Page 13 of That One Night
“So what’s next?” Maisie asked.
“I guess I avoid the guy next door for the rest of the summer.”
Maisie laughed again. “I meant on the list.”
“You know what’s next. You wrote it.” Emery pulled the list out of her pocket. After sneaking upstairs, she’d put a big tick next toGo Skinny Dipping. “Number two. Get a tattoo,” she read out.
“You don’t have to do them in order,” Maisie said. “You’re so regimented. The whole point of the list is to help you lighten up. You don’t have to treat it like an assignment.”
“Have you met me?” Emery asked her. “Of course I’m going to treat it like that.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Maisie sounded almost gleeful. “But maybe we should move them around. Put the tattoo later. I know you, you’ll never do it.”
“I don’t actually want to do any of them,” Emery told her. “Especially after what happened today.”
“But isn’t a tiny piece of you glad you did?” Maisie sounded almost sad. Like her plan wasn’t working. “Isn’t it nice to do something that you know your asshole ex would hate?”
Emery couldn’t help but smile at her friend’s vehemence. “Maybe…”
“Then try to do some more. For me. I hate being so far from you. I just want you to remember who you are. How much fun you can be when you don’t have Trenton weighing you down.”
“I’m trying,” Emery told her. “I really am.” She swallowed hard, because she knew Maisie was right. “I promise by the end of the summer I’ll have them all done.”
“Even number seven?” Maisie asked, sounding more than a little smug.
Kiss a man who isn’t your ex.
Emery swallowed. “Even number seven.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was charged. Hopeful. And just a little terrifying.
Chapter
Five
Hendrix handedeach of his brothers a beer, then took a sip of his own. It was almost six, and he’d arrived back at his cottage to find them waiting for him, their cars parked in his driveway. Frank was nowhere to be seen, no doubt having found somewhere cool to sleep the afternoon away.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked Pres and Marley. They looked like they’d both come straight from work – Pres from the construction site, and Marley from the fire station where he was the chief.
And as much as he loved them both, he knew they wouldn’t just casually drop in on their little brother for the fun of it.
“Mom asked us to check on you,” Pres admitted sheepishly, taking a mouthful of beer. Pres and Marley were twins. Thirty-four, loud, loyal, and completely incapable of minding their own business. And like most twins, they came as a set. They were also both married with kids, much to their mom’s delight.
He’d always been the wildcard, the one his mom lost sleep over. Even at twenty-nine, he was still the worry line on her forehead. All he knew was that she worried about him often. And he didn’t like it. He just wanted to live a quiet life.
“Well you can report back that I’m fine,” Hendrix told them.
“She’s all worked up with this charity thing,” Marley said, shrugging. She’d been working on creating a charity for the past two years, alongside their dad. From the start, as the three of them were growing up, their parents had made it clear they wanted their children to make their own way in life. That included them not inheriting their dad’s money from his rock music career before he settled down in his hometown.
Hendrix was fine with that. He didn’t want money he hadn’t earned himself, and he knew his brothers didn’t either. They both encouraged their mom to create the Hartson Foundation – her way of helping the homeless in West Virginia – by building shelters and apartments where those less fortunate could rebuild their lives.
“Mom hates you living out here all alone. She thinks you’re lonely,” Pres murmured, taking a seat on the swing that had been here when Hendrix moved in.
“She also thinks you’re living in squalor,” Marley added, his mouth curling at the thought.
“And she isn’t wrong,” Pres pointed out. “Heisliving in squalor. But he’s not lonely. Didn’t you see the pair of women’s panties at the top of his laundry pile?”
“You’re looking through my laundry?” Hendrix frowned. “You got some kind of dirty clothes fetish?”
