Page 29 of Finding You

“Believe me, MacKenzie is most definitely down on her luck.”

“Where is she now? I can’t imagine you’d be speaking this freely if she were sitting right there with you.”

“Oh, um…Ashlynn Donovan and Avery Hudson sort of took her under their wings and invited her out for a girls’ night.” He shook his head. “It’s kind of nice that people are reaching out and befriending her.”

“Especially if she’s considering staying.”

Yeah, he wasn’t about to get into that right now. Instead, he changed the subject. “So tell me what’s new with the clinic!”

“So…wait…they were doing it on the dining room table?” Ashlynn asked with wide-eyed disbelief.

MacKenzie nodded. “Yup. That table used to belong to my Nana, but there was no way I was ever going to take it with me, because…” She shuddered dramatically.

“I’m not sure which part of that offends me more,” Avery pondered. “The cheating or the cheating explicitly on top of your grandmother’s table! I mean…some things you just don’t do.”

“Absolutely,” Billie Donovan agreed as she reached for her wineglass. “I hate that you had to deal with that, but I’m so glad that you knew it was time to go. Some people stay way too long and make far too many excuses for a boyfriend’s bad behavior.”

“The thing is, Kevin and I were done so long ago, but neither of us actually bothered to move out.” She shrugged. “I know that makes me sound pathetic, but…”

“Not pathetic,” Chloe Donovan–Ashlynn’s twin sister–commented. “I’m sure you had your reasons. Everything’s so expensive now, it probably just made sense to stay where you were.”

“We weren’t sleeping in the same room or anything,” she explained. “He got the couch.”

“Good for you,” Jade–who was engaged to Ashlynn’s brother Levi–said. “But I kind of feel that may be why he used the dining room table…”

MacKenzie couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe!”

There were eight of them hanging out in Billie’s living room. There was music playing softly in the background, the wine was flowing, and the whole charcuterie thing covered most of the kitchen. There were all kinds of Italian meats and cheeses, olives, vegetables, crackers, cheese spreads, pickles, and then desserts.

Speaking of…

MacKenzie reached for a double fudge cake pop. “Have I mentioned how much I love everything you bake?” she asked Billie with a huge grin. “Seriously, I would willingly forgo eating a balanced meal if I could just have any of the cakes you bake!”

Everyone laughed and began discussing their favorite treats from Books & Beans before the conversation turned toward other favorite foods. And the entire time, they were all refilling their plates with yummy things from the charcuterie table.

“You know,” MacKenzie began a few minutes later, “back home–in Syracuse–one of my co-workers made her lunch like this every day. It was like a culinary event for her.” Pausing, she took a sip of her wine. “I never understood the appeal until now. Clearly I just wasn’t doing it right.”

“You can really put anything on the board that you want,” Ashlynn told her. “Reid and I tend to make one every Saturday night while we watch a movie. Sometimes we make it a dinner board, other times a dessert one.”

“Ooo…remember the s’mores one we did when we went camping back in March?” Jade asked.

“Don’t try to make that sound like a fun memory,” Ashlynn murmured. “It was freezing out and there was no need to go camping!”

“Oh, stop,” Chloe said with a small laugh. “It wasn’t that bad.”

All Ashlynn did was snort.

“What am I missing?” MacKenzie asked the group.

“Well…” Billie began hesitantly. “We took a family camping trip, but since neither me or Chloe are big on that, we sort of went overboard on supplies to be comfortable.”

“It was like glamping,” Chloe explained.

“Right. Glamping,” Ashlynn huffed before facing MacKenzie. “The two of them rented a camper while the rest of us had tents and sleeping bags! And it had electricity and everything and while the rest of us were sleeping on lumpy ground and freezing, the two of them were snug in their beds while binge-watching HGTV!”

“Glamping?” MacKenzie asked in mild confusion. “That’s really a thing?”

“You’ve really led a sheltered life,” Avery said with a grin. “Oh! That’s what we should do for our next big girls’ night adventure! Make it a weekend of glamping! We’ll rent a couple of those camper things and do the s’mores charcuterie board and roast marshmallows and…”

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