Always You: A Lilac Bay Novel (Friends with Benefits) (21 page)

“Got it,” she said, taking off.

I turned back to David and Iris. “Okay, we need to get you to the doctor,” I said. “Andrew, you’re just going to have to take his place.”

“I’m not doing the skit!”

“What choice do we have? You and Iris can just do it.”

“Um, I’m taking my boyfriend to the doctor,” Iris said. “Besides, Andrew and I are related.” Oh, right. They couldn’t exactly play the princess and her lover.

“Okay, let’s just think,” I said, rubbing my hands over my forehead. “Who can do this—”

David moaned. “We should go,” Iris said, pulling off her flower crown.

“Yeah, go, go,” I said, the beginnings of panic setting in.

“Riley?” Gina asked, sticking her head around the curtains. “Are you starting soon? We have all the footage we need, but I’d like to get the legend skit taped if we can.”

Andrew and I both stepped in front of David, blocking him from her view. “Yup,” I called out, my voice so chipper Andrew winced. “About to get started!”

“Great. See you out there.”

She disappeared and I turned to Andrew. “You’re doing this.”

He stared back at me, wide eyed. “With who?”

I glanced at Iris in her princess costume. She was quite a bit shorter than me. And she definitely had more going on in the chest area. But I would just have to make do. What choice did I have?

* * *

T
en minutes later
, Andrew and I were standing to the side of the stage, hidden from the crowd by curtains strung up between the trees.

“I cannot believe you’re making me do this,” he muttered, pulling on the tights.

“Shut up,” I hissed. “You think I’m happy about it?” The princess dress was about three inches too short for me and I had to use a safety pin to keep it from gaping over my boobs. Real flattering.

“We’re ready to go, Iris,” Tina, the dance studio owner, said, sticking her head around the curtains. “Oh,” she said, surprised. “I mean—Riley?”

“Little change of plans, Tina,” I told her, trying to smile through the fear growing in my chest. “Iris and David had a little accident.”

“Do you know the part?” she asked, looking worried.

“Sure,” I said, even though neither of us did, not really. Sure, we’d seen the damn skit performed year after year, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you paid close attention to. Still, the narrator—Libby this year—did most of the work. She read the story and we just had to act out what she said. We could improvise the rest.

At least, I hoped we could.

“Okay, dear. Well, I’ll send the kids out then.”

I closed my eyes, trying to take deep breaths, as the music started on the other side of the curtains. There was a murmur of approval from the audience, and I could picture the kids from Tina’s ballet class taking the stage, dancing around in their fairy costumes. Then Libby began the story.

“Many, many moons ago, very near to this same spot, lived a rich and powerful king.” There was laughter from the audience, and I peeked around the curtain so I could see what was happening. Mayor Jones had entered in his king costume, strutting around the stage.

“But the king was a cruel man, jealous and demanding,” Libby read, while the mayor pretended to bop a few of the fairy dancers on their head. “The king had a very kind and beautiful daughter.”

There was a pause on the stage. “Riley, that’s you!” Andrew whispered behind me.

“Crap,” I muttered. “Here goes nothing.”

I stepped up on the stage to scattered applause and a few wolf whistles—Jake and Zane, I was pretty sure—and started to flounce around the stage while Libby read the part of the story about the princess loving flowers and the woodland creatures.

“What is Auntie doing?” I heard Mason ask loudly, followed by Rebecca snickering.
Nice sister
, I thought, grimacing.

“One day, while playing in the woods, the princess came across a woodsman.”

It occurred to me in that moment that Andrew could very well have taken off without me there to prod him onto the stage. But as soon as Libby said the line, he stepped out onto the stage. He stood there in his tights and tunic with the silly little hat, glaring at me across the stage, obvious to everyone how very much he didn’t want to be there.

I slapped a hand over my mouth to cover my laughter, and several people in the audience giggled as well. Edward was laughing hysterically, so loudly I thought he might actually hurt himself. Andrew turned his gaze to the audience and glared at them instead, leading to even more laughter.

“The woodsman thought the princess was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen,” Libby read, her voice tinged with amusement. Andrew sighed and turned back to me. I put my hands on my hips and raised my eyebrows and he sighed, slapping a soppy expression on his face. The crowd was really laughing now.

“The princess and the woodsman fell in love at first sight.” I did my best to dance over to Andrew the way I had seen the other princesses do over the years, but from the way Rebecca was snorting in the audience I probably didn’t look very graceful. “They danced through the forest with all of their woodland friends and the fairies,” Libby read. Andrew just stood there, looking like he wanted to die.

“I said,” Libby called louder, “that they danced through the forest with all of their woodland friends and the fairies.”

Andrew sighed and took me in his arms, waltzing awkwardly around the stage while Tina’s dance class joined us, the little girls in pink fairy costumes, the little boys in brown pants and shirts with furry-eared headbands. I was finding it very difficult not to burst into laughter as the little kids fluttered around Andrew with his angry, flat expression.

“Unfortunately for the princess, her father was very cruel and very jealous and demanding,” Libby read, and Mayor Jones stepped onto the stage, waving his arms over his head.

“Who is that with my daughter?” he bellowed.

“It is I,” I whispered to Andrew. “A humble woodsman.”

“Oh, God,” he whispered, but he turned to Mayor Jones and repeated the line. “It is I, a humble woodsman. But I love your daughter dearly and I promise to make her happy.”

Nice, Andrew
, I thought. Apparently he had been paying attention all these years.

“My daughter is a princess!” Jones shouted. “She will not marry the likes of you!”

“But Father!” I cried. “I love him so!”

“Then I will lock you up!” he shouted. God, he was so over the top. Once again, the urge to laugh rose up in me, and I had to hide my face in Andrew’s shoulder.

“Please, Your Highness,” he said, his voice as flat as his expression. “Don’t take away my love.”

Mayor Jones grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away, the fairy dancers covering their mouths in horror.

Libby continued with the story, explaining how the angry King created an island fortress in the middle of the bay to imprison the princess. I sat in the middle of the stage, pretending to cry, as the fairies danced around me.

“The fairies were so sorry for the poor princess that they turned her tears into the most beautiful flowers to cheer her up.” The woodland creatures had changed into purple costumes, and they came on stage, waving fake bunches of lilacs in the air. “But the king was so very cruel that he cut them down, making the princess cry even harder.

“The fairies couldn’t bear to see her so sad,” Libby read. “And so they turned the water surrounding the island into ice so that the woodsman could come and rescue his true love.”

Andrew appeared again on the stage, reaching out a hand to me. “I’ve come to rescue you, Princess,” he said.

“You could sound a little more excited about it, woodsman,” I said, and the crowd laughed. Andrew even cracked a smile.

“So the princess and the woodsman escaped across the ice bridge. And to this very day, the fairies bring back the lilac flowers every spring to remind us of the power of love. But they only bloom for a very short time, just like the flowers that the King cut down, to remind us that love is precious and fleeting and not to be taken for granted.”

The fairies danced around with the boys in purple, waving their lilac bunches.

“You may wonder what happened to the king and his daughter,” Libby read. “Well, the king spent the rest of his days very angry, searching for the princess.” The mayor stomped around on stage, waving his fists. “But he could never find her, because she was guarded by the protection of the fairies.”

I high-fived a passing fairy.

“Instead she lived happily ever after with her true love, the woodsman.” Libby looked over at us, her eyebrows high.

This was where we were supposed to kiss. I shook my head at her, crossing my arms.

“What kind of love story is that?” Jake called from the crowd. “He’s supposed to kiss her!”

“They always kiss at the end of the story,” Fran agreed.

“Yeah, kiss her, woodsman!” Eddie shouted.

“I hate everyone,” Andrew muttered, but he bent down and pressed his lips against mine, lightly, to the cheers and catcalls of our friends and neighbors. He started to pull back, but Libby’s arm darted out, pushing his back, forcing him a step closer, his lips pressing tighter on mine.

I grabbed his arms to steady him as he stumbled, and the crowd went nuts.

I thought he would pull away but his lips remained there, pressed against mine. And then he seemed to increase the pressure, his arms coming up around me, responding to the crowd that was cheering and whistling.

Putting on a good show
, I thought to myself, feeling a little annoyed. He just has to show off and be the ladies’-man.

But then one hand came up to my face, and I stopped thinking about the crowd, and I stopped being annoyed. Because this didn’t feel like showing off.

This felt like being kissed.

He was cradling my face, and I could feel every millimeter of the work-roughened skin of his palm. His other hand was still on my back, drawing me close to his body. He was bending me backwards a little but I knew I wouldn’t fall. I wouldn’t fall, because Andrew was there under my hands, his body strong, substantial, exactly the kind of thing you’d want to be anchored to. And his lips were moving against mine, insistent, demanding, and I was pretty sure I had stopped breathing several minutes ago.

And then, just like that, it was over. He had pulled away, and I felt like I was falling, like I wasn’t sure where I was. Over his shoulder, Libby was laughing. The fairies were still dancing around us, the crowd obnoxious with their cheers. Everything exactly the same as it had been before that kiss, like nothing had just changed.

But Andrew was standing there in front of me, his gaze fixed on mine, his blue eyes unreadable. What was he thinking?

I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around what that kiss had felt like, and Andrew was giving me no clues as to his take on it.

“Thank you for listening to the Legend of the Lilacs,” Libby was saying. “We’d like to thank all of our participants tonight.”

Andrew pulled me to the front of the stage to take our bows with the fairies and Mayor Jones. From the corner of my eye I could see that Andrew was once again smiling his smug, cocky smile, so I tried to mimic him, fixing a huge grin to my face, hoping that no one could tell how my brain was spinning in that moment. I just wanted to get off the stage and go somewhere quiet with Andrew so that I could figure out what in the hell had just happened.

But when we stepped off the stage he immediately pulled his hat off.

“I need to get out of these tights,” he said, his voice as normal as if we had just finished a baseball game, rather than locked lips in front of the entire town. “You gonna grab food?”

I realized, belatedly, that I was staring at him. “Sorry, what?”

“Food,” he repeated. “Are you gonna change or eat first?”

“Uh, change, I guess.”

“Alright. I guess I’ll see you over there, then,” he said, giving me a little nod before heading back to Libby’s, leaving me alone by the stage to wonder if I had just imagined the entire thing.

A
n hour later
, I found Rebecca in the wicker rocking chair on her front porch, feet tucked up under her, a paperback in her hand.

“Where is everyone?” I asked by way of a greeting.

“Kids are in bed, Jake is watching the Tigers game.” She set the book on the glass-topped table next to her as I took a seat in the glider. “I kind of thought you might stop by.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really.”

She grinned. “That was some kiss.”

I groaned, running my hands through my hair. “It was that obvious?”

She shrugged. “To me. I don’t know if anyone else noticed.”

Well, I guess that was better than nothing. Before I could respond, she sat up a little straighter and I knew, immediately, that something was wrong.

“What?”

“There’s something we should discuss before we get into your saliva swap with Andrew.”

I started to object to her description, but her face had taken on that carefully guarded expression she so often got when she wanted to downplay something that she knew was going to make me stressed.

“What’s going on, Beccs?”

“Mom is gone.”

I was on my feet before I even realized I’d moved. “
What
?”

“Sit down, Riley,” she said, her voice patient and calm. “Everything is fine. She went to the mainland—to her sister.”

That brought me up short. “Aunt Lynn?”

Rebecca nodded, and I swore under my breath, sinking back into the swing.

My mother and her sister didn’t speak. Not entirely surprising, considering my mom had ruined her older sister’s second wedding reception by getting wasted, knocking over the cheese table, and trying to hook up with the groom’s married father. I couldn’t exactly blame Aunt Lynn for cutting her sister out of her life after all that. But in doing so she’d cut out Rebecca and me as well. Oh, she'd tried not to spin it that way; she'd assured us she would be there for us, that we could call her if we ever needed anything. But since what we’d always needed was help with our mother, her assurances hadn’t carried much weight with either of us.

“What happened?”

“She called me this morning.”

“You knew she was gone this morning?”

She held up her hands. “Don’t give me that look. You had enough to deal with today.”

“Rebecca, you should have told me.”

She raised an eyebrow—looking an awful lot like our mother, come to think of it. “Like you’ve never hidden anything from me to protect me? Like, say, what Mom said to you last Saturday?”

My face colored and I was grateful that it was dark out. “Jake told you?”

“Of course he did. God, Riley. I’m so sorry—”

“It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t think I could stand her pity. “Just tell me what happened.”

She released a breath. “She called this morning to tell me that she needed a change of scenery. She sounded mortified about the whole spending-the-night-in-jail thing. I think it was a wake up call.”

How many wake up calls did a person need?
I wondered. Rebecca’s eyes searched my face. “She mentioned you, too.”

My stomach dropped, thinking of all the opinions my mother might have shared with my little sister. “What’d she say?”

“That she felt awful. That she tried to hit you. She said the details were fuzzy, but she knew she was really mean to you.”

Mean to me.
I almost wanted to laugh. That was one way to put it.

“Anyhow, she said she felt awful and she wants to try to make some changes.”

“And Lynn is going to help her with that?” I couldn’t believe that my aunt would back down so easily.

“She got her into a rehab facility.”

“
What
?” Our mother had never, ever shown any interest in rehab. She was in too much denial about her condition. “You’re kidding me.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I’m not. She’s starting tomorrow.”

“I’m not going to hold my breath,” I muttered.

“That was my first thought. But maybe if Lynn is helping her…” She trailed off, but not before I recognized the note of hope in her voice. My stomach clenched, knowing there was no way to keep her from getting her hopes up. And in that moment, I hated my mother. Not for the drinking or blaming me for Dad’s death or any of the cruel things she had said. I hated her for making my sister believe that things could be different.

“She said she might stick around there,” Rebecca said. “In Grand Rapids, I mean. After rehab. Said Lynn could help her get some assistance, maybe get a job.” Another thing I wouldn’t be holding my breath over anytime soon. “She said it was time for a change, that she didn’t think the island was a very healthy place for her.”

I snorted, unable to come up with a response for that which didn’t include a monstrous amount of curse words.

“I know,” Rebecca said softly. “I know it would be stupid to take her at her word.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s just—”
Ah, here it is,
I thought. “It’s just—I keep thinking about what that must have been like for her.”

“What?”

“Leaving. Calling Lynn after everything that happened. Packing up her things and leaving the house she’s lived in for ten years. I mean—that’s a big deal, Riley. And she did it all by herself, you know? It must have been so scary. Maybe…”

She trailed off again, but I didn’t need to hear the end of the sentence.
Maybe it means that things will be different.
That’s what she was hoping for.

“I don’t know,” I said, looking away. I couldn’t stand to see the optimism in her face. “I just don’t know, Beccs.”

We were quiet for a long time, sitting there on the porch together. It was strange to think about my reasons for coming over. Everything else seemed so unimportant now.

Mom was actually gone. For the first time in years, she wasn’t here on Lilac Bay. I didn’t know how that made me feel. There was a kernel of fear there, deep in my chest, knowing that she had gone somewhere that I couldn’t help her. Guilt, too, that she was someone else’s problem, at least for the time being. But more than any of that, there was relief. Because tonight I could go to sleep and not think about her, alone in that little house. I could go about my day tomorrow without the fear that my next trip to her place would bring a gruesome discovery. I didn’t have to worry about Rebecca dealing with the problem and hiding it from me. I didn’t have to worry at all.

For today, at least.

“Hang on one second,” Rebecca said, startling me from my musings when she stood. “I’ll be right back.”

She reappeared a few minutes later, a bottle of white wine and two plastic cups in her hand. “Isn’t it a little tacky to toast to our mother’s stint in rehab with alcohol?” I asked as she handed me a cup. “With plastic, no less.”

“Ha ha,” she muttered, filling the cups before reclaiming her rocking chair. “I just thought wine would be a welcome accompaniment to our subject change.”

“Oh, Beccs, no, I don’t want to talk about that now.”

“Too bad,” she said, her voice several shades fiercer than I was used to. “We’ve spent the last fifteen years tiptoeing around Mom’s issues. Her drinking has way too much real estate in our heads, sister. We’re done with that—at least for tonight. Okay? We’re going to share this bottle of wine and we’re going to talk about this kiss.” She glared at me. “Got it?”

I couldn’t help but grin at her. I kind of liked this take-no-shit version of my sister. “Got it.”

“So. The kiss.”

I took a long slug of my wine before responding, knowing that I would need it if we were going to have this conversation.

“It was a pretty good kiss.”

“It looked like a good kiss.” She leaned towards me, her eyes flashing in the darkness. Oh, God. She was way too excited about this. I needed to put the brakes on, fast.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said, ignoring her splutter of disagreement. “It’s just strange because it’s Andrew, you know. He’s like my brother or something.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, give me a break, Riley. He’s not like your brother!” She raised a skeptical eyebrow when I didn’t agree. “You’re telling me you’ve never been attracted to him? You’ve never looked at those broad shoulders or that gorgeous red hair or those wicked blues eyes of his and felt something?” She grinned, leaning a little closer. “You’ve never checked out his ass?”

“Rebecca!”

“What? Even I’ve checked out that ass, and I’m a happily married woman. You’re going to tell me that you only feel sisterly thoughts when you look at that boy? I don’t buy it. Last I checked, you were still a human woman.”

An image of him at the dance, in that suit, flashed though my mind. The way his voice had sounded when he asked me to dance. How it had felt to be so close to him, in his arms. Feeling him. How it had made me partially incoherent.

I shook my head. No. I wasn’t going to make more out of that moment than I needed to.

“It’s Andrew,” I said instead, as if that should be argument enough.

“Okay, then let me ask you another question—why were you so quick to break up with Chase?”

“I didn’t break up with Chase. We went on one date.”

“And you haven’t seen him again. Did he stop calling?”

He’d actually called me the night before, inviting me to dinner on Sunday. Well, inviting my voicemail. I’d screened the call.

“I just don’t see it going anywhere.”

“But you said you liked him. You said he was cute and you had fun with him. He was clearly into you. And, no offense, but he’s definitely the hottest prospect you’ve had in years. And yet you’re just blowing him off. Why?”

“A million reasons,” I said. “I’m really busy right now, you know. Organizing the show is taking a lot out of me. That’s the main reason I’m not pursuing this.”

And because Andrew asked me not to
, a stubborn little voice in the back of my head whispered. Oh, God, was that true? Was I actually letting Andrew get in my head? I’d been so pissed when he'd asked me to drop Chase. There was no way I was letting him affect my decision.

At least, there was no way I was telling
her
that. She would absolutely get the wrong idea. She would jump to conclusions, the way that people had our entire lives.

“I was watching him at the dance, you know,” she said, her voice soft. “Do you have any idea how fast he dropped that girl he was with when he saw you go off with Mom?”

A shiver rushed through me. He’d appeared at my side exactly when I needed him to. How many times had that happened over the years?

“Riley,” Rebecca said. “Look at me.” I did, and her eyes were wide and filled with something like sympathy. “Come on, Ri. You can’t honestly tell me that you don’t know what’s going on.”

I stared at my little sister, waiting for her to elaborate. When I didn’t respond, she laughed a little.

“Riley! He
loves
you.”

“Oh God,” I muttered, covering my eyes with my palm. “Not you, too.”

“No, not
me too
,” she said, pulling my arm away so I had to sit up and look at her. “I’m not some stranger gossiping about you or making stupid assumptions because I don’t think guys and girls can ever just be friends.”

“Then what are you—”

“I’m your sister, the person who knows you best in the world. The person who sees you, and who sees him, and who knows what he looks like when he looks at you.”

“What’s in this wine? You’re drunk. And you aren’t making any sense.”

“Riley, he loves you. I know he does. I can tell. What I don’t understand is why you can’t see it.”

“There’s nothing to see! Jesus, Rebecca. We’ve been best friends since first grade. I have watched him hook up with girl after girl. In case you haven’t noticed, Andrew Powell isn’t the slightest bit shy when it comes to women, okay? He’s not self-conscious. He’s not a scared little boy. When he wants something he tries to get it.” I swallowed. It was the strangest thing, but for just a brief second, I felt like I might start crying. I shook my head, determined to clear it. “He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t see me like that.”

“You’re totally right,” Rebecca said, and I sighed in relief—until she kept talking. “He doesn’t see you the way he sees all those other girls. He sees you as something else entirely. Something so important it scares him.”

I gaped at her. “You’ve lost it.”

She shook her head. “You’re in denial.”

I was starting to get really annoyed now. “You know,” I said, my voice tight, “I’ve always hated it when people impose such cliché restrictions on my relationship with my best friend.” She started to argue, so I help up my hand, talking over her. “Oh, we have different kinds of genitals, so clearly we must secretly want to bang. It’s such crap, Rebecca. I just can’t believe you’re the one putting it on me right now.”

“This isn’t about clichés or gender roles or what society expects,” she said. “This is about you and Andrew.”

“We’re
friends
.”

“So you felt absolutely nothing when you kissed him tonight?”

Well, that shut me up. Try as I had to ignore it, I couldn’t help the memories rising in my head.

The feel of Andrew’s work-roughened hand on my cheek, gently cradling my face like it was something precious. His other hand at the small of my back, pulling me closer to his body, his chest so solid and substantial against me. And the feel of his lips, his insistent, warm lips on mine, pressing, persisting, taking my breath away. The spark I had felt, deep down in my chest. That inexplicable—
something
.

And the clearest memory of all. The way his eyes had held mine for that long moment after pulling away. The moment that seemed to stretch on and on, an eternity passing between us. I had always been able to tell what Andrew Powell was thinking under any circumstance. But after we kissed tonight I had looked into his eyes and—not known. For the first time I could remember, I’d had no clue what he might be thinking.

“You should see your face right now,” my sister muttered.

And just like that I knew exactly what I needed to do. What I should have done earlier, instead of coming here.

“I have to go,” I said, standing so quickly I knocked my cup to the ground. I was thankful it was only white wine as the liquid pooled across the porch.