I didn’t move, my eyes zeroing in on the girl in front of me. She was staring, a pert little frown forming on her face as her eyes went between me and my friend. The nod she tucked into her chest stirred up anxiety in my stomach.
“So, not for me then,” she said, stepping away. “Got it.”
I directed my next words to her. “Should I go?”
Truth be told, I had no idea who I was supposed to be at this gathering. Was I a friend? Was I more? Or was I only just someone her so-called brother-in-law knew?
Her eyes traveled from my face to the dish I was holding in my hand. Pasta salad. It had been hard to make my mom’s recipe for several reasons. One being, I was shit at it, but the other being the visceral urge I had to call her and ask for her help.
These thoughts were running me ragged. And I just wanted to curl my head against the chest of the girl who was looking at me like I hurt her somehow.
“You gonna answer that Fernandez?” Clay asked, and I realized he was still there.
Finally, she cleared her throat and stepped aside. The loss of her eyes was like a loss of a limb. I just wanted to get them back, make this better. “No. We’re joint hosting with the Fergusons. Any guest of theirs is a guest of ours.”
Got it. I wasn’t a guest of hers then. Wasn’t hers at all.
I didn’t even know if I wanted to step in any further at that point. Not afterthatwarm welcome. I could hear soft music floating around and the hum of laughter coming from other rooms. It was all so nice, so congenial, it made my stomach hurt.
So did the sight of her shoulders as she went to turn away from me without another word. I jogged to catch up to her, catching herhand in mine before she could get too far and pulling her closer so I could speak to her in a low voice.
“Boss? What’s up?” I asked, needing to know. “I can leave if it’s too much.”
The guarded look that passed through her eyes as she pulled her hand away from mine stung. Her voice was a distant flutter as she tucked her chin away from me and said. “Nothing’s up, Harp. I’m glad you have somewhere to spend the holiday—someone.”Her eyes drifted to Clay before she cast them down. “—Anyway, we’re all just hanging out for now. You’re welcome anywhere you like. Dinner is at four.”
With that, and plucking my pasta salad dish from my hands, she turned and rushed away.
A long whistle sounded from behind me before a hand clapped over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but feel sucker punched as Clay and I started into the main house. “I was going to show you around the place, but the doghouse is that way, man.”
Past the foyer and into the house, we passed an opening of a living room where a handful of men sat around a television screen watching the motion of some sport on the screen. I recognized Alta’s brother as one of them, and when he felt me watching them he looked up and quickly rolled his eyes away from me as if I was as annoying as a fly that kept bugging him. Another familiar face being Clay’s younger brother, who noticed me and abruptly looked the other way.
Weird.
In the end, he hadn’t been able to find anything substantial about that number he looked into for me. I’d have to tell him it was okay. Instead of finding the truth, the truth found me.
Surprisingly, the most welcoming presence at the gathering was the little fire-head who I realized had one hundred percent set me and Alta up on Halloween when she ducked out of the shop suspiciously.
“Tattoo guy!” she greeted as she barreled into the kitchen Clay was just showing me, a pie-wielding girl in tow.
“I have a name and if I remember correctly, you know it, tiny girl,” I said.
“I don’t know it,” a sweet voice said. The tall girl I’d only seen glimpses of peering up at me from around Ceci’s shoulder. She moved her hazel eyes to Clay, and I realized that their irises matched. “Clay, is this your only friend?”
“Tiny, you little shit,” Clay said, pouncing on her and pinching her cheek. She giggled like crazy before batting her brother off. I felt something pull at the easy way they interacted. Family being family—being happy. Something like envy pushed through me and formed a lump in the bottom of my throat as I watched Clay give his sister a little nudge. “Introduce yourself, you know how to act.”
“Hi,” the girl said, she moved her pie to one hand and held out her other to shake. “I’m Clementine. I make the pies.”
“Gus,” I shook her hand briefly. “I made the pasta salad, though if it finds its way to the trash before dinner, you might save a few lives.”
She smiled politely, her laughs apparently saved for her brother and her grins for her fiery companion beside her. What she did give me was a skeptical eye. “I thought Alta called you Harper?”
“That she does,” I said, my mind catching on to the fact that her family knew what she called me. Did that mean they knew about us? “It’s actually Augustus Harper, but that’s a mouthful, so I let people call me what they want.”
“Ah.” She nodded, her quiet eyes spanning over me before momentarily catching her sister-in-law’s. “And the two of you are…”
So they didn’t know about us after all. The momentary disappointment I felt about that was silly. Of course they didn’t. Why would they when I was nothing more than a cling-on that threw himself at her?
I shook it off and shrugged as casually as I could. “I mean, we work together, but we’re friends also…” I trailed off lamely.
