Page 36 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

It’s a pretty familiar feeling, one I’ve had since those earliest memories of Henry saying, ‘ I can’t believe I’m a father ’ when he held Kit for the first time. And in all the time I’ve spent with Charlie, I didn’t feel it once.

Charlie wanted me there. Elijah did too.

And I left to come back to this bullshit.

“Have you seen Ellie Hermann and her husband?” whispers one of the women. “At each other’s throats.” I’m relieved they’re not focused on me, but I don’t love this conversation either.

“That marriage doesn’t have long,” says someone else. “Speaking of…did you hear about the Kellys?”

“He’d gotten into such good shape,” says another. “That’s always the first sign they’re on their way out.”

The conversation turns to someone’s Birkin, and who’s on Ozempic, then onto the amount of money a couple has donated to an event and how it’s simply because he’s trying to keep his dad out of jail.

They care so very much about everyone’s place in the hierarchy. They’d all shove me down a flight of stairs if it pushed them further up.

I’ve never felt more on the outside than I do now. But…do I even want to be on the inside? Do I even care about the things these women are so viciously fighting to win? I don’t think I do.

I excuse myself, knowing they’ll talk about me next—my money is on “ Harvey left because she couldn’t get pregnant ” or “ she never got over Miller ”—and cross the yard in search of someone I don’t loathe.

Before I can find that mythical person, I’m cornered by Malia, one of my mother’s old modeling cronies.

She pulls me to the side of the stage, her leopard-print caftan blowing over my arms as she clutches my biceps. “You’ve got to stay strong, Maren,” she says. “I was in your exact situation thirty years ago.”

I smile politely. “Oh, I thought it was more recent than that. Didn’t you just get divorced last year?”

She shakes her head, waving a hand to dismiss the idea.

“Not that. Divorces are a dime a dozen. I mean—” And here she looks over at Kit and Miller, who are currently on the dance floor, gazing at each other as if they’re the only people in the world.

“Not with my sister, thank God. But my best friend. He was the love of my life, and she swiped him right out from under my nose. They got divorced five years later, if that gives you any hope.”

Wow. Okay, so she thinks I’m upset about Miller, and she thinks I want my beloved sister’s marriage to fail.

“That sounds very different from my situation,” I say mildly. “I’m thrilled for Kit. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“That’s the spirit,” she whispers. “You keep saying that to yourself and one of these days, it will start to feel true.”

My smile flags just as the photographer snaps a photo of us. Great. That’s going to be the picture the press runs with when they publish the story.

Maren Fischer’s Secret Heartbreak they’ll call it. A source will claim, somewhere in the body of the story, that I spent most of the night in the corner of the yard, being consoled, because Miller was the love of my life. Someone else will claim to have seen me in tears.

“I just hope that you’ve found another man before they start having children. I know that’s something you wanted.”

My stomach drops. It’s already happening—I only ended things with Harvey a few weeks ago, but already people are acting as if he was my last chance at having a family, and perhaps my last shot at being loved. It’s the exact sort of gut punch I don’t need right now.

My mouth opens to reply just as a hand wraps around my waist. I glance at the hand first, but already my heart is beating faster. Because I know that hand. I know its size, its possessiveness.

Charlie’s lovely mouth presses to my cheek. “Do you mind if I borrow her?” he asks, pulling me away from Malia without waiting for her to agree.

I turn and throw my arms around him. “You came!”

He shrugs. “The signature cocktail sounded good.”

I can’t stop staring up at him. At his lovely face and his sweet dimples and those glowing eyes.

I shouldn’t go back to South Carolina, but my God, I’m not sure if I have enough self-restraint to stay away.

All I want in the whole world is to be able to spy his face somewhere in the periphery several times a day and make sure he occasionally eats a vegetable.

“I’m so glad you’re here. Kit will be thrilled to see you. ”

“Kit doesn’t give a flying fuck about seeing me,” he says, glancing toward me and then away. “And I didn’t come here for her.”

He came because the situation would be tough on me. He came because he cares that much about my comfort. The smile on my face is so wide that no one here could possibly believe for a second that I am mourning Miller.

“Now the real question is this: why aren’t you drinking?”

My mother has set up two bars—one on the porch and one at the back of the yard, near the massive boxwood hedges separating us from the shore. He pulls me to the bar near the house and orders gin and tonics for us both.

Laughter chimes from the champagne fountain to our left. To our right, dancers on the temporary parquet floor my mother had installed squeal as they come close to falling into the pool.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” I tell him, letting my head rest against his shoulder. “The woman I was just speaking to tried to console me by promising Kit and Miller won’t last. ”

“It was lonely without you,” he says. “I even missed your terrible dogs.”

“I knew you loved them.”

“Love is a strong word. It’s more the way you miss hiccups when they finally stop coming.”

I laugh as I take a big swig of the gin and tonic he’s handed me. He’s so full of shit. He’d die for my puppies, and he knows it.

“Where are they, anyway?” he asks, looking around.

“I put them in Mom and Roger’s room so they wouldn’t be underfoot,” I reply. “Would you like to go see them?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, “but we’d better make sure they’re not tearing the place apart.”

Again: he’s so full of shit.

We take our drinks up to my mother’s room and wind up sitting on the floor with the puppies in our laps, our backs against the footboard, while he tells me what I’ve missed during the twelve hours we were apart.

I tell him that everyone’s treating me like I’ve just learned I’ve got a fatal illness and several people have referenced my dwindling fertility, and then Narcy knocks over my gin and tonic and we agree that the best course of action is to leave before my mother finds out we were up here at all.

Downstairs, we get more drinks. Ulrika tries to sideline Charlie and he excuses himself, telling her he wanted to talk to me about my dwindling fertility.

The night is saved. No, it’s better than saved.

I’m bubbling over with my happiness. The way the puppies act when I come home?

That’s how I feel when Charlie enters the room.

Like I want to leap at him until he pulls me into his arms. And yes, it’s dangerous and a variety of other bad things, but tonight I’m just going to allow myself to love it.

Because he came here for me, and that fact alone has me smiling so wide no one could possibly think I was brokenhearted .

Not once, for the rest of the night, do I hear “you’re handling this so well.”

Or maybe it’s just that I’m no longer listening to anyone speaking to me aside from Charlie.

The party rages on until the very early hours of the morning.

The beds are entirely gone by the time we get inside—and so are the couches.

Charlie pulls a big blanket out of the linen closet and grabs my hand, leading me down to the beach.

The breeze is chilly, but once we’re lying down —my head on his very warm shoulder and the blanket around us—I’m as cozy as I’ve ever been in my life.

“I don’t want to fall asleep,” I whisper, fighting my drooping eyelids like a toddler.

“Me either,” he says, pulling me closer. It’s been a perfect night, possibly my favorite night ever, and if I can just stay awake, I can…

The sun’s first rays are in my face before I can finish the thought.

“Shit,” he says, reaching for his phone, and then his shoulders relax. “I’ve got to go. I forgot to set the alarm.”

Go? But he just got here. And I somehow had it in my head that he’d stay until I felt okay about him leaving again, but when is that day coming?

“Already?” I ask.

“I’m catching a ride with some guys heading to Kiawah in about an hour,” he says, climbing to his feet and helping me to mine. “And I can’t ask Elijah to work the hours he is and not at least be present.”

I want to argue that he hasn’t slept all night and won’t be any use to Elijah this afternoon anyhow, but even if that’s true, it would be unfair of me to ask him to stay.

He already gave up a day in Oak Bluff to be here, and even if he’s useless when he gets home, he’ll wake up ready to go tomorrow.

I sigh in agreement. “I’ll take you to the airport.”

“You know,” he says, pushing the gate to my mother’s property open, “the party is over. I’m sure there’s room on the flight if you just want to come back with me now.”

As much as I long for sleep, I long for the peacefulness of Oak Bluff more. But it is not to be.

“I can’t. I told Andrew that I’d go to lunch with him.”

“Andrew,” he says flatly. “How are you going to get back to the city by lunch?”

I shake my head. “He’s here. In the Hamptons. I ran into him yesterday.”

Charlie tenses, his jaw locked tight. “So it’s a date,” he says.

I shrug. “It’s just lunch.”

“I’d better go get my stuff together,” he says.

I haven’t done anything wrong by agreeing to lunch with Andrew.

I am guilty anyway, and at the same time, irritated by the way Charlie is ruining our final minutes together.

We walk inside. I brush my teeth while he changes and returns his suit to its garment bag.

He holds out his hand for the keys as I walk to the car—I might object to it under other circumstances, but I just want to cure his sudden bad mood.