“Let me see…” she thumbed through a stack of papers. “The Wasserman/Rollins wedding?” She looked up questioningly, eyes shifting over to Oliver and giving him a tiny smile.
In response, Oliver’s fingers brushed over the tattoo on my back and dipped into the waist of my jeans. Emily watched us, taking in every bit of our intimate touches, before saying, “Everything is ready to go. Five p.m. wedding. A hundred guests. We’ll have it set up an hour beforehand.”
She handed me the paperwork. At the top, the bride and well, bride, were listed as A. Wasserman and G. Rollins.
“Is this your wedding? Are you guys getting married?”
“Oh, no.”
“We’re not getting married,” Oliver said with a cheeky grin, “yet.”
I rolled my eyes but I blushed anyway. “It’s for my friend Amber and her fiancé, Ginger. They live in New York now but Amber grew up in Allendale. Justin knows her.”
A small grin twisted her lips. “I bet.”
I glanced at Oliver. What was that about?
“How is Justin?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“Oh, you know he moved after high school. People had a hard time with his, you know, personal life. Not that I have any problems with it, but Oceanside has never been very open-minded.”
“No,” I said, remembering how my mother and I were basically run out of town after my father left. “No, it’s not. Well, I guess I don’t blame him for leaving. Any of the old gang still around?”
“Oh yeah, Paul actually manages the company. His uncle owns it. He’s back in the warehouse now.”
Paul. I’d kissed him at a bonfire in high school, but he was one of Justin’s biggest antagonists. He’d been friendly with Spencer back then, too.
“We really need to run,” I said, clutching the paperwork. “Everything looks great. I think the wedding should go off without a hitch on Saturday.”
Emily nodded. “I’m sure it will.”
“It was good to see you again.”
“You too, Heaven. I’ll tell Paul you came by. He’ll be very interested to hear about the details of the wedding.”
There was something about the way she said it that sounded like a warning. For what?
“Ugh,” I groaned when we were back in the car. “Running into people like Emily make me remember why I hate this place.”
“She’s got a lot of opinions, that’s for sure,” he said, shifting his car in gear.
“She always has.”
Oliver backed out of the parking lot and two figures standing by the warehouse door caught my attention. Emily and Paul watched us drive away. The look on their faces made me uneasy—probably just leftover feelings from the past. There was a reason Justin and I used Emily and her group of friends to spread the rumor about the two of us having sex. They were gossips and shit-stirrers. One thing was for certain; I didn’t trust these people then and I didn’t trust them now.
With summer on the horizon, the afternoon warmed up. To my surprise, Oliver took the rest of the day off, encouraging me to lounge with him by the pool.
“We have to pick up Anderson in three hours.”
“We can do a lot of things in three hours. Lying by the pool is one of them.”
“If I get burned, Amber will kill me,” I said, after finally agreeing to stop by my apartment for my bathing suit.
“Don’t worry, babe. I’ll lather you up.”
I snorted. “I bet.”
Back at his house, I changed in the small bathing house adjacent to the pool. It wasn’t my first time in the pool. The summer after graduation we spent hours here. Lounging, dreaming of college. But now that Oliver owned the house, it felt different. I felt less like a visitor and when I walked out of the small building adjusting the ties on my bikini, I had a sense of confidence I was unfamiliar with.