Page 22 of Olivia’s Only Pretending (Sweet River #3)

Sixteen

Gracie

S ince Gracie was back home in Sweet River for fall break from school, Lucy decided to host a dinner party with Adam at her house on Sunday night.

She’d enlisted me to provide appetizers, but I was not much of a cook.

I made a mean grilled cheese and loved a salad kit and frozen lasagnas.

The local restaurants around town knew my regular takeout orders by heart.

I didn’t even have to say anything when I called anymore, except takeout for Olivia Rhodes .

So when Lucy asked if I’d bring an appetizer, I headed straight to our local market downtown.

The ceiling was hung with flimsy paper pumpkins and turkeys, streamers in browns and yellows strung about.

Our small-town market was always decked out for the season.

I strolled through the aisles, pressing my cell phone against my ear.

“Hey, Liv,” Lucy answered my call.

“Hey, I’m at the store shopping for an appetizer, but I wanted to double-check who is coming tonight.”

“We have me, you, Adam, Gracie, Mom, and she is bringing a date?—”

“Mom is bringing a date? Who?” I set the box of muffins I was studying back on the shelf.

“One of the guys she’s been messaging with on LoveLocal. Jeff. He seems nice. He’s a banker or something like that. He has a few kids, all around our ages,” Lucy said before yawning. “Him coming tonight means we can vet him, I guess.”

“Is this their first date?”

“Yeah, this’ll be their first date,” Lucy said. I could almost see her shrugging. “ Mom on a date. ”

“How do you already know so much about, what’d you call him, Jeff?”

“It’s called talking to Mom, Olivia. I asked her about him.”

“I forget Mom even has a love life now to ask about.” I pushed the cart through the chip aisle. “Is this more of a chip and dip situation, or a cheese board situation?”

“Cheese board. Definitely,” Lucy said decisively. “Oh, by the way, Adam invited Victor.”

“What?” I stopped pushing my cart, frozen in the middle of the aisle.

My stomach fluttered. Flashes of our kiss raced through my mind—my hands on his chest, his lips on mine, my back against the doorway.

“Why do you sound so surprised? You’re close to him. Adam’s close to him. Of course he’s invited.” Lucy’s chuckle was muffled on her end of the line, like she was holding her phone between her ear and shoulder. “What? You afraid you’ll kiss for a second time?”

A second time ? Try a third time. I swallowed.

“Have you talked to Gracie since our last margarita night when she FaceTimed?” Lucy asked.

“Uh, just a few text messages back and forth. Have you?”

“One phone call. And I asked about her message from Austin, and she really dodged it.”

My heart sank. “What is it about Austin?”

Lucy groaned on her end of the line. “Seriously.”

I perused the premade cheese trays. Did I want simple or elaborate? I picked up an elaborate one.

“Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions. Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk about him anymore, like he’s a sore subject,” Lucy said optimistically.

I dropped the tray in my cart. “Doubtful. I know our little sister. If she’s avoiding a topic, it’s because she’s hiding it.”

“Huh, I know someone else who hides from topics, too,” Lucy said in a sing-songy voice, oozing with insinuation.

“I don’t hide from any topics,” I said. A ’90s love song crooned from the market’s stereo system in the background.

“Really. How’s Victor?”

“He’s great. Brought me over Midol and breakfast yesterday for first day cramps,” I said smugly. Did leaving out a few details count as hiding?

Our conversation continued, but the back of my mind snagged on what Lucy said. Did I hide from certain sensitive topics, like the topic of Victor?

I’d remained quiet about the kiss.

And the feelings I’d been wrestling with.

I’d never felt like I hid, but I definitely wasn’t sharing it. Because, I thought to myself later while buckling the cheese tray into the front seat of my car, why involve others in my own messy thoughts until I cleaned them up?

I knew Lucy. She’d just try to clean it up for me. Or with me.

And then there was a thought I wrestled with the whole drive to Lucy’s, in my big-sister voice: and what’s so wrong with someone helping sort out the mess alongside me?

L ucy’s house smelled like tomato sauce and garlic. My mouth watered at the bubbling, gooey lasagna she and Adam had made for dinner.

She was tossing the garden salad at the kitchen counter while Adam told Mom and Jeff about how he’d seasoned the lasagna meat. Lucy’s own art hung on the walls around us.

I leaned over Lucy’s shoulder. Her wild red hair was back in a messy clip. “What do you think of Jeff?”

Gracie suddenly appeared by my side. “You guys whispering about Jeff?”

I shot a glance at Mom. She was completely immersed in the lasagna conversation as Adam used his hands to emphatically describe something about the recipe.

“He’s nice. He brought a great bottle of red wine.” Lucy shrugged, adding a few more croutons to the salad.

“He seems friendly,” Gracie mused, stealing a crouton from the opened bag.

“I think he really likes Mom,” I said.

So far, he’d found multiple reasons to make physical contact and looked at her like he was taken aback by her beauty, her shaggy auburn bob, and her big, brown eyes.

“I noticed that, too. He seems flustered,” Gracie agreed, reaching for another crouton.

Lucy swatted her hand away from the salad toppings. There was a knock at the door. “That’s probably Victor. Will you go answer, Liv?”

I wanted to protest, but that would garner suspicion, so I swallowed back my nerves. We hadn’t seen each other since our second accidental kiss.

He’s just my old pal Victor, I reminded myself.

I pulled open the door to find Victor standing there in a hunter green sweater that made his mocha eyes pop. My heart swirled in my chest. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Hey,” he said almost tentatively. He shifted like he was going in for a hug, but then stopped himself, hands returning to his sides.

It was my own rules, so I tried not to feel disappointed.

“Come on in.” I stepped to the side, and he trailed into Lucy’s house.

W e all piled around Lucy’s long, wooden dining table for dinner. Everyone caught Jeff, the newcomer, up to speed.

“So, how’d you two meet?” Jeff asked Lucy and Adam.

I grinned. They loved to answer this question.

“She stormed into my office to yell at me.” Adam chuckled.

Jeff’s brows raised in surprise.

“It’s true.”

“I didn’t yell at him. I did confront him. Do you know the Sweet River Summer Festival?” Lucy said. The candle in the center of the table flickered.

“Of course. I take my family every year,” Jeff said.

“Well, it was my late grandmother’s brainchild, so I’d started running it in her memory. Adam moved to town and immediately tried to take it out from under me. That was how we met.”

Adam shook his head. “I was going to let her volunteer.”

“Selling hot dogs.”

Adam burst out laughing. “We wound up working together after she confronted me, and I was honestly impressed by her passion.”

“And her hotness,” Gracie whispered behind her glass of iced tea, but loud enough to make the whole table laugh.

“You guys ran it this past summer? It was incredible, and that’s even with the storms,” Jeff said through a big bite of salad.

Lucy shimmied her shoulders with pride. “We made a good team.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, turning to me and Victor, who sat beside me. “How did you two meet?”

“Oh, uh …” I stumbled over my words, a forkful of lasagna hanging in midair on the way to my mouth. “We met at a coffee shop. Actually, we both had shown up that day to act as moral support for Adam and Lucy. But we’re not a couple.”

“Try as I might, I still haven’t won this one over,” Victor joked, in the way he always had, but his voice rasped at the end.

I gave his shoulders a playful shove in the way I always had, but the giggle felt stuck in my throat. “Be serious.”

“I got her talking about the old house she’d been renovating.

Those green eyes lit up, the way they do when she’s talking about something she loves.

Our conversation flowed so easy. It always does with us.

” Our eyes were on each other’s as he spoke.

The rest of the table faded into the background. “We were fast friends.”

“Fast friends,” I repeated. I felt an urge to squeeze his hand or press my shoulder into his, but I resisted.

“The best friendships are the ones where you can talk for hours on end,” Jeff said, breaking my attention from Victor.

I turned to him to listen.

“My late wife, Angela … She and I were friends from childhood. I used to call her my safe zone.”

“Safe zone,” Victor repeated. “I like that.”

“Angela was always my safe zone from grade school and beyond. I could talk to her about the important things, the ridiculous things, even the commercial we’d just watched on TV—all of it. Those types of relationships are a treasure.” Jeff gave a small smile.

My mom rubbed his shoulder gently. “Angela sounds like a treasure.”

I glanced across the table and saw Lucy mouth to Adam that he was her safe zone. I quickly looked away. The moment felt like an intrusion. The moment wasn’t mine, but it cracked something open in me.

I could feel Victor’s gaze on me heavy as a touch, but I didn’t dare look back at him.

I was trying to handle everything between us delicately, carefully. I didn’t want to risk losing my safe zone.

W hen you got Lucy and Adam together, a board game always found its way onto the table, or a dart board got hung on the wall, or a deck of cards got pulled out of Adam’s pocket. This time, after dinner was finished, it was a game of charades.

We settled into Lucy’s living room, piling onto her couch and armchair. The sky was dark outside. A few lamps switched on around her house. Some of us had carried our glasses of wine along with us.

Adam’s City of Sweet River hat was filled with tiny pieces of torn paper with phrases written on them.