chocolate contraband. Then I’ll get out of the way so you can get your daddy-daughter time in, and I can get to my meeting.”

  Which was between her, the Pacific Ocean, and a paddleboard. A strict no family, no drama kind of event.

  “You’ll miss the celebration,” Loraine said, placing a big plate of eggs on the table.

  “We already did that. Two nights ago,” Ali said, quickly putting the groceries away, relieved to find that Marty hadn’t filled the fridge with off-limits foods. “Big party. The groom arrived in golf gear. The bride still said yes. I have pictures if you want to see.”

  “It was croquet knickers,” Bridget defended, as if that made it manlier. “And he’d just come from a game with some business associates.”

  “Never trust a man in knickers,” Loraine said. “Shelly Lynch, from over on Tenth Street, caught her husband in a pair of knickers. The next thing she knew, her lipstick was disappearing, and when she kicked him out, she was missing her favorite pumps.”

  “You can take your bacon to go, too,” Bridget said, pointing to the door. “I’m sure people are waiting to get their mail.”

  “Mail! I nearly forgot. This came for you.” Loraine reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope.

  It was white, contract-size, had a green note attached to it with the United States Postal Service logo at the top, followed by Ali’s name, and a line for a signature.

  “Oh my God!” Ali snatched the envelope. “It’s from Architectural Digest?”

  “Signature required,” Loraine beamed. “I brought it by your shop earlier, but you didn’t answer.” She had been taking out her frustrations on a piece of steel. “And since signing for you was illegal, I just stuck it in my purse.”

  “It could be nothing,” Ali said, knowing that the only reason they’d send a package with a signature was if they needed permission from an artist.

  Bridget gave an apologetic smile. “Or it could be something. Open it, Ali.”

  “Yeah,” Ali said, deciding to take her sister’s comment for what it was, an apology. “It could be something.”

  And she needed something right then to go her way. Something good that was hers, and hers alone. Something that didn’t rely on anything other than her hard work and determination. No outside emotions, expectations, or qualifications.

  Just Ali and her work.

  “Open it, girl,” Loraine said.

  Desperate to do something other than argue, Ali lifted the flap, which was already expertly torn, and glanced at Loraine.

  “Okay, so maybe I peeked,” Loraine admitted. “But only because I knew how much this means to you. And if it was bad news, then I wanted to be able to soften the blow.”

  Ali looked at the big breakfast and her palms went damp. “Maybe I’ll open this at home.” Over a bottle of Jack.

  “But then you won’t have anyone to squeal with,” Loraine said.

  Ali rested her steel-toed boot on the chair. “Do I look like a squealer?”

  “Doesn’t matter, because I’m a great squealer.”

  “So am I,” Bridget added, coming up behind Ali and resting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, don’t let us ruin this moment.”

  Pushing down the frustration and hurt to deal with at a later date, when she was alone, Ali said, “No matter what’s in here, no one say anything to anyone until I contact Nolan.”

  Bridget nodded.

  Loraine grinned ear-to-ear. “I promise to keep my mouth shut until I get your okay.” And when Ali skewered her with a this is serious look, she added, “I haven’t said a word about you getting the cover, now have I?”

  “The cover?” Ali choked. Loraine grinned. Bridget clasped her hands. And all of the stress from their argument vanished and a euphoric lightness filled her chest until she felt weightless. “I got the cover?”

  “Well, Mr. Landon got the cover,” Loraine said, pulling out the contract and flipping to the page that talked about the shoot. “But they’re using his yard and the back of his house for the cover. And it says right here, ‘The Marshal piece will be in the foreground,’ she read, “and further down, look.”

  Ali read the next line and squealed. “They are requesting the artist be onsite for some evoking words on her piece.” She clutched the papers to her chest. “They want me onsite while the shoot is happening!”

  “That’s huge,” Bridget said.

  And that was when Ali found herself squealing. Not a long, woo-girl squeal, but a little chirp of joy that refused to be held in. It felt so good, she did another one, until she felt her feet coming up off the ground. Loraine had lifted her up in a hug and was spinning her like a windmill in spring.

  “Hawk is going to flip out,” Bridget said, and beneath all of her sister’s excitement, Ali sensed a small amount of longing. “He always said you’d do it. And you did. That’s pretty cool.”

  “I couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t talked me up to Nolan in the first place,” Ali admitted.

  She also couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been willing to help her get all of her supplies up to Nolan’s place. And encourage her every step of the way.

  Bridget gave a wistful smile. “That’s Hawk, though. Fiercely loyal until the end. Always offering his support and belief in people and always there for his friends.”

  Ali wanted to argue that they were more than friends, but that would be ridiculous. Whether it was today or after Bridget finally decided to leave Destiny Bay, it was inevitable that Hawk would change his status.

  And the sooner the better, because even though Ali was a master at pretending around those she loved, she was afraid that this game of pretend had turned too real for her.

  Suddenly the victory didn’t feel complete. It wouldn’t until she was able to share it with her friend. She thought about calling him, then remembered he was avoiding her.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea for things to go back to being the same. Because she couldn’t imagine them being different right then.

  Not if different meant losing her best friend.

  * * *

  In Destiny Bay, it turned out, promising not to keep one’s mouth shut did not limit the use of one’s fingers.

  Two seconds after Ali left the kitchen, Loraine started texting her frie
nds. By the time Ali had cleared the house of all contraband—a Drumstick inside the icemaker and a bag of chicharrones hidden in the linen closet—there was already a Facebook event set up for a magazine release party. Because the only thing Destiny Bay loved more than one of their own making was free food.

  Determined to get to her dad and tell him the good news, before someone sent smoke signals over Destiny Bay, Ali went down to the dock. Which was empty. She stepped on the boat and followed the whistling below deck and found the subject of her search stretched out on the bed.

  His deck shoes lying on the floor.

  In cargo shorts, a faded U of W shirt, and with one socked foot crossed over the other, Marty had his reading glasses on his face and his nose casually stuck in a book.

  “Oh, hey, honey,” Marty said, lowering the book and sounding surprised to see her there. Ali knew that, for her dad, surprise could easily be a front for guilt. “I didn’t know you were coming over today.”

  “I come over every day.” Ali sniffed the air, but caught only the faint scent of air freshener over the salty brine of the Pacific. That’s when she noticed the coffee mug on the nightstand, and the pair of dress slacks at the foot of the bed. “Bridget said you were washing down the deck, not that you relocated to the boat.”

  “I didn’t relocate, just didn’t want to wake Bridget when I got home, so I spent the night down here.”

  “Why were you out so late, Dad?” Ali crossed her arms.

  “I was out with the fellas, I lost track of time,” Marty grumbled. “I forget, is fun not on the doctor’s prescribed therapy?”

  “No. I’m glad you went out,” Ali said, feeling awful. “You’ve just been tired lately, and I worry.”

  “No need to worry, I got home before nine, surprised to find Bridget asleep on the couch. So I snuck down here, then headed back to the house this morning to see if Bridget wanted to go for a sail. I took one look at the laundry hanging everywhere and decided I didn’t want to share my coffee with Victoria and all of her secrets, so I came back down here to relax.”

  He set the book on his chest and rested his reading glasses on top, and that’s when Ali noticed how tired her dad looked. He may have claimed to have slept like a baby, but she could see the subtle signs of exhaustion bracketing his features.