Page 30 of Best Served Cold

She hugs everyone, ending with me. Before she pulls away, she says, “I can feel you’ve been carrying around the stone I gave you. I’m glad, my boy. Good things are coming your way. There’ll be some bumps, but when aren’t there?”

I gape at her as she turns and leaves, and the rock feels like it’s become warm in my pocket. “She’s…”

“Brilliant,” Sophie says, with a warning note in her voice. It’s obvious she won’t tolerate anyone saying anything different.

“Yeah, I like her.”

Silence hangs for a beat. The natural thing would be to leave. I delivered my warning, I overstayed my welcome, possibly by a lot. My job here is done.

“I’d like to buy you a drink,” I tell Sophie before I can think twice about it.

“That’s nice, Rob,” she says. “But unnecessary. You already bought us tea the other day.”

“And tea cakes,” Hannah adds, lifting a finger. “We added those after you left and Dottie shared the news of your generosity.”

“You wanted to go out in your dress,” I point out.

“I still do, but we’re a package deal,” Sophie says, gesturing with her champagne flute at her cousin and her friend.

“You, yourself, and you, or you, Hannah, and Otis?”

“Both,” she says, but she’s smiling now. “I go nowhere without all four of them.”

“So, let’s all go. I’ll be your designated driver.”

“You haven’t had any champagne?” she asks, sounding surprised. She looks for my flute but doesn’t find it. Because I never claimed the one from the coffee table.

“No, I don’t drink alcohol.”

Sophie drops her champagne flute. It hits the porcelain plate beside her at exactly the wrong angle, and the thin, brittle porcelain cracks in half, leaving a fissure down the center of the eye.

“Oh no. That feels like bad luck,” she murmurs. She looks shaken by it, like luck isn’t a random thing, but a force guided by some invisible handler that’s taken a disliking to her. I understand the sentiment, but I’ve stopped believing in things like luck. I’ve had to.

“Nah, old things don’t last forever,” I say. “They’re not meant to.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want eyes staring at them in the middle of a special occasion anyway,” Otis says. “We can get Gram something normal.”

“So it was good luck,” I add, smiling at Sophie. “You don’t have to eat off a plate that’s watching you anymore.”

She laughs, but there’s something off about her, an unease that’s crept in. So I usher them out of the house and into my car. Otis calls shotgun, but I remind him it’s sort of Sophie’s wedding day. I open the door for her, and she looks up at me in surprise.

I have to laugh. “Let me guess. I’m an alcoholic, hard-partying loser who doesn’t do anything good without an angle or for money.”

She blushes as she settles into the seat, pulling in her lacy skirts after her. She looks like a cupcake. A greeting card.An invitation to sin.

I crush that last thought.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I know he’s a liar. I’m not sure why it keeps surprising me. I should just assume everything he said was a lie.”

“It wasn’t all a lie,” I admit. “Some of the things he said used to be true, and it would suit him to believe they still are.”

“He didn’t even tell me he had a brother,” Hannah interjects from the back seat. “He said he was an only child.”

I’m not sure why I care, after everything, but that hurts too. It’s like Jonah took an eraser and tried to rub out my existence.

“I knew he was a dick,” Otis says victoriously, and I reach into the back seat and high-five him—only realizing mid-act that I’m leaning directly over Sophie, so close I can feel the whisper of her lacy dress and the warmth of her breath against my flesh.

I can feel my body responding to her, awakening, and it’s disconcerting as hell. This is Sophie.Pollyanna. I remind myself of that fact again as I shut her door and circle around the car, sliding into the driver’s side.

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