But more than anything, I really don’t like that I’m about to have to eat a whole truckload of crow.

Chapter Four

EVIE

“I don’t think it’s supposed to look like this,” I tell Joanna, stepping away from my easel to inspect it.

She leans around her own masterpiece (literally, it looks like it could hang in a museum somewhere) to look at my sorry painting. Honestly, it looks as if Charlie painted that bowl of

fruit. Not true—Charlie would have painted a better version. His attention to detail is impeccable.

Six weeks ago, when Joanna announced to me that she was going to be heading into retirement at the start of the new year, she decided that she needed to seek out a new hobby that could help occupy her time when she was a lady of leisure. Not sure why she felt the need to drag me along on her hobby-seeking adventure since I’ll be the one to absorb all of the work she’ll be giving up, but I’ve been along for the ride ever since.

So far, we’ve taken up power yoga (and then set it right back down), built a raised vegetable garden and planted ten different types of green plants before Jo decided that she didn’t like being in the sun so much and wanted an indoor hobby, and took two improv classes until the guy who never stepped out of his pirate character told me my hair was beautiful and that he’d like to see what it looked like on one of his dolls at home.

Yeah.

So, when Jo suggested we take up painting in the comfort of her kitchen while we sip white wine and listen to music, I was all for it.

Joanna scrunches her nose and shakes her head. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but I think you might be gettin’ worse.” I love her accent. It’s thicker than mine because she’s from the deep south of backwoods Alabama.

I give a short laugh. “No, don’t sugarcoat it for me. Be honest and tell me how you really feel, why don’t you?”

Jo flashes me a sassy grin. “Honey, you know I love you more than a stick of butter. I don’t need to lie to you about your artistic abilities to prove it.”

And I do know that she loves me, which is why her honesty never hurts. It’s why I’m laughing at her comment instead of silently brooding over it like I would if my mama would have made it. Because if Melony Jones would have said something like that, it would have been so I could see exactly where I fell short. Exactly why I needed to either hire the best private tutor and spend countless hours a week perfecting my technique so she could hang the finished product above her mantel for her supper club to ooh and ahh over, or hide it away forever, and for heaven’s sake, never let anyone know I have flaws.

By contrast, Jo stands up and fluffs her messy top knot—seriously, can I please have long, gorgeous, white hair like her when I grow up?!—and tops off my glass of wine before telling me to paint a line down the center of my orange.

“Then it’ll look like a big round butt,” she says with a satisfied smirk. “And that, darlin’, will make you laugh every single time you look at it.”

I nearly spit my wine back into my cup. Drinks are never safe with Jo. You never know when she’s going to say something that makes you shoot it out your nose.

“Where’s Gary tonight?” I ask later after she and I packed up our canvases and moved to the couch. Her painting looks like a masterpiece of bright, delectable fruit. Mine, a plump booty covered in an orange spray tan. “And why doesn’t he ever get dragged along on these hobby adventures?”

Gary is Joanna’s husband—and is just as likable as she is. He’s a sixty-six-year-old journalist who can work from anywhere and loves his job more today than he did the day he started thirty years ago. Joanna and Gary Halstead are just the sort of people to make my mama and daddy turn up their noses. Gracious me, do you mean he had to work for his money???

The Halsteads moved into the Charleston area about five years ago simply because they’d always wanted to live here. That was when Joanna founded Southern Service Paws. These people are as down to earth as the dirt itself.

I aspire to have what Jo and Gary have—the kind of love where a man will still walk into a room and pinch my butt after forty years of marriage. And I know this from witnessing it a few too many times for my liking.

A mischievous glint enters Jo’s eyes, and she wags her eyebrows playfully. “Gary’s not invited because I don’t like to mix my hobbies. And he already participates in a very favorite pastime of mine.”

“Ew,” I say, shoving my face into one of her oversized throw pillows dramatically.

Suddenly, I’m thirteen, and she’s my mama telling me about the birds and the bees. Except the irony is that Mama never actually told me about the birds and the bees. She gave me a book and walked away, because Melony Jones doesn’t have personal conversations.

I remove my face from the pillow and toss it at Jo instead. “Gross. I don’t want to know about your nighttime hobbies with Gary!”

She catches the pillow, laughing. I know she takes great amusement in the fact that I turn red easier than an albino on the beach with no sunscreen, because she always, always, always takes her inappropriate jokes a step further.

“I never said they are nighttime hobbies. Honestly, Evie, where’s your creativity? Thinking like that is going to give you the most boring marriage on the planet one day.”

La, la, la, not listening.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good inappropriate joke. But from the first day I met Joanna and Gary, they became the parents I never had—meaning, the parents I wish my current parents were. Because of this, I absolutely do not want to hear about my surrogate parents’ bedroom endeavors.

I curl up in a ball in the corner of Jo’s massive couch and shut my eyes. This day felt way too long, and now it’s catching up to me. “I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about the creativity in my marriage, because it’s starting to look like I’m going to die a lonely old maid. Just me and Charlie forever.”

Tags: Sarah Adams It Happened in Charleston Romance
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