Page 2 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

He brought my bag of toiletries from the bedroom and left me to take a shower, but as soon as the door closed and I was left again to my thoughts, my lingering smile faded.

Is he here?

The scalding water was glorious against my back, gently massaging the tension out of my shoulders. When I finished, I grabbed my phone and turned on some music, cranking up the volume in an effort to drown out my thoughts as I styled my hair.

Is he here?

Forty-five minutes later, my brown hair hung in loose curls around my shoulders. My makeup wasn’t great, but it was great for me. Freckles still peeked out from under the foundation, no matter how much I tried to cover them.

“I thought you were going to wear the yellow one,” Kieran said as he finished tying up the back of my dress—a mid-length milkmaid-style sundress with little purple flowers that made me feel pretty. I was already anxious, but at least I didn’t feel insecure on top of it.

“I planned to wear it on Saturday.” I packed five dresses for the weekend, knowing my selections would be a game-time decision depending on how I was feeling in the moment.

“Hmm,” he said.

“What, you don’t like this one?” I teased, doing a half-twirl .

Kieran pulled me toward him. “It’s hot. They’re all hot. But the yellow one is…” He gave me a heated look, to which I rolled my eyes and opened the suite door.

He looked downright mouthwatering. Was it the way his perfectly tailored suit pants hugged his muscular thighs?

How great his toned arms looked with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow?

His dirty-blond hair pushed back out of his face, highlighting his light green eyes?

Whatever it was, it was irresistible. Part of me regretted saying no to trying out the California king.

“Will there be a lot of people you know here?” he asked as we made our way, hand in hand, down the brick path from our suite.

“A few. Gemma’s mom and brother. Some friends from grad school, too.” I didn’t offer any names.

The distant music grew louder with each step. Soft string instruments and an acoustic guitar added to the romantic ambiance of the property.

I tried to keep my face neutrally happy as we continued down the path to the welcome party, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from impatiently darting over every face we passed, as though he was going to suddenly spawn right in front of me.

Relax, McLaren, I chided myself . Act like a normal fucking human and not like a nervous Chihuahua. So what if he’s here? What difference does it make? Absolutely none.

The illuminated pathway led to the winery side of the resort behind the main building.

We made our way deeper into the property, following a steady stream of well-dressed partygoers, and were greeted by the smell of sweet, fermented wine and wood barrels.

At the end of the walkway, our view opened to a breathtaking courtyard situated between two buildings, with the countryside beyond a picture-perfect backdrop .

Twinkling string lights hung overhead, bridging the gap between the two buildings and vining down Roman-style columns bordering the courtyard.

A quartet of musicians sat poised in the corner, surrounded by lush greenery, like muses in a garden.

The photos Gemma sent me months ago didn’t do the place justice.

For a second, I was convinced we were in Tuscany rather than Napa County.

“Jesus,” Kieran whispered.

High-top tables with tiny candles peppered the space, already partially occupied by other guests carrying glasses of wine.

Waiters weaved between them, offering champagne and various wines balanced on serving trays.

I snagged a glass of red as soon as they were within reach and gave the crowd another once over.

Maybe it was a form of self-preservation, the itching need to know if he was there or not. Or maybe it was a deep-seated trauma response. Either way, the lack of control made me fidgety.

The way I saw it, the more information I could take in—in this case, the more faces I could mentally inventory—the better I could gauge the situation and recalibrate possibilities of what might happen.

The better I could anticipate possible interactions, the better sense of control I had, and the more grounded I felt.

Which would explain why I felt like I was orbiting somewhere in the sky instead of standing on solid ground.

On the surface, maybe that logic was flawed, but it was a process I’d used my entire life.

A way to keep myself prepared for any outcome.

Reasonable as it was or not, I wasn’t going to lie to myself: the biggest variable in predicting how the weekend would go depended on whether he was there or not.

So yes, I scanned the crowd again.

“Babe? ”

My head snapped to Kieran, who was looking at me with an adorably confused expression, like he was waiting for my answer to something.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”

He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I said I’m going to head to the bar and get a drink before it gets too busy. Want anything?”

“Oh, uh…” My head involuntarily swept left, then right again. I was still holding the nearly full glass of red wine I’d gotten from the server when we walked in. “No, I’m fine for now. You go ahead; I’m going to look for Gemma.”

“Have fun with that,” he said with a lilt in his tone, bending to kiss my temple before turning toward the bar. “I’ll find you after.”

I took a long swig of my wine, which was way too dry for my liking. The aftertaste reminded me of what I imagined fresh asphalt to taste like. Or a tire. Or the inside of a leather boot.

I recognized a few faces as the crowd grew.

Gemma’s mother chatted with an older gentleman whom I assumed must be her newish husband as of a few years ago.

In the corner, I spotted Martinez, one of our old friends from grad school.

I hadn’t seen him since a few days after graduation, at Grant’s last game night he hosted with all of us before we went our separate ways.

It was the last time the whole friend group was together at once.

Well, almost the whole group.

I wandered through the crowd, passing a towering champagne wall and a mall-style photo booth Gemma’s mom begged her not to rent. She thought it would be tacky, but Gemma convinced her it was “actually retro,” thus making it a must-have.

A huge, printed engagement photo of Gemma and Grant caught my eye.

It wasn’t until I took a few steps closer, and the image faded to another, that I realized it wasn’t just an engagement photo.

It was the slideshow Gemma had told me about—a television screen displaying pictures of the happy couple throughout the years.

My face split into a grin as I moved to the screen. A gap-toothed Gemma, no older than seven or eight years old, smiled back at me, proudly holding up loot from the Tooth Fairy. Naturally, she was the cutest kid in the world.

The photo faded to the next—a teenage Grant, standing outside of a driver’s education school, holding his freshly printed driver’s permit in the air.

An embarrassed expression contorted his youthful baby face, and I imagined him saying, “Mom, that’s enough.

No more pictures,” while the photo was taken.

The image faded. Gemma, on Halloween, dressed up like a princess.

Then, Grant and his younger brother, Jared, in a swimming pool.

Then, side-by-side pictures of Gemma and Grant at their respective high school proms, their dates strategically cropped out of the photos.

I watched and laughed at each photo as they faded into and out of view, the two getting gradually older with each one.

Finally, the image faded into a photo of the happy couple together. They stood cheek to cheek in the middle of a crowd, arms wrapped around each other as they smiled at the camera.

It reminded me of the night they met. There was something so special about the way Grant, for being so completely different from Gemma, clicked instantaneously with her.

He somehow kept up with her, with the ease of someone who had known her forever.

As if he saw her for the force of nature she was and wanted to hop on her moving train and take it wherever it would go.

I remembered how closely they huddled together in the deafening club, how loudly she laughed at his jokes.

If I believed in love at first sight, I would believe it for them .

Then, my smile slowly receded back again, replaced by a hollowness in my gut as I thought about him.

For over a year, I’d done so well at keeping him wrapped up, sealed tight in a box in the corner of my mind. But not knowing if he would be at the wedding was cracking my resolve. The Unknown was never a friend of mine. And it was never good for my anxiety.

I trained my eyes on the corner of the image, knowing what I would find.

A tall figure with dark hair that was perpetually an inch too long stood showing off his profile: a straight nose, strong jaw, and a ghost of a smirk playing with the edges of his mouth.

His arm was loosely wrapped around a girl next to him, hand resting ever so lightly on the small of her back, barely making contact.

He leaned in close, towering over her to hear something she was saying to him.

Anyone else looking at the photo displayed would never have been able to tell the girl was me. Her face wasn’t visible at all. Only the back of her head, her long brown hair, and the palpable sense she liked that boy way more than he liked her.

The memories of the night Gemma and Grant met flared again.

Only this time, they weren’t of my best friend falling in love right in front of me.

They were of him . His knee bumping into mine under the sticky table, his hands ghosting around my waist as we danced, his tentative smile on the drive back to his apartment.

Heat climbed high on my cheeks.

To think about Gemma and Grant was to also think about him . Because the night my best friend found the love of her life was also the night I met Nate Cassidy.