I take that back. What you need is a dictionary. Clearly, you don’t know what the word means.
Jillian
Or I could Google it?
Her mom sent her a facepalm emoji that made Jillian laugh out loud before slipping her phone back in her pocket. When she looked up, her gaze caught on the hint of dark hair against a white collar and wide shoulders moving through the crowd.
She rubbed her hands over her biceps in an attempt to tame the strange tingling waking up all of her nerve endings.Weird.He looked like Levi Bright. Just the simple thought of him prompted her mouth to tip up in a smile, her heart to speed up.Haven’t thought about him in a long time.Giving her head a slight shake, she reminded herself that she was here to grab her friend and get out, not get mired down in the past—on the dance floor or in her head. She’d lost more hours than she could count in her teenage years thinking about Levi or writing about him in her diary.
She really needed some sleep. The lodge wasn’t opening for another month. They’d decided to open on the first of June so they could make sure everything was ready to operate at full capacity. This also allowed her to do a trial run of hosting an event there to see if it was feasible. It’d been Jillian’s suggestion to start with a kids’ overnight camp before the end of the school year, because really, were there any judges harsher than eight- and nine-year-olds?
Lainey bounced over to her, bumping her,hard,with her hip. Jillian straightened off the wall, stopped herself from falling.
“You lift weights with your hips or what? You could knock someone out like that.”
Lainey laughed, lifting her long arms in the air and letting her gorgeous, uniquely designed bracelets slide down until they stopped at her elbows.
“These hips can do wonderful things. Come dance,” Lainey said, shaking said hips.
Dressed in a body-hugging red sheath dress with little silver sparkles catching in the rays of the disco light, her friend looked stunning. Six feet tall without the three-inch heels, she had cropped hair that winged out at the ends, accentuating her sharp jaw and cradling her beautiful face. On a regular day, Jillian felt like a shrimp next to her, but tonight, dressed for comfort and bed, she also felt a bit frumpy. She pushed the thought away, blaming the sudden and uncharacteristic moment of insecurity on being in a high school.
“I need to get home. You texted, said ‘save me.’ I’m here.”
Lainey wrapped her arms around Jill. “Like a perfect best friend.”
She pulled back and Jillian caught just a hint ofsomethingin her gaze. Enough something to make her skin itch.
“Time to go, right?” Jillian said, taking a few steps forward.
“So, you’ll never guess who’s here.”
Jillian looked around before sending her friend a wry smile. “Most of the 2012 graduating class?”
Lainey bit her lip, a total tell. Jillian’s head whipped around, scanning the crowd. Who else would be here? That lip bite meant Lainey had boxed Jillian into something “for her own good.”
It’d started in their teens when Lainey had “helpfully” arranged for Jillian to have a private goodbye with the aforementioned Levi, who left town at seventeen—to Jillian’s fifteen—to pursue his culinary dreams. Of course, neither of them could have predicted that the goodbye would go down in history as one of Jillian’s most embarrassing moments. Ever. In her life. Though, Lainey’s “help” wasn’t always bad. During a visit after Ollie was born, Lainey secretly blocked WebMD from her phone.That had saved Jill a lot of diagnosing she shouldn’t have been doing anyway. Then there was the time, when they were teenagers, Lainey pretended to hurt her ankle so Jillian would be forced to drive them onto the ferry for the first time. Or, more recently, when she’d convinced Jillian to go for an overnight girls’ trip in Michigan by teasing her with a trip to Costco. Jillian braced herself for whatever her friend had in store. When Lainey continued to smile, her head tipping to the side, Jillian’s skin prickled.
“What did you do? Am I going to have to bury your body or someone else’s on the way home?”
Lainey put an arm around Jilly’s shoulder and looked straight ahead and, like they’d choreographed it, Graham Bennett, a former colleague and friend in the loosest sense of the word, approached. As usual, he wore a soft-looking sweater that highlighted his trim, athletic build. His smile was worthy of a toothpaste commercial and his hair was definitely more styled than her own. He was good-looking, sweet, and nice. And she had absolutely zero interest in dating him. Which Lainey knew.
“Hi, Graham,” Jill said, doing her best not to pat down the nest of hair on her head or appear more awkward than she probably looked.
“Jilly. I was hoping for a dance with you tonight.”
Lainey had stepped to the side as soon as he joined them and was now mouthing,Just do itbehind Graham’s back.
“That’s very sweet. I’m not staying, though. I’m sorry.”
The way his smile dropped always made her feel bad, but pretending she had interest when she didn’t would make her feel worse.
Lainey’s eye roll was cut short when Graham turned and shrugged. “We tried. Nice to see you, Lainey.”
Shaking her head, Lainey came back to Jilly’s side as he walkedaway. “Why do you say no to someone who would bend over backward to make you happy?”
Jill scanned the crowd, looking for the straightest path out, and caught that same glimpse of dark hair and felt immediate awareness. How could she say yes to someone like Graham when just the thought of a man she hadn’t seen in ten years made her stomach muscles tighten and flutter? Or, more importantly, when she knew she couldn’t fully trust someone else until she regained her trust in herself?
“I’m perfectly happy, thank you. Can we go?”
