Page 30 of My Pucking Enemy (The Milwaukee Frost #4)

Wren

“Wren! Thank you so much for coming!”

I smile when Astrid opens the door to Sloane’s house. She’s wearing a pair of light-wash jeans and a striped sweater, her dark hair pulled back from her face with barrettes.

My chest is tight with a low thrum of anxiety. I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just a baby shower. For Sloane, and I already know she likes me. And Luca should be here too.

But still.

Astrid reaches out and basically pulls me inside, walking through the living room and telling me about her choice for the decorations, the party favors, and food. I’ve been here before—briefly—for that pool party, but I never came inside.

Their house is massive, the kind of fancy I used to drool over as a kid.

That I still drool over. It’s stability in the clean baseboards, the large comfy couch.

When I was with my dad, we were either sleeping on trains and finding cheap hostels, or living life large in huge luxury suites—there was no in-between. Nothing like this.

This is the kind of place you live for a long time.

The kind of place that holds an entire family all at once, kids in bunk beds and couples in guest rooms. Like the house we went to for Christmas.

Something lodges in my throat at the thought of that—Sloane recreating the way she grew up for the next generation.

“Wow,” I say, glancing around as we walk further into the house. I follow Astrid and realize that although all the decorations are up, the place is surprisingly empty. “I thought there would be more people here.”

“Oh,” Astrid turns to me as we walk into the kitchen, brushing a lock of dark hair from her face, “the party hasn’t started yet.”

The space is filled with light from the backyard, the snow just starting to melt, dripping off the trees. But with the weather here, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got another ten inches dumped on us overnight.

Ruby and a few other women I don’t recognize sit and stand around the kitchen island, stuffing and wrapping little cellophane bags, then tying them with ribbons.

“Wren, hi,” Ruby says coolly.

“Hi,” I say, nodding to her, always feeling a little out of my depth in her presence. I’m used to being the coolest one in the room. Ruby makes that impossible. Then, to Astrid, I ask, “What do you mean, the party hasn’t started yet?”

Astrid waves her hand, sliding onto a stool. “It’s just us girls to start. Finish setting stuff up, hang out.”

I blink at her. Just us girls.

My body feels like it’s vibrating—I’m one of the girls? I’m invited to the baby shower pre-game? I don’t know how to feel about it, but I don’t have any more time to think it over, because Sloane comes walking through the doorway, wobbling a bit with the weight of her belly.

She’s wearing a floor-length, soft green maternity gown with fluttering sleeves and a slit up the leg. Her golden hair—the exact color of Luca’s—is curled and laying over her shoulders. She could be in a commercial for a maternity boutique—the picture of ethereal motherhood.

That is, until she sees me and immediately starts to cry.

“Wren!” Sloane gets my name out in a warbled sob, walking forward and throwing her arms around me so her stomach presses firmly against mine. “It’s so good to see y-you!”

“Oh, uh…” I rub her back when I realize she’s sniffling, my heart—which was already stressed—doing cartwheels to try and figure out what I did to upset her. “I-It’s good to see you, too? I’m sorry, are you—?”

“Don’t mind her,” Astrid says, laughing and pulling Sloane back and offering her a square box of tissues. “She was a cry-er even before the baby. This has been the greeting for every person to walk through that door.”

“She got snot on my dress,” Ruby deadpans. “I’ll forgive it because she’s pregnant.”

Sloane laughs, folding her tissue carefully and glancing up at me. “After I have the baby, I’m going to be stoic. You won’t even recognize me, I’ll be so stone-faced.”

“Sure,” Astrid says, patting her friend’s arm. “Come on, Wren, we’re just trying to finish up the party favors.”

So I sit with them at the kitchen island, helping to fill the bags with mints, candy, and gift cards to local Milwaukee establishments. When each bag is finished, I pass it along to Astrid who ties it up, then it goes to Ruby who has a perfect move to curl the ribbon and make it look cute.

By the time the rest of the party guests show up—including Luca and his parents—I actually do feel like I’m part of the girls.

The only problem is that, just like with Luca and Mandy, this thing between us isn’t real.

And I really have to stop letting myself believe that.

***

“Hey, Gran,” I say, breezing into the room still full of conflicting emotions from the baby shower.

The nursing home is a little slower today, fewer people out visiting because of the weather.

With the holidays over, many of the residents are bored—wandering around the halls, looking for something to distract them.

“Wren!” she says, twisting around in her chair to look up at me as I walk into her little living area. “I have a surprise for you today.”

I stop, glancing around the small room, eyes narrowing. There’s not much space in here for her to hide a surprise. And, besides, I helped her move in, so I would have packed and unpacked something if she had it before.

“You aren’t online shopping again, are you?” I ask, raising my eyebrows and sitting down on her bed to face. A few weeks ago, she almost got caught up in an online scheme, and I had to take her credit cards from her.

“Ha,” she says, rolling her eyes at me. “That wasn’t my fault. Anyone would have thought that site was legitimate.”

“Whatever you say. What’s my surprise?”

As though waiting for the cue, someone knocks on the door, and I look up to see one of the nursing aids in a set of heart scrubs from Valentine’s Day standing in the doorway, a large box beside her.

“Gran,” I say, not taking my eyes off the box. “What is this?”

“You can bring it in!” she says, and I watch as they wheel it inside the room.

The aid looks at the space in the room, then at me, flashing a smile. “Are you taking this home with you? I worry it might be a hazard in here…?”

“Yes, she’s taking it,” Gran says from over the back of her recliner. “Would you bring it in so I can look at it?”

I thank the aid and grab the box, dragging it over in front of Gran. It’s some sort of fancy, specialty box, and it’s not heavy at all but there are arrows specifying which way it should stay up.

“What is this?”

“Open it and find out,” she says. She’s practically bouncing in her seat, the giddiness making her voice more girlish even as it slurs a bit from the excitement. “I haven’t seen it in years. It’s been in storage since your grandfather died.”

That hits me in the chest. Someone told me once that grief is a bag that just gets smaller and smaller. But in my experience, it’s like a cartoon piano, and I’m an unsuspecting victim on the street. I never know when I’m going to get crushed by it.

Working my fingers along the perforated seam of the box, I peel open the front of it like a book to reveal what’s inside. It’s a garment box, a plastic rod at the top holding something wrapped in tissue paper.

And when I pull that tissue paper away, Gran gasps.

“It’s just as beautiful as I remember it.”

I can barely breathe. I’ve seen this dress before—the sweetheart neckline, the smooth, creamy eggshell color. The pearls stitched in along the bodice that trickle down into the skirt.

“Your wedding dress? “I didn’t know you still had this,” I say, turning to her. She wipes some of her tears away with her good hand.

“There’s a little storage unit back in Maryland,” she says, her voice wistful, like she’s already getting caught up in memories of her wedding day. “When your grandfather passed, I got a small one just to keep the important things safe. And this was one of my important things.”

“Why bring it here, now?” I sit back down on the bed, the wedding dress situated between the two of us like a ghost sitting in on the conversation.

Obviously, I wasn’t around for Gran’s wedding, but during the few stints I was living with her, I spent some time on the floor, her photo albums spread out around me while I went through the pictures of her life.

Looking at pictures of my dad when he was a kid, watching him grow up slowly through snapshots and wondering at what point he went from being the kid in the light-up Mickey Mouse sandals to being the man who carted me around the world and taught me to pick locks and con people.

“Because I want you to wear it when you marry Luca.”

If I was drinking something, I might spit it out.

I twist my head around to look at Gran so fast, it puts a crick in my neck. “What?”

“Oh, please,” Gran says, waving her hand and doing a little shimmy in her chair to sit back.

When her eyes meet mine again, they’re still wet from the tears, but shining happily now.

“I knew it from the first time you started talking about a guy at work that you didn’t like.

That’s exactly how it was for me and your grandfather.

Couldn’t stand him when I first met him. Must run in the family.”

“…Really?”

I should be pressing the issue of me marrying Luca, and specifically making it clear that it’s not going to happen. But it’s rare that she’s open to talking about grandpa like this. Usually, it’s too upsetting for her.

I’ve heard the gist of the story before, but if she’ll talk about it, I want to hear it again.

Gran picks at the fabric on her brace. “Oh, yeah. But that’s one of those things—we were just too alike. At first, that felt like a problem. But it’s like with you and Luca—you’re both so smart, and so clever. You’ll keep each other entertained for a long time.”

I bite my tongue to keep from listing off all the specific, important reasons that Luca and I aren’t alike. The fact that he grew up in a loving family that’s only getting bigger and more loving. It would make me sick if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m so fucking jealous.

And there’s the fact that Luca knows exactly what he wants out of his life, to the point of planning it to the letter. Hiring a wife. Other than having the money to make sure Gran is living somewhere nice, staying out of trouble, and adhering to my parole, I have no idea what my future looks like.

For a long time, I went through life not even knowing what the next day would hold.

Luca doesn’t work like that, and there’s no way he’d want to incorporate such a wild variable into his carefully laid plans, his perfect equations. He’d be spending far too long trying to solve for me.

“Maybe I’ll be around, maybe I won’t—”

“Gran, don’t talk like that—”

“—so I wanted to make sure I gave you the dress now,” she finishes anyway. “I’d like you to get it fitted so I can see you in it.”

Pressing my lips together, I look away from her, unable to stop the sadness from clawing up my throat. “Okay,” I say, finally, because I can fit the dress and show it to her without promising to marry Luca. “I can do that, Gran.”

Even if it’s just going to make everything worse.

Gran reaches out, grabbing my hand. Her skin is impossibly soft and papery “Thank you, Wren.”