Lucy dropped her gaze down to Gina’s neckline. “Aardvarks drowning in the ocean.”
“Interesting,” Gina said and sat down in front of one of the large canvases with a few swooping lines drawn in pencil on it.
Tess and Lucy exchanged a she’s-totally-full-of-it glance and joined her.
“Liar. That’s not interesting, it’s totally preposterous. Even Larry wouldn’t have dreamed up something so ludicrous.” Lucy turned and gave their instructor a cheery wave as she sat down. “No offense, Larry.”
The balding man in the Stay Weird apron splattered with several years’ worth of dried paint just rolled his eyes. After two years of the three of them being here every Wednesday night, he’d either learned to put up with Lucy’s brash ways or how to pretend like he had.
Tess sat down at the canvas next to Gina’s, putting her plastic cup of wine down near her paint brushes and a second cup next to the last canvas in their row. She was too distracted wondering why the normally one-glass-and-done Tess was double fisting it to realize she was under attack until it was too late.
Lucy snagged her shirt, pulled the collar just enough to reveal the hickey Ford had left, and cried out in triumph. “I knew it wasn’t just home renovations last week. You were shacked up with a dude. Finally!”
Gina force herself to take a measured sip of her rosé, even though she just wanted to chug the bottle. Paint and Sip night was not the place she wanted to have this discussion.
“It was the wedding guy,” Tess said with a gasp.
“Oh my God, say yes. Say it was the wedding guy, because he sounded so flippin’ hot.”
“Who sounded hot?” asked a woman from behind her.
Gina turned to see who was moving in on their conversation and almost fell off her stool. The plastic cup slipped in her grip, but she managed not to drop it. Some of the pink wine did slosh over the side and landed smack dab in the middle of her shirt, because why only be humiliated once when you could get a second helping for free? It was the universe’s version of an embarrassment buy-one-get-one-free sale.
“There you are, Fallon,” Tess said, grinning at Ford’s sister. “Lucy and Gina, this is Fallon Hartigan. She’s the emergency room nurse I was telling you about who helped me out when I couldn’t find my way around the hospital during deliveries the other day. We started talking about the total dumpster fire of dating in the modern age and trust me, she is one of us—totally single and slaying it.”
Gina didn’t even bother wishing that the ground would open up and end her misery now. It was too late for that. Disaster was bearing down on her like a midtown bus with busted breaks. There was no way she was gonna get out of the way in time. She was about to be a bug on the windshield of life.
“Nice to meet you, Lucy. Hey Gina,” Fallon said as she sat down. “So, tell me about the hottie.”
Oh hell. Gina downed her rosé. She was gonna need it.
“Oh, it was at this guy at a wedding Gina planned the other weekend,” Tess said, her face taking on an excited glow. “She got put on a kiss cam with a total babe of a cop in front of everyone. I swear I would have died, but she ended up kissing him. What was his name, Gina? It was a car name, wasn’t it?”
“Ford,” Gina and Fallon said at the same time. Of course, Gina said it with resignation and Fallon with more than a hint of surprise.
A heavy hush fell over their little group as Tess and Lucy looked from Gina to Fallon and back again. Then, they scooted their stools closer. They must have spotted something in her face because Tess handed Gina her still-full cup of rosé without a word.
Lucy zeroed in on Fallon. “You know him?”
“He’s my brother,” she said, giving Gina an assessing look that all but screamed they’d be talking about this later.
Tess gasped. Gina took a big drink of the second cup of wine, wondering if maybe she’d get lucky and it would be poisoned. This was so not how she expected tonight to go. Come on out to Paint and Sip night, it’ll be fun, they said. Yeah, sure. More like total mortification. At least she hadn’t told her besties that she’d slept with Ford this week—although sleeping was pretty much the last thing they’d done. She had muscles she’d never known about that were still a little sore.
Lucy let out a loud laugh and clapped her hands together with joy. “You banged her hot brother?”
And that earned them a glare from Larry and some curious looks from the other women at Paint and Sip night.
“What? Ugh. No. Tell me no more,” Fallon said, slapping her hands over her ears. “Hearing uptight Ford get called hot is bad enough, please do not let me hear about what he’s like in bed.”
“If they even made it to a bed,” Lucy said in her version of a whisper that to almost everyone else in the known world was a normal volume.
Twin dots of fire zapped Gina’s cheeks. They had. Eventually. But she wasn’t just going to announce that in the middle of Paint and Sip. Not that this whole thing wasn’t awkward enough as it was, because it very much was.
Fallon fake gagged. “I need a time machine so I can leave myself a note at the door to warn me not to come in.”
If she figured out how to do that, Gina so wanted in on it. “Don’t worry, I’m not commenting on what happened.”
“But something did happen,” Lucy pressed.
What was the use in denying it at this point? Lucy and Tess would see right through any lame attempts at lying. And Fallon? She’d been at that Hartigan family lunch, so if she hadn’t seen the almost-kiss herself then she’d probably heard about it. No one in that family—besides Ford—struck Gina as the kind to keep any tidbit of gossip to themselves. So she might as well fast forward from the fun stuff to the reality of the situation now.
“But it’s not going to happen again,” she said, her tone more cheerful than she actually felt about the whole thing.
Tess gave her a sympathetic shoulder squeeze. “Oh, I hate that.”
“It doesn’t matter.” And if she said that enough, it would become a reality. “I’m fine with my life the way it is. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”
That last part wasn’t a lie. She didn’t. She had a home that would—eventually—be exactly how she wanted it. She owned her own business helping people celebrate their own happily ever afters. She had friends who, despite their nosy ways, were the best she’d ever had. She had family—okay, they were more than a little strange, but they were still her family and they loved her. Really, what more could she ask for? Sure, having someone to share her life with on a more intimate basis would be nice, but she didn’t need it. She was fine just the way she was.
“No, you don’t,” Lucy said with a nod of agreement. “But it does help if you want to keep your feet warm at night.”
“I can get socks for that,” she retorted.
So what if she was picturing big thick ones that smelled of warm cedar, just like Ford did.
“Ladies,” Larry said, his unexpectedly deep voice cutting through their giggles. He stood in front of the room, paint brush at the ready. “Class is starting.” That was their usual Wednesday night cue to shut the hell up. “Tonight’s painting subject is the naked mole rat sunning itself on a settee.”
“Okay, I take it back,” Lucy whispered in her totally loud way. “Painting a drowning aardvark wouldn’t be that weird for him.”
…