Page 82 of The Write Stuff

I made a face. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Because it was obvious from the first night that you guys had unfinished business,” Bree replied.

“Plus, you just sparked when you were together,” Bella added. “You had energy whenever you were around one another, although I think you guys believed that it was bad energy at the start.”

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I cast Wylie a sidelong look. She appeared as baffled as me.

“Well, I guess that’s good.” I focused on my menu.

Wylie, however, gave her attention to Hayley. “Is Lucy still mad at me? She hasn’t talked to me in days.”

“Don’t worry about Lucy,” Hayley replied. “We had a long talk about how obnoxious she was to you — trying to blackmail her own sister is not allowed — and we’re working on her attitude.”

I cast Hayley a surprised look. “You’re working on it together?”

“We are,” she confirmed. “She might not know it yet, but we totally are.”

If anybody could get Lucy on the straight and narrow, it was Hayley. I had no idea what their relationship looked like — seriously, how could Hayley put up with Lucy? — but I applauded the fact that somebody was working on it other than Wylie. It was what had to happen.

“We’re spending the weekend at my house,” I volunteered. “You have all the space in the world to whip her into shape this weekend.”

“She’s coming around,” Hayley insisted, giving Wylie a sympathetic look. “You did the right thing with her. You had to put your foot down. She’s a sweet person, deep down —”

“Way deep down,” I muttered.

She ignored me. “She just has Little Sister Syndrome. She sees you as being the perfect child, your mother’s favorite, and she’s built up a victim complex in her head,” Hayley explained to Wylie. “She really is coming around. It might take a little more time, though.”

Wylie blew out a hefty sigh. “Well, I’m glad she has you.” She leaned closer to me, and I kissed the top of her head.

Talk turned to everybody’s weekend plans, and before I realized it, Wylie had volunteered ours.

“So, you’re going to be in our territory this weekend, huh?” Bree looked between us, and I could practically hear the gears in her mind working.

“No, we’re going to be at my house,” I countered. “Alone. No visitors.”

She snorted. “I’ll visit if I want. I was just thinking that Wylie could help me change Gertrude’s clothes. It’s time for her to get decked out in her finest red, white, and blue ensemble.”

I groaned. “I thought you were taking her.”

“I can’t take her until I know where I’m going to put her,” Bree replied. “I’ve already used the birdbath exclusion. I have a call in with a guy to see if we can turn her into a water filtration system for a pond.”

“You’re going to put a pond in your yard?” That seemed like a lot of work to own the HOA.

“Oh, she has a whole list of ‘improvements’ she wants to do in our yard,” Brody replied. He looked less than thrilled. “It’s going to be a long summer.”

“You love it and you know it,” Bree fired back.

“I love you. That’s enough.”

The others laughed at the schmaltz, but I grew contemplative. I knew it was too soon to love Wylie. Still, something inside of me yearned. For the first time in my life, I wanted to fall in love with someone, I realized.

When I looked over at her, she was smiling. Light somehow bathed her face and made her look like an angel. That’s when things became clearer.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to fall in love before. It was that I could never fathom it. Now I could. I felt open because of it.

I continued rubbing her back, basking in my epiphany. Things were finally going in the right direction for me. There was a pathway for me to get everything I never knew I wanted. It would mean getting past our mothers, though, and I had no doubt that my mother would be more difficult than Aggie.

I had to start figuring things out on that front, and sooner rather than later.