by A. L. Woods
Trina was leaning against a faraway wall, her anime features pinched together. She appeared to be in a terse discussion with a tall and lean guy I didn’t recognize with a shock of deep reddish-brown hair that he kept brushing out of his eyes. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder navy blue vintage A-line pin-up dress. The neckline swooped downward, white details lining the bust.
“Who’s Trina talking to?”
“Hmm?” Penelope hummed, studying them. “Oh, that’s Adam.”
“Adam?”
She examined the room for prying ears, then leaned closer to me. “I’m certain they’re fucking.”
My jaw slackened, surprise stewing inside of me. I wasn’t sure why that information caught me off guard. Trina wasn’t a child, lived on her own, and well…had already carried a child. That she was getting some wasn’t that outlandish. Plus, despite the very obvious fact that she was a pretty girl, it was only natural that there would be suitors brave enough to pursue her, regardless of her older brother and his protective best friend.
“He’s not bad on the eyes though, huh?” Penelope offered with a sigh, nibbling on her bottom lip as her eyes raked over Adam’s lean body.
My head snapped back. “He looks fifteen.”
“Twenty-five, actually. Could do catalogue work for Calvin Klein if he wanted to, with those hip bones.” She tipped her head up. “Remember when we were twenty-five?”
“Remember? That was only three years ago.”
Her eyes lit up. “Was it?” She sighed. “Seems like a lifetime ago.”
My entire face scrunched together, muddling my features. “What is going on with you?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve and I am as sober as the baby I’m carrying.” She pouted, flattening a palm against the small swell of her stomach. “It’s making me nostalgic.”
I grimaced. I wasn’t sure I would call this nostalgia. The way she had said it was melancholic and a little too somber for New Year’s Eve vibes. “All right, maybe you need some sugar with that despresso you’re sipping on. You’re putting the B in bitter.”
“I can’t even have espresso.”
Dougie announced his return with a cough, his eyes tapering in Penelope’s direction. “You can have an ounce a day.” The way he said it made me think they’d had this conversation several times. He was toting a dainty flute of what appeared to be sparkling juice between his thick fingers.
She heaved a sigh, rolling her eyes. “That barely does anything.”
I met his stare—the one that screamed SOS—grimacing a little. She wasn’t wrong. An ounce barely got the sleep out of your eyes on a good day, never mind a bad one.
Dougie shook his head, holding out the flute to Penelope. “Thanks,” she muttered, accepting the crystal glass. She held the rim to her nose, inhaling deeply. A pained retching sound left her, her groomed brows dipping into a sharp V at the glass. “Is this apple?”
His throat worked, his gaze raking over her. “It is.”
“Apple makes me gag,” she said, sounding dismissive. She held the glass back out to him, her grip loose on the stem.
“Since when?” he asked evenly, running a hand over his cropped dark hair. How he was keeping the malice that would have had me wringing her neck tethered in place was a damn mystery to me. This guy was a saint. The embodiment of patience and impending fatherhood…to think I hadn’t been able to stand him in the beginning.
“Since this morning.” Penelope cocked her head to the left, looking for visual clearance. Dougie was by no stretch of the word tall, but he was stocky enough that the breadth of his body was impeding her view of whatever drama was unfolding between Adam and Trina—she didn’t want to miss a second of it.
I made a loud harrumph, hoping she’d get with the program. Her fiancé sported that kicked puppy dog look in his eyes, and that shit made me antsy. I waited for her to come back down to earth, but it was as if Dougie and I weren’t even there in that moment. She concentrated on the Calvin Klein model and his anime-character fuck buddy/girlfriend/whatever-the-fuck-kids-called-it-these-days.
I gave Dougie a weak smile. Blowing out a breath, his nostrils twitched. I thought he was going to snap, his patience fraying at the ends the longer Penelope failed at being furtive. Instead, his face relaxed and he smiled, taking the flute from her with a nod of his head. “I’ll be back, sweetheart.” I didn’t miss the way his Bristol County accent punctuated the term of endearment.
When he was out of earshot, I stabbed Penelope’s bicep with my pointer finger. “Why are you being an asshole?” I questioned.
Her eyes dropped to where I’d jabbed her. Something must have registered in her addled brain, because her face took on something akin to discovering she was toting around a knock-off Louis Vuitton and everyone had realized it before her.
“Am I?” Her mouth popped open. Out of nowhere, a dam broke in the corners of her eyes, tears gathering there. Her Atlantic Ocean blues shimmered, the sheen catching on the lights above us. “I’m not trying to be.” She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, sniffling. “I just…I’m not feeling like myself.”
“Pen,” I whispered, placing a tender hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She sniffled. “It’s the hormones, I’m watching my body, but I’m not really in it. I keep people watching. Everyone seems so themselves, and I’m…I’m not me, y’know?”
Not really. I didn’t have a damn clue what she meant.
Dougie returned with a new flute, looking breathless. A small line of sweat had formed on his forehead. “I got you peach instead.” He took one good look at her, his expression growing ashen. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry I’m an asshole.” She threw herself into his arms, the liquid in the flute sloshing, spilling over the rim, dribbling over his fingers.
Holy mother of fucking mood swings.
Penelope buried her face into the crook of his neck. “Whoa, whoa.” He flattened a big palm on the small of her back, holding her close. “You’re not an asshole.”
I disagreed, but he got points for sparing her from the truth. Her hormones had turned my rowdy, take-no-bullshit best friend into a sniveling, emotional mess with about as much stability as a piece of Plasticine in a toddler’s clutches.
Crushing my lips together to keep my laughter to myself, I patted her gently on the shoulder. “I think you’re going to manage just fine without the alcohol.”
“Bad time for levity, Raquel,” she sobbed.
Dougie pinched his lips together, as though he, too, was trying not to erupt into laughter. “Why don’t we go wash your face, sunshine?”
“Stop calling me that.” She squeezed him tighter, the sob rocking through her entire frame. “I’m a thunderstorm.”
“No, you’re not,” he reassured, looking skyward, his lips trembling with the laugh that was testing him. “You’re the sun on a warm summer day on the Cape, Penny.”
Oh, give me a break.
Penelope hiccupped, her grip relaxing, consideration lining her face. She leaned away from him, finding his forest green peepers. “Really?”
“Really, sunshine,” he assured, pulling her back in for another hug.
If the other guests felt concerned, they didn’t show it. No one stared at the host who was a teary-eyed mess, a massive contrast from who she was at any other point in her life. In everyone else’s eyes, Penelope’s behavior appeared to be as normal as rain in April. Nothing out of the ordinary over here.
Unease flanked me, the hairs on the back of my neck rising to half-mast, my eyes dragging across the room searching for the source of my discomfort.
Maria’s classical beauty was impossible to miss in the sea of nondescript and average-looking people. She was staring dead center at where we huddled together in a circle. To her left, a man I knew didn’t have a chance in hell of climbing into bed with her spoke to her profile. Maria didn’t acknowledge him, her lips didn’t even quirk. She
looked listless, bored.
I batted away the unsettled sensation when I realized her fastened stare wasn’t on me—it was fixated on Dougie. I glanced back at my best friend’s husband-to-be. He met Maria’s stony stare, giving her a half-smile.
Maria’s frost didn’t thaw, and Dougie didn’t seem to care enough to change that. She tilted her head, glancing back at the man who was attempting to breach her emotional fortress. He was mid-sentence when she rose to her feet, graceful as a prima ballerina, and walked away. The guy who had been talking to her—or maybe, since she wasn’t paying attention, at her—didn’t even attempt to conceal his shock, but that didn’t stop him from watching the small sashay of her hips in that expensive-looking blood-red pencil dress that was not only flattering to her svelte figure, but timeless.
That whole interaction was…odd.
“Do you know how hard it is to find your bottle opener right now?” Sean’s voice cut through the thoughts percolating in my brain. “I had to use my teeth to—” His footsteps staggered to a halt when his gaze passed between the three of us. “What happened?”
“Hormones,” Penelope said with a sniff, releasing her teddy bear vise grip on Dougie’s shoulders, though she still clung to his arm as if she was a passenger on a sinking ship and he was escorting her to a lifeboat.
Sean’s forehead puckered, a question brewing in his face. He glanced at me. I lifted my shoulders with an uncertain shrug. If he wanted an explanation for what had just occurred, I was the wrong person to ask. My guess was about as good as his.
“I’m ready to go wash my face now,” Penelope whispered. Dougie shook the disengagement out of his face, his eyes clearing from wherever he mentally had gone. He smiled at Penelope, reaching for her hand to brush his lips across her knuckles, then led her away.
Sean held the bottle out to me. It took everything in me to temper the urge to chug the whole thing. “I think I made her cry,” I said with a frown.
He lifted his own bottle to his lips, pausing before he took a quick swig. “I doubt that.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause Penelope’s kind of been the Brewer Fountain for weeks now.”
Guilt slammed into me. I’d been so entrenched in my own life that I’d barely spoken to her to check in. I didn’t have the faintest idea about what she was going through, and she’d been nothing but present and available for me. As per usual.
“Don’t,” he warned.
“Don’t what?”
“You make a face right when you’re about to make yourself feel shitty for something that has nothing to do with you.”
“I should have—”
“Nope.” He cut me off again, placing the pad of his index finger on my lips. “No ‘should haves.’”
“But—” I pressed harder.
“No.” He served me a look, the hand used to silence me dropping to his side. “Dougie’s waiting on her hand and foot. You’re free to get more involved now, but you’re not allowed to feel bad about things that have already come to pass.”
Exhaling an anxious breath, I nodded. As I archived the thought, I vowed to be more present and emotionally available for the next couple of weeks. It was obvious she needed it.
On the flip side, at least Fall River was a hell of a lot closer.
CHAPTER FOUR
Penelope knew how to throw a party. Nothing was unaccounted for, and anything we could have thought of, so had Penelope…right down to the teeny tiny forks that I initially thought were for dessert. She corrected me—they were for the fresh oysters on ice in the kitchen. She had gracefully recovered from whatever the hell she wanted to call that episode. I watched as she floated from guest to guest, a delicate smile on her face. Dougie trailed after her, ignoring her when she shooed him off and told him to enjoy the party.
Sean brought me around the room, introducing me to every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their disenchanting spouses, who appeared as if they were just counting down the minutes until they climbed back into their minivans or pickup trucks to return to their respective homes. They were all too willing to offer their glasses for a top-up every time Penelope made one of her rounds.
Any other day, their entitlement would have annoyed me. Today, though, coming off the heels of what I knew was going to be the next greatest chapter of my life, nothing was getting to me. I was impenetrable.
I huddled next to Sean, my arm lazy around his waist, his thrown over my shoulders. His face lit up while he recounted a story to a group of guys about when he first started in the business and was trying to learn how to install backsplash. He had gotten cocky and thought it sounded straightforward enough—he ended up having to go back to the hardware store to buy new tiles, three times. The third time, the tile department felt so bad, they sent someone to escort him just to make sure he didn’t fuck the dog again.
“Measure twice, cut once, boys,” Sean concluded, chuckling into his drink. “And when all else fails, go to a different hardware store. They still bring it up every time I’m there. It’s been ten years.”
“A decade later, and your tiling still sucks,” the guy I decided was Harry offered with a laugh, inciting chuckles from the three other guys flanking us.
I segued out of the conversation. All of this construction talk was going right over my head. “I’m going to give Pen a hand.”
Sean paused to glance at me, contemplative and curious. I loosened my slack on his waist. Leaning in, he tilted his head, offering me his cheek. Just as my lips landed on his peppered cheek, he turned his head and captured my lips with his instead. Oxygen caught in my chest, my body falling into the kiss, my pleasure receptors going off. I didn’t think I would ever get used to this. To kissing him. To being this drunkenly happy, both literally and figuratively. I’d lost count on the drinks.
He ignored the jeers and claps from his employees, his arm draped around my shoulders, pinning me in place. When he was good and damn ready, he broke the kiss. Placing a kiss on the tip of my nose, he released me. “Now you can go.”
I knew his eyes tracked me until I disappeared into the kitchen. Glancing at the time on the oven clock, I made a mental note—thirty minutes until the ball dropped. Penelope was clearing plates into the compost bin, stacking them by the kitchen sink.
“Need a hand?” I offered.
At the sound of my voice, she all but exhaled in relief. “I’m so glad it’s you.”
“Who else would it be?”
“She-wolf.”
At that I frowned. “Who?”
Her movement stilled, her spine visibly straightening. “Sean’s older sister.”
“Maria?”
“Yep.” Her lips popped. “She’s barely said two words to me. Anytime I try to start a conversation, she looks at her nails or takes a massive gulp of wine. But without fail, whenever I look up, she’s right there. Watching me.”
My mind jumped back to what happened hours ago in the living room. If Maria could pull a Medusa and turn Dougie into stone, I think she might have. I’d gone over to say hi to her alongside Sean while Penelope and Dougie were still in the bathroom. She was as normal as Maria could muster. “Civil” was perhaps a better word. We were by no stretch of the phrase ever going to be painting each other’s nails or getting matching “FRIENDS 4 EVER” charms, but we had called a truce at Thanksgiving and agreed to stop stepping on each other’s toes. We had been content enough to agree to those terms, and Christmas had been blissful and peaceful. New Year’s Eve would be no different.
Still, I could see Penelope’s point. Maria’s heavy stares were impossible to miss. She was the embodiment of apathy, but I saw a dissonance in her eyes. As though she wanted something that the swipe of her black Amex card could never buy.
Sliding a plate toward Penelope, I heaved a sigh. “To be fair, that sounds like Maria.”
Penelope scoffed, scraping the plate off. “Who drinks a vintage bottle of Chateau Le Puy Emilien like its water?”
“I don’t
even know what the fuck you just said,” I confessed; she lost me when she started speaking fluent Rich Bitch.
“It’s a five-hundred-dollar bottle of wine that we got from a friend of my father’s from the country club as a congratulatory gift. Dougie opened it by accident.” Penelope huffed, tossing a wadded ball of napkins into the bin, all but confirming my sentiment. “I thought I was the honorary rich snob. I don’t know what to do with people who are ‘new money’ and behave snobbier than me.”
Who gave a pregnant woman a bottle of wine as a gift? But I didn’t have time to focus on that. Penelope gave me a withering stare, as if she was one breath away from having her second identity crisis for the evening, and could I blame her? She had never been one to focus on money or perpetuating the stigma of being a stuck-up old money bitch. This was still the woman who had worn Iron Maiden shirts tucked into her Burberry pleated skirt and sported bruises from getting entangled in mosh pits.
I fortified myself by taking a generous gulp of my beer. “That would be because you’re not an inherent snob, you’re just not doing a rain dance around your bank account in hopes more zeroes will appear.”
“Exactly!” she blurted. “When we invited Sean’s sisters, I wasn’t expecting them to show up.”
“Was it a pity invite?”
“No,” Penelope said, her eyes scanning the room. “We invited all the crew, and I like Trina. Inviting the other two seemed only natural, and I was curious.”
“Curious about what?”
She stilled, her brows folding together. “About what she looked like.”
I followed her stare. From the kitchen, we could see Maria out in the living room. She was standing in a corner, the stem of the elegant wineglass trained between her fingers, her concentration fixed on the iPhone in her other hand. Unlike everyone else who cowered in corners with timorous expressions etched on their faces—Maria planted herself there out of her own volition. It no doubt gave her the best view of the room; she could look around it unobstructed, as if she was a monarch presiding over the land. She didn’t have a single fuck to spare on anyone in this room not related to her.