Slowly.
I’ve started a text to her probably every other waking hour since Theo left Silver Horn to pick her up at the airport on Monday, but I haven’t found the right words, nor do I want to do this over text.
Laney reports she hasn’t seen Emma either, but Theo has nearly daily and says she looks sad. I’ve fielded questions from more friends and neighbors about if she’s back yet, telling everyone I haven’t seen her—which is the truth—but the entire town knows she’s due back this weekend.
And not because she does half the town’s taxes as our most popular accountant.
It’s more about the viral video and the reporters who were hanging out here for a week or so after the wedding hoping for more juice for their stories.
But today, I’m doing it.
I’m going to see her.
Probably.
After I swing by Laney’s and see if she wants to go with me, and if Theo thinks this is a good idea.
I’m packing my car in case Laney’s up for crashing Emma’s temporary digs with me when Grey walks out of his door.
I freeze and eye him.
Dammit, he looks like a box of chocolates that you know only has the kinds you like in it, even though you know you’re allergic to one of them, but you can’t help wanting to roulette the whole box anyway.
After a prolonged moment of both of us deer-in-the-headlightsing, he breaks eye contact and glances at the back end of my SUV.
His eyebrows furrow.
No doubt silently questioning why I need a massive box containing two blow-up human-size hamster balls in addition to my snowshoes, dog supplies, and winter safety kit.
Yes, there’s a story behind the hamster balls.
No, he’s not getting it.
I have places to be that don’t involve the kind of trampoline jumping that my heart is doing right now.
Wait.
Seeing Emma probably will involve my heart on a trampoline, but there won’t be any sexual tension mixed in with it.
And speaking of, I am all in for pretending Friday never happened. “Hey, Grey! How awesome to see you on my day off. Here you are. Here I am. Running into each other since you moved in next door… Jitter! Did you see who’s here?”
Grey’s eyes light up, and I feel like an asshole.
Jitter doesn’t come running, because he’s already hanging out with my mom for the day.
She loves taking him for walks around the lake on nice days, and thirty degrees with clear skies and no wind absolutely counts as a nice day. She meets a lot of new people that way.
And he loves her because she feeds him good food and lets him get up on her bed for Sunday afternoon naps. Mom’s approaching seventy in a couple years—she had me later—but she’s still strong and spry and can handle him.
I snap my fingers. “Dammit. Forgot. He’s not here. Habit. Have a nice day.”
“What’s with the perky attitude?”
“I’m not being perky.” I smile. Brightly. “I’m just being my normal, happy, cheerful self.”
And clearly annoying the ever-loving crap out of him.
Which is good.
He needs to not like me.
I need to not like him.
Get along? Fine.
Us having a repeat of Friday morning?
No.
And not just because I sneezed orange snot again this morning.
“I figured out who Mr. Snuffleupagus is,” he says.
“That was a gimme, and there’s nothing you can say that would embarrass him.” I shut my tailgate, then finger-wave at him. “Toodles! See you tomorrow!”
He doesn’t stop me or talk me out of my clothes, though he does smirk-smile in a way that makes my vagina clench, and I decide it’s in my best interest to not even consider if he has regrets about Friday or if he wants to try to talk me out of my clothes again.
Preferably in a location without leftover containers of powdered cheese from Chandler’s idiotic we’ll add cheddar popcorn to the menu idea.
No.
No.
There is no wishing Grey will talk me out of my clothes again. I am not being rewarded with more orgasms.
And yes, I did almost come just by dry-humping him.
Which I am done thinking about.
Officially.
For real.
The drive to Laney’s house is easy and her roads and sidewalks are clear after Friday’s snow.
I make myself imagine this neighborhood snowed in to distract myself.
But when I spot Emma’s car in her driveway, I almost want to head back to my house, knock on the wall that I share with Grey, and see if maybe we can hide in a blanket fort together.
Not because I don’t want to see Emma.
More because I’m afraid she’ll tell me she still doesn’t want to see me, and it’s easier to contemplate Grey rejecting me than it is to contemplate Emma rejecting me.
“You’ve got this,” I tell my reflection in the mirror. “You’ve got this.”
We’ve been friends forever.
I know she knows I didn’t mean to hurt her.
Well, I hope she knows.
And the other thing that everyone has been telling me lately is that she knew who Chandler was. It wasn’t my job to tell her every bad thing he ever did.
My phone dings, and I glance at the readout.
It’s Laney.
I see you sitting in my driveway. COME INSIDE NOW. I’d send Theo out to drag you in, but he’s preoccupied with getting his ass handed to him.
When I don’t move right away, my phone dings again.
I’ll call my mother to come get you if you don’t come inside, and you know she’ll be here before you can back out of the driveway since she’s still upset that I broke my leg.
I almost smile.
And then I brace myself and head inside.
And immediately wish I hadn’t.
“What in the world were you thinking?” Emma shrieks somewhere deeper in the house.
My gut clenches, but Laney’s stifling a smile as she waves me to join her. She’s propping her leg cast up on the couch with two of her kittens on her lap, and she’s stroking both of them.
“Is Em okay?” I whisper while I sink onto the couch, almost sitting on a third kitten that was hiding under a throw pillow. “Is Theo okay? Wait. Back up. How are you? How’s your leg? Do you need anything?”
“I’m good, thank you, and Emma’s working on his taxes,” Laney whispers back.
She’s almost gleeful.
I give her the why the hell is that funny? eyebrows while I shrug out of my coat and rescue kitten number three, who’s quaking a little. Probably because of the yelling.
Which is not like Emma at all.
“He said you already know, so I’m not gossiping to you when I tell you he threw all of his money into that screw-the-hedge-fund-managers thing off Reddit last year and made a hella ton more with it. But he didn’t tell Emma, and she’s freaking out about him underpaying estimated taxes.”
“This isn’t about Chandler and jail?” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “It is not.”
“Is she still mad at me? At any of us?”
The thing I love about Laney is that she can fix anything. If there’s a problem in a four-mile radius, Laney will sniff it out and solve it before most people are aware it even exists. Second-most, I love that she doesn’t blow smoke up my ass, even if she sometimes will paint the truth in the prettiest light she can.
But when she purses her lips and has to think about it, I hate that I love those two things about her.
“I don’t think she’s mad at any of us, necessarily,” she finally says, “but I do think she has a lot of feelings to work through still. And who can blame her? She spent seven years waiting for him to marry her, and then the whole thing not only fell apart at the last minute, but the entire world saw it. Nice job the other night on calling Addison out for being such an asshole and posting the video, by the way.”
“She’s on my permanent shit list.”
“Did your boss appreciate it more or less than he enjoyed getting cheesed with you?”
“Ugh. What did you hear?”
“Sabrina. You claimed him at House of Curry. People are speculating you’ve done way more than dusting yourselves in powdered cheese.”
“Devi saw, didn’t she?”
“Devi saw, and she swears I’m the only person she told.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Can we get back to Emma? Did she enjoy her trip at least?”