“Would you like to spin the wheel of fortune?” she asks with a red-lipped smile.
“Sure, why not?”
She gives the wheel a turn and it spins dizzyingly fast before ticking down to a standstill.
Landing dead center on LOVE.
And like his penis before him, one handsome face pops directly into my brain.
The woman claps her hands. “Love! Glorious love.” She plucks a shot glass from the table. “Drink this, then say the name of your dearest love, loud and strong, and you will have a lifetime of joy and happiness.”
I don’t put any stock in this hokey, mumbo-jumbo, mystical stuff—but it’s a party. Where else can you let go, have fun, and let yourself believe in the patently unbelievable?
I peer into the cloudy-liquid-filled shot glass.
“What is it?”
For my twenty-first birthday some college friends bought me almost an entire bottle worth of tequila shots. I was sick for days and haven’t been able to touch the stuff since.
The North remembers—and so does my stomach.
The lady shields her mouth with her hand and says, “Vodka with a dash of lemon.”
Vodka works.
I lift the glass, then down the contents. After the liquid scorches a path of fire down my throat, I close my eyes and declare in a loud, clear, fearless voice, “Connor.”
Mere moments after the two syllables slip past my lips, a wind-chime pleasant voice pipes up from behind my shoulder.
“Connor who?”
A voice I realize with growing Michael Myers in the background level horror belongs to Callie Daniels. The woman married to Connor’s brother, Garrett. They both teach at the high school. They’re like the prom king and queen of the whole town.
Ermahgerd!
“Did you mean Connor Daniels?”
Slowly I turn, hoping with every fiber of my being that I’m wrong. My hope dies a quick but painful death when I come face-to-face with Callie Daniels’s friendly green eyes.
I force a swallow down my panic-narrowed throat and wave a sweaty-palmed hand as nonchalantly as I can manage.
“No. Not Connor Daniels. Definitely not. I meant another Connor.”
Callie’s light-blond brows furrow and her blond head tilts in curiosity.
“Oh. Another Connor?”
Lying isn’t a skill I possess. So, I literally say the first thing that pops into my head—it’s my only defense.
“From Tacoma.”
I never said it would be a good defense.
Callie squints. I don’t blame her.
“Connor from Tacoma?”
“Yes.”
“Like, Tacoma, Washington?”
When I was twelve, my neighbor, Noah Jarvis, convinced me to run across Highway 9 to the Dunkin’ Donuts on the other side. Halfway across the southbound lane, Noah panicked, turned around, and tried to run back.
He got hit by a Range Rover and spent the whole summer in traction.
Moral of the story? The only way through is forward—always stick with the plan.
“Yep . . . that’s where Tacoma is.”
“Really?” she asks, like she absolutely doesn’t believe me but is too nice to say so.
And that’s when I cave. Because lying is just too exhausting. The inconvenient truth tears out of me in a rapid-fire burst.
“Okay, no—not really. I meant Connor Daniels. But for the love of God, you can’t say anything! To anyone!”
Callie says nothing for a few seconds. She just stares at me, looking me over, a slow, sly smile sliding onto her pretty face.
“This is fantastic!”
“No one!” I stop short of screeching—but it’s close.
“Connor is my brother-in-law. I could introduce you.”
I rub my hands over my face—because she’s not listening to a word I’m saying.
“Violet works at the hospital. She’s a nurse.”
Lainey Burrows has entered the chat. Coming up beside me and Callie—and she’s not helping either.
Because news of my occupation just delights Callie Daniels even more.
“That’s perfect!” she says. “So you and Connor must know each other already?”
I grab their arms and drag the three of us into a tighter triangle in the corner, to keep the sound of our voices contained and knowledge of my mortifying crush drowned out by the beat of the music.
“Yes, we know each other. We work together. So you have to swear to me—woman to woman, Girl Scout pledge, sisterhood of the traveling vagina level swear—that you won’t tell anyone what you have learned here tonight. Especially NOT your husband. And it can’t be one of those ‘Oh, honey, I’m going to tell you something but you have to promise not to mention it to your brother’ kind of things that I know all you married people do, because it never works! He’s a man—he’ll talk.”
“It’s true.” Lainey says, slurring a little behind the big silver straw in her giant pink-concoction-filled Bride goblet. “Garrett came over to the house the other day so he and Dean could have a ‘strategy session’ for the upcoming football season. But all they did was gossip about which of their players was dating who and which one of them was most likely to get dumped before the first game. They were like little old ladies.”
“See! You can’t say anything, Callie. You don’t understand.”