Willow Spring (27 page)

After the meal, though, the mood finally seemed to lighten for real. Which was a relief, to say the least. The guys offered to clean up, and the girls decided to go swimming. Well, all the girls except for Anna. Not that it was a big deal. But Amy thought that Anna just never seemed to want to do what the rest of them were doing.

“After cleanup,” Logan announced, “we’ll take the pontoon out before it gets dark. Maybe watch the sunset from out on the lake.”

The smaller kids cheered at this, whereas Lucky’s boy, Johnny, seemed much more interested in the here and now, calling out, “Hey, watch this!” and then running to do a cannonball off the end of the dock and into the water with a loud splash.

“Can you keep an eye on him, babe?” Lucky called to Tessa as he scooped up some empty serving plates and platters, ready to head toward the cottage.

Fortunately, once she was in the water with the girls, Amy finally got her mind off Anna and ugly things like jealousy. She angled her body crossways on one of the blow-up mattresses, sharing it with Sue Ann’s daughter, and they kicked their legs beneath the surface to propel themselves around.

Meanwhile, Sue Ann kept a close watch on Adam’s twins, who floated on colored swim noodles—when they weren’t using them to hit each other. And Rachel and Johnny threw a Nerf football back and forth as Tessa and Jenny talked weddings and about life changes in general.

“Lucky’s officially moving in to my cabin, and we might add a room or two on the back,” Tessa explained. “And we’ll eventually transition his house into offices for both our businesses.” Lucky already ran a lucrative custom motorcycle painting business out of his garage, and Tessa’s interior design business was expanding all the time. In fact, Amy knew that soon Tessa would probably quit working at the bookstore and Amy would need to find someone else to take her part-time hours. And she was thrilled that Tessa’s work—and her life in general—was going so well, but she would miss the easy camaraderie she felt having Tessa in the bookshop with her.

Changes. So many changes in the lives of all her friends the past few years. And changes for her, too, lately. Which she’d decided she wanted, needed. But they just didn’t seem to be going her way. Sure, all of her friends had encountered big problems and conflicts on their paths to true love, but none of them had ever had to deal with another woman in the picture, let alone a figure so equally tragic and beautiful as Anna Romo.

“You quit kicking,” Sophie accused her then.

Amy flinched, having gotten lost in thought. “Oh, sorry.”

Sophie tilted her head. “I can’t kick hard enough by myself to keep us going,”

But Amy just teased her. “Oh, I bet you could if you tried.”

And things got easier, happier again. And Amy realized that . . . well, she had plenty of great things and people in her life, regardless of what happened with Logan.
So I just won’t think about him that way for the rest of the day.
Maybe he was right, maybe a get-together with their friends
could
make things feel a little bit normal again. As long as she focused on the positive anyway.

“Well, Soph, I think my kicking legs are about exhausted—I’m ready to get out. How about you?”

“Yeah, mine are worn out, too,” Sophie agreed, so together, they swam their mattress toward the dock’s ladder.

“Up you go,” Amy said, watching as Sophie maneuvered her way onto the dock in an adorable pink and white polka dot swimsuit. Sophie took the blow-up mattress from Amy, pulling it up onto the dock, dripping, and Amy followed, climbing the ladder herself.

And the first thing she saw was—dear God—Anna and Logan sitting on the dock alone together, looking downright cozy as Anna said to him, “Do my back?” She then passed him a bottle of sunscreen. In response, he obediently scooted his way behind her, squirting lotion into his palm as she held her long hair out of the way.

They talked quietly, both smiling, and Amy couldn’t hear the rest of what they were saying, but she didn’t have to. Her blood boiled anyway. And worse than that, her heart hurt. And maybe even worse still, she felt . . . stupid. To instantly realize she was the obvious loser in this love triangle she’d unwittingly gotten herself into. And after she’d actually felt a little hope upon getting here, getting that sweet kiss on the cheek from Logan. It felt . . . cruel suddenly, to be invited here only to watch the guy she loved flirting with another girl. Even touching her now.

As quickly as she could, though, she yanked her eyes away and back onto Sophie, so that if one or both of them noticed her, she wouldn’t be caught staring, or appearing the least bit concerned with them whatsoever.

“Something to drink, Soph?” she asked softly—and soon enough, she sensed in her peripheral vision that Logan did look up as he finished the sunscreen application.

But Amy just kept talking, focusing on Sophie and on the soft drink she’d just gotten for her from one of the coolers, pretending for all she was worth that Logan and Anna were the last things on her mind.

Even though what she’d seen still stung like crazy.

Even though she wanted nothing more than to run away, from the dock, from the lake, from him, from all her friends, from all of this.

She wanted to run away to some imaginary place where some great guy might actually think she was a really great girl, and might actually fall in love with her. Was it so bad to want, just once in her life, to know what it was to be truly and deeply loved?

Something inside her was breaking. She could feel it, cracking, snapping. But as usual, she kept smiling as she talked more with Sophie, chatting about her cat, Dickens; she kept smiling as the others then began piling out of the water, laughing, talking, stretching out on towels to dry—just as the rest of the guys returned from the cottage, as well.

“When do we get to ride in the boat?” Adam’s son, Joey, asked eagerly as Adam tossed each boy a towel.

“We can leave in a few minutes, as soon as everybody dries off,” Logan said. “We should get going before the sun goes behind the woods.” Indeed, the sun had begun to dip toward the horizon, and a glance up reminded Amy that sunset came earlier on the lake due to the trees and hilly landscape.

“So, Anna,” Adam said, “you getting settled here in Destiny?”

And it was all Amy could do not to roll her eyes. She knew Adam was just being nice, making conversation, but still . . . when had her life turned into
The Anna Romo Show?

“I guess,” Anna replied with a noncommittal shrug. “Not quite sure of my plans yet. Whether I’m going to stay or go.”

“Oh Anna, you just got home, you can’t leave,” Sue Ann said as if the loss would kill them all.

And Jenny added, “Everyone’s been so happy to have you back.”

Hmm, not
everyone
.

“Well, coming here is a big change from the city,” Jenny’s husband, Mick, pointed out.

And Anna agreed with him, saying, “Definitely. A much slower pace.”

And just like earlier, Amy heard herself begin to speak without quite having weighed the decision. “You don’t seem as if you like it here much.”

And the moment the words left her mouth, she felt the air around them all thicken.

But Anna gave an easy reply. “Some things I like, some I don’t.” Though her smile, cast in Amy’s direction, looked a bit forced.

And then Amy heard herself talking yet again, not quite able to control herself. “I’m just saying, you shouldn’t stay if you don’t want to. I’m sure you don’t feel like you fit in very well.”

The silence that fell over the dock was heavy, intense. Amy felt people staring at her. But maybe the wine coolers had affected her more than she’d realized or something, because suddenly she didn’t care. She didn’t care what anyone thought. They didn’t know what she’d been going through. Even Tessa and Rachel, though they knew the story, couldn’t feel what it was like to be inside her, wanting so badly to just have what everyone else had. They couldn’t know what it was like to feel Anna was somehow stealing it from her.

Finally, Anna said, “Um, it’s a process, I guess. But . . . you’ve all made me feel welcome.”

“Well, it’s hard when all of us have been friends our whole lives,” Amy said. And part of her knew it really was time to shut up now—but some other part, some part she didn’t know very well, kept right on going. “I mean . . . you might
never
fit in. You’d probably be happier back in the city. You seem more like that type of person.”

“What type of person?” Anna asked quietly. Her voice struck Amy as smaller than usual, and this strange, new, mean part of Amy she’d never encountered in herself before . . . liked that.

“A city person,” Amy said. “You know, just not as friendly, not as worried about other people. No offense.”

Anna’s answer came out dry. “Um, sure.”

And it was then that the stark silence and stares struck Amy once more. And even as Anna wordlessly stood up, slipped her feet into a pair of sparkly white flip flops, grabbed up her towel, and walked away, off the dock, Amy wanted to feel justified. She wanted to feel like she’d had every right to do what she’d just done. And she kept trying to cling to that belief, that need, even as Mike flashed her a look of utter astonishment and followed after his sister. Even as Rachel did the same, murmuring, “I should go with Mike.”

Lucky followed after them, and Tessa’s expression finally told Amy exactly how badly she’d just screwed up.

“Amy,” Jenny began critically from where she sat next to her, “what were you thinking? It’s not like you to be mean.”

“I . . .”
Have no answer.

That was when Logan stood up, walked over to where she sat, and glared down at her. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him look so disappointed in her. “Who
are
you, Amy? I don’t even know you right now. How could you say something so awful to someone who’s been through so much and is just struggling to figure out her life here? That was just wrong. Wrong, and mean. Badly done, Amy. Badly done.”

If the tension before had been heavy, now it was downright stifling. Amy felt as if she could barely breathe.

Sue Ann mumbled something about leaving “since it seems like maybe you two need to talk or something.”

And as she and Adam quickly grabbed up all the kids’ stuff, Tessa said, “I should probably take Johnny and go with Lucky, too. Will you be okay?” She touched Amy’s shoulder.

Feeling a little numb, Amy just nodded. Tessa had brought her here, and God knew she wanted to run away more than ever now, but at the same time, she didn’t feel she had a choice. She and Logan probably did need to talk, like it or not. She just didn’t really know how she was going to defend herself, how she was possibly going to make him understand. Since she didn’t completely understand herself.

Once the dock was empty of everyone but him and Amy, Logan walked onto the pontoon and sat down in the captain’s seat. He suddenly needed to get out of the sun. What had just happened here? He barely knew. He’d never, in his whole life, seen Amy act cruelly. To anyone.

And now the whole party had ended, in about two minutes flat.

So when Amy stepped onto the boat a minute later, silently taking a seat on the padded bench that ran along the side, he quietly got up, unlashed the pontoon’s rope ties from the dock, and then came back to his seat to turn the key, already in the ignition. The boat’s motor rumbled to life.

“Um, what are we doing?” Amy asked.

“Going for a ride. Because Sue Ann’s right, you and I need to have a talk.”

“We couldn’t do that here? And besides, you’re gonna have to drive me home anyway.”

“I just want . . . no distractions for this. I don’t want either one of us to be able to walk away from it until we get some stuff settled.”

As he steered the pontoon out into the open water of the lake, he glanced over to see her heavy sigh. She looked . . . regretful. As she should. At least they were in sync on that much. But at the moment he wasn’t sure they were going to be very like-minded on much else.

They didn’t speak as he drove—he wanted his full attention on this conversation once it started—and since the silence was beginning to be deafening, he reached down and turned on the built-in radio. The retro station whose signal was the only one to reach Destiny came on.

“God, I wish we could get some decent music around here,” he muttered.

“I like this station,” she said quietly. Reminding him how agreeable Amy usually was, how easy to please and how naturally happy. This was the Amy he knew. He wasn’t sure
who
that had been on the dock a few minutes ago.

“
This
song’s good,” he said, pacified. About the music anyway. “Baby Blue” by Bad Finger filled the air with something both pleasing and a little melancholy at the same time. “I just wish there was more variety.”

“Hmm,” she said, sounding a little terse. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t realize until recently just how much you like variety.”

Oh boy. Had she really just said that? He couldn’t keep himself from tossing her a look—but he still held his tongue, for now.

When the slow-moving boat had puttered to what Logan decided was just about the center of Blue Valley Lake, he turned off the engine, then got up, walked to the back, and dropped the anchor over the side. The sun had dropped behind the trees now, bringing cooler air as the July day turned to night, along with streaks of pink and blue across the western sky. This wasn’t exactly like he’d imagined the pontoon ride going, but it was time to face the matter at hand.