Page 6

chapter three

Jillian

J une wasn’t my favorite month just because of my birthday.

There was something about the start of summer that made me feel brand new, when I could finally shed all the layered clothes and feel the sun on my bare skin.

And on the Gardners’ patio in my Dolly Parton t-shirt and holey jean shorts, I soaked it all in.

Surrounded by some of my favorite people, this was setting up to be the perfect night…

as long as I could continue ignoring my neck pain.

And my inexplicable hip pain.

“Are you okay?” Meghan asked, handing me a hard seltzer. I tilted it so the ice cube slid off the top onto the stone patio where we stood. “You’re wincing.”

“I’m fine!” I lied with an enthusiastic shake of the head, running my hand along the two ibuprofen in the pocket of my shorts.

Normally I took them before my breakfast, and sometimes worked in a second dose by mid-afternoon.

But days like today, when my random aches and pains were particularly stubborn, I was popping ibuprofen like candy.

I suspected it was my cheap mattress. I’d get around to purchasing a new one someday.

Meghan was more observant than I’d hoped. Flipping her jet-black hair off her shoulder, she studied me as she said, “Jill, when are you going to go back to the doctor?”

“To say what? My everything hurts?”

“Exactly that, yes,” she said, glancing up when Chase slid his arm around her waist. “What happened to your poker game?”

Every Friday night, the guys played poker inside while us women held a half-assed book club meeting in the backyard. We normally spent all of ten minutes talking about the book of the week before we got sidetracked beyond the point of no return. “It’s too nice a night to stay inside. Besides–”

I didn’t get to hear the rest of Chase’s sentence, because a sharp, icy shock ran down my neck, followed by the unmistakable chill of an ice cube sliding down my back.

I tensed up and gasped, turning my head to see Xander with a rare grin on his face.

“Xander Pierce, I’m going to kill you!” I caught the ice cube midway down my back and threw it at him.

He covered his face with his hands just in time.

“Play nice, you two. Little eyes are watching,” Mason teased, nodding at his daughter, Finley.

She was kneeling on the patio a few feet away, drawing a jellyfish with a chunk of pink sidewalk chalk.

Mason and Kendall couldn’t find a sitter that night, so we all had to watch our language in front of the six-year-old.

Meghan was having the most difficult time with it, having dropped at least five F-bombs.

My eyes moved to Abigail, who immediately glanced down at the drink she was holding as Xander’s slipped his hand up the back of my shirt. He was only lightly stroking my skin, which seemed innocent enough, but it was like she’d witnessed something she shouldn’t have.

There’d been this unspoken awkwardness between the two of us since Xander and I first went public with our relationship back at the Woodvale Comic Con a few weeks ago.

Xander and Abigail had been best friends since childhood, a fact that never bothered me.

Yet I got the impression there was more under the surface there than I’d ever be able to comprehend.

But I wanted to be her friend. I cleared my throat, making her look at me again. “Abigail, when will Shanda be in town again?”

I knew very little about Abigail, except that she was a librarian, and she was casually dating a woman named Shanda who lived a couple hours away. Last week, we all begged her to bring Shanda to one of our Friday night gatherings, but she insisted she was too shy for something like that.

Abigail pulled her long, red hair around to one side of her neck before she answered my question. “Well, probably never,” she admitted with a weak laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to work out with her.”

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear that. We were all rooting for you.”

Abigail shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m the one who ended it. I just couldn’t do the long-distance thing anymore.”

Instinctively, I glanced at Xander. His hand slipped from my back to his pocket, his focus locked on Abigail. And as she went on, detailing the many reasons she didn’t want to keep seeing Shanda, he stood completely still, never once taking a sip from the beer in his hand.

And then I caught it. The quickest, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glance between the two of them. It probably meant nothing, but it was almost like there was a telepathic exchange of words between them. Like they could effortlessly read each other after all those years of being best friends.

Would I ever have a connection like that with Xander?

As quickly as the jealous thought entered my head, I pushed it away just as fast. I wasn’t going to be like this. With her retro glasses and sweet, high-pitched voice, Abigail was one of the most genuine people I’d met. And I’d met a lot of people in all my years of reporting.

“You know what?” I asked her, handing my drink to Xander. “I think a break-up calls for tequila shots.”

“I’m in,” Kendall blurted, approaching us from behind as she took a bite of a fresh strawberry.

“What’s a tequila shot?” Finley asked, making us all chuckle. She had a streak of pink chalk on her nose.

“Tequila is alcohol, Fin,” Mason explained.

I laughed as I grabbed the gargantuan bottle of tequila from the glass patio table. “Sarah, Owen—do you have shot glasses?”

“How about double shot glasses?” Owen asked, picking up a package of little, clear plastic dessert cups. We’d all just eaten strawberry shortcake out of them, and they were a little large for drinking tequila from.

“Those are more than adequate,” I answered, taking the package of cups from his hands. I poured generously.

Sarah sighed, blowing some loose strands of hair out of her face as she accepted a cup from me. “I think I’m going to indulge tonight, too,” she said, stealing a quick glance at Owen.

“You deserve it after everything you’ve been through,” Kendall said. Her eyes immediately widened like she’d said something she shouldn’t have. And then, lowering her voice, she added, “I mean, with the tornado and everything.”

Back in April, a tornado tore through Woodvale, ripping apart the elementary school gym where Sarah was the principal.

I wouldn’t blame her at all for needing a drink.

“It’s okay, it’s not a secret,” she told Kendall, likely addressing whatever it was that made her eyes widen just seconds ago.

Sarah glanced from me to Meghan as I filled her cup.

“I’m not sure if you all have heard, but Owen and I have been trying for a baby,” she said, “and our first round of IVF in March was… well, unsuccessful.”

“Fuck,” Meghan muttered, just as I said, “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Sarah said, but her half-hearted smile told us it was anything but. “Talking about it helps. Owen’s been opening up about it on his podcast, too. We’re not giving up.”

Mason, who worked for Owen, gave him a couple hard pats on the back.

With everyone’s cup now full—including Finley’s, which brimmed with Sprite—I raised mine to initiate a toast. “Here’s to getting through the hard stuff with the hard stuff,” I said, attempting to lighten the moment.

And judging from Sarah’s soft chuckle, that did the trick.

I turned to Abigail, giving her a warm smile as I continued.

“Whether it’s a break-up or infertility or…

being the person who has to edit Xander’s articles now. ”

I grinned at my best friend, who rolled her eyes. “I’m glad my suffering isn’t going unnoticed,” Meghan mumbled, to which Xander joked, “Hey, I don’t need an editor, so you can fuck right off.”

“Language,” Mason reminded.

Owen lifted his cup. “To all of us.” The rest of the group lifted their cups in unison, the pale golden liquor catching the warm glow of the string lights overhead.

We collectively tilted our cups back to down our drinks, followed by a round of coughing, grimacing, and laughter.

And as I glanced around that backyard, one thought stuck in my mind: I really like these people.

I blinked back tears as I swallowed a gulp of my hard seltzer to wash down the tequila.

Pain spread from my lower back to my hip, worsened from the way I tensed up from the ice cube incident.

As everyone scattered to find seats on the patio furniture, Xander watched as I pulled the pills from my pocket, preparing to wash them down with the drink in my hand.

“What’s that?”

“Ibuprofen. I’ve got a little bit of back pain,” I said with a half-shrug.

He scooted closer, eyeing the pills. “You might give yourself an ulcer, taking those with alcohol.”

That was a risk I was willing to take. “It’s okay, I’ve done it before.

” He looked me in the eyes as I disregarded his advice, taking both pills in one swallow.

I often downplayed my random aches and pains with Xander, rarely mentioning them.

I didn’t want to sound like a hypochondriac, and this relationship was too new and fresh.

He knew me as bright and bubbly Jill, and I didn’t want to ruin that.

Thankfully, he let it go, nodding for me to follow him over to the L-shaped couch on the patio.

We joined in a conversation about power-hungry politicians, a topic this group never shied away from.

Finley ran circles around us with the Gardners’ golden retriever, Leia, who only half-grasped the concept of fetch.

“She doesn’t want you to take the frisbee, yet she wants to chase it,” Owen was saying as he stoked the fire in the pit at the center of the patio.

“No take, only throw,” Chase said with a laugh.

“We need to get her a dog,” Mason told Kendall, meeting her eyes. “I kind of did promise her a dog when we moved out, but I think she forgot.”