T
1
HUCK
hat “Morning Mood” song is stuck in my
head.
I dip the kayak paddle into the water again, trying
to get the sound to match another song. Any other
song. Cotton-Eyed Joe. Anything. But my mind is
filled with that sunrise flute. It’s not surprising,
really, because it is pretty close to sunrise. Kind of
close, anyway. The sun’s been up for an hour,
maybe, and I’ve been out in this kayak the whole
time.
If I paddle in one direction, there it is—the stretch
of white-sand beach with the event stage on one
end. In the far distance I can see the outcropping
with the hidden pool where Roman’s famous
incident got rolling back in June. Charlie’s out here,
too, way down on the beach—running, as usual. In
the sand, like a masochist. He looks a bit more
relaxed, I guess. At least he’s got Leta here now.
Asher is another story. Asher is always another
story. And Charlie tends to trail off when he talks
about that whole thing, so we’ll have to wait and
see what happens with the resort after all.
What I can say is that I’m glad he’s not running for
hours at a time anymore. That was a bit much. I
appreciate a good workout as much as the next guy.
You don’t get abs like these—you know, kayaking
abs—from lounging around all day in a beach chair
like Beau.
Just kidding. Beau secretly works out early in the
morning so he can still maintain a small piece of his
image as the life of the party at Bliss. Even if he’s
not the toasted life of the party anymore, I can see
him doing this in thirty years. Hanging out. Having
a great time.
My heart seizes with dread at the thought of
spending thirty years here. I always knew I’d join
the family biz one day—who wouldn’t?—but now
that I’m back at the resort…
Well, there’s a reason I’ve been doing so much
kayaking and sailing and floating out on the water.
The reason is because it’s my job for the time
being. But the secondary reason is that I’ll
probably die if I settle into the office with Roman
or spend the rest of my life hosting parties like
Beau or hermit myself away in the finance building
like Charlie. Even Driver changed his life to be at
Bliss more.
I dig the paddle into the surface of the water and
take a deep breath. It’s too early in the morning to
be worried about that type of shit, and the sun on
Ruby Bay is really something else. The front of the
kayak comes around in a wide arc, giving me a
panoramic view. A tiny voice in my head says
kayak away, man, kayak into the sun, but all I’d
find on the other side of this body of water is a
rickety campground sandwiched between the ritzy
houses that pack themselves close to the shore.
So what do I do? I swing back toward Bliss. I’ve
still got time before the boathouse opens and the
guests filter down from their rooms and suites.
We’ve got some regulars from the club side, and
we’re nominally open to the public, and—
There’s a bride on the beach.
A bride.
My heart does a jagged flop up into my throat, such
a weird sensation that I almost gag on it. What the
hell did I miss? Is there a wedding going on at the
boathouse? Am I seeing things?
The paddle in the water jiggles under my hand and
the tip of the kayak swings too far to the shore, too
fast. All the kayaking and hauling on ropes has
obviously strengthened me past what I realized. I
blink long and slow. She’s still there. It’s not a
hallucination.
She turns toward me, raising one hand to shade her
eyes at the exact moment I dig in hard on the left
side to turn myself around. Too hard, like an idiot,
so my wrist turns awkwardly along with the rest of
my core. Fortune smiles upon me by sending an
errant wave in from the middle of the lake, where a
speedboat zips by, and the kayak dumps me into the
water as unceremoniously as anything else I’ve
ever done in my life.
Balls. Balls, it’s cold. Technically the water is
warm, with all the heat of the summer collected
near the shore, but out here it’s over my head and
frigid. Speaking of balls, mine react by shrieking
and pulling themselves upward with such force I
feel it start to cramp.
I kick hard for the surface, which is tough on
account of my seizing balls, and break into the
sunlight. The kayak is only about teen feet away,
floating underneath a rain of…laughter. And where
the hell did the paddle get to? Right. On the other
side of the kayak, where it’s at its most convenient.
“Balls.” I spit the word into the water and duck
under again, swimming under the kayak to get to
the paddle. Paddle. Boat. Me.
I know who’s laughing now. That voice can only
belong to one Katie Lennon, my best friend and
professional asshole.
All right, all right—she’s not always an asshole.
She’s usually funny and kind and quick to laugh
and all the many things I would want in a girlfriend,
if I was looking to destroy one of my oldest
friendships with a thing like that, which I am not.
I do the only possible maneuver to get myself back
into the kayak, and by the way, I pull it off
seamlessly, without my swim trunks coming off into
the waer. That would be too much for this moment.
Then I get the paddle from where I shoved it under
the kayak’s attached bungee cord and speed toward
the woman who is still doubled over on the dock,
laughing her ass off at me.
A few feet from the dock, I put out the paddle and
use it to balance the boat into a good enough
position to glare up at her. “How are you laughing?
I could have drowned.”
She stands up straight, white dress falling over her
honest-to-god perfect body, and tilts her face up
toward the sky. Katie takes a deep breath. Her
smile is so wide, and so brilliant, that it almost
strikes me down right here. Right back into the
damn water. “I mean—” Eyes closed like this, she
looks like something out of a painting. A goddess.
One could almost pretend that the tear on her
cheek was from some kind of rapture and not
busting a gut over the fact of me flipping a kayak.
“What was that, even?”
“A nautical accident. It could have been a
catastrophe, and here you are, laughing until you
cry. Some friend you are.”
She opens her eyes and looks down at me. “I’m
your best friend, jackass.”
“I am not a jackass,” I sniff. “You should be
profoundly relieved that—”
“Listen,” Katie says, smoothing down the front of
her dress, each word still punctuated by laughter. “I
need the day off.”
I do a double-take, which makes her laugh again.
Laugh…continuously. She hasn’t stopped, really.
“Today? You need today off?” I crane my neck to
look around at the sun. “Seems a little late to be—”
“Look, you know about the wedding.”
I do know about the wedding. I know about her
friend Libby’s wedding, because she’s been
hassling me about it since I got back to Bliss. The
wedding itself is going to be held in a church in
downtown Ruby Bay. The reception is at the VFW
hall, and the after party is at a suite at the resort.
“I know it’s next weekend.”
“Yeah, not so much.”
“Are you telling me…” I hold up a hand. “Are you
telling me you are in a wedding and got the dates
wrong?”
“I got the timing right, if that counts for anything.
We’re doing hair and makeup in the suite.”
“And you just found out about this now?”
“I found out about it last night. But I didn’t want to
bother you.” Katie makes such a stupid face when
she says this that I a burst of laughter bubbles up
and escapes me. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t care
that much about bothering you. But I knew you’d
make fun of me, and—”
“I would never.”
Katie sticks her tongue out at me, and it’s
completely at odds with her dress. “I’ll see you at
the after party.” She lifts the hem of her dress
delicately away from the dock and turns to go.
“Wait.”
She waits.
“Why are you dressed like the bride?” It is a white
dress. Thin straps. Fucking gorgeous.
Katie wrinkles her nose, and my heart does a loop
on the biggest roller coaster that can fit inside my
chest. “It’s a royal wedding thing. She liked the
look.” Then she narrows her eyes and grins at me.
A second loop. “Why? You like?”
Right there, with the sunlight in her hair and the
reflections from the water playing over that silky
fabric, I’m fresh out of sarcastic shit to say. “Yeah.
I do.”
“Well.” She flounces the hem of the dress again.
“Don’t fall in love with me because of the dress,
Huck. That would be so awkward.”
T
2
KATIE
he first thing I do at the poolside bar is look
for Huck.
Should I be looking for Huck? Probably not. It’s
still technically Libby’s wedding day, which means
we should all be pouring our energy toward the
bride and nothing else. That’s what friends are for.
But Libby has had her tongue down her new
husband’s throat since the moment we got on the
party bus. And now—now his tongue is down her
throat. They’ve switched it up. Good for them,
keeping it spicy. She and Jeff have been together
since I met her my second semester in college.
Libby—good ol’ Libs—has the kind of personality
that draws people to her like flies. Desperate,
grasping flies who need the warmth of a sunny
personality. I wouldn’t consider myself that
desperate. I mostly present as a fun-loving,
easygoing person, but maybe that’s just around
Huck.
Maybe that’s why I look for his dark hair and gray
eyes right away.
I’ll admit it—I’ve found a lot of…well, peace and
comfort in those eyes over the years. I wouldn’t say
I especially need peace and comfort in this
moment, since the party bus was well-stocked with
champagne and nobody knocked over any of the
decorative candles at the ceremony.
Old habits die hard, I guess.
I’m not really looking for the habit to die, by the
way. Don’t get the wrong impression. It has a
natural expiration date, which is the end of the
boating season at Bliss, which is…soon. This year,
Huck’s brother Roman told me when he hired me,
is a little different because of the weather. It was
warmer earlier in the summer. That meant nothing
at the time. But now it’s nearing mid-September
and still warm. The boathouse is still full of people
coming and going. When it’s done, I’ll go too.
Don’t ask me where I’ll go, because I don’t know
yet. That’s another thing Huck doesn’t know,
although we’ve talked about almost everything
else.
Everything except the way I feel when those eyes
settle on mine from where he stands across the
pool.
Yikes. A shiver rockets down the length of my
spine, and all around me, the other bridesmaids
shout woo!
I don’t know what we’re woo-ing at, but I join in
just in time. Oh—there. The woo signaled the
arrival of a tray full of shots.
“You ladies are my best bitches in the world,”
Libby cries. The sound of her voice surprises me
because she’s been so busy making out with Jeff
that she’s largely been silent since we left the VFW
hall. This event—this is where we’re all supposed
to cut loose. A celebration of the celebration,
Libby called it during the planning phase. Now that
we’re out by the pool in the unseasonably warm
September air, it makes more sense. We’ve
survived the battle of the ceremony and reception,
and now it’s time to celebrate friendship. “Let’s
drink,” she finishes, and then another woo goes up
around me. We do the shots.
I’m feeling loose. Feeling good. The dress looks
good on me—Huck was right. No, it looks better
than good. It looks great.
“How’d it go?”
My heart skips a beat, then goes thundering on
ahead, fueled by the shot. “Shit, you scared me.”
“I scared you?” Huck’s eyes dance in the light
from the pool. “You just waved me over here.”
“I totally didn’t.”
He sticks his hands in his pockets. “You beckoned
me with your eyes.”
“I beckoned—” Another curl of heat in my gut.
The vodka must be potent. “I looked around, that’s
all.”
“And I saw you, that’s all. And I came over,
because we’ve been friends since middle school—
do I really need to tell you all this?” Skepticism
flashes through his eyes. “What kind of wedding
was this?”
“Beautiful.” It comes out more like booful. Gotta
try again. “Beautiful. They’re very married.” The
thing is, I had more than one glass of champagne on
the way over. We all did.
“The second round is on me, too!” Libby shouts,
and there’s the bartender with another tray full of
drinks, decorated with tiny umbrellas. They’re
blended. Oh, man, they’re blended drinks, and
sweet enough to mask the taste of alcohol. The first
sip takes me straight back to middle school. We
used to go to the 7-Eleven two blocks down from
Ruby Bay High School and get Slurpees after
school. I can still feel the lift in my chest when the
bell rang and it was time to walk down to that
slightly dingy store and taste…freedom.
Plus, middle school is where I first met Huck.
The second sip is significantly less sweet.
Bittersweet. I swallow it anyway, though my throat
goes tight like an invisible fist has tightened its
fingers around my neck and hot tears congregate at
the corners of my eyes. I’ve gotten really, really
good at holding them behind a velvet line and
shoving them back into place. A wedding reception
after-party is no time to burst into tears. Right? It’s
Libby’s wedding day and we’re all having a great
time. The bartender turns up the music—a
throbbing beat by Pilot Five—and Jeff dips Libby
so he can better access the back of her throat with
his tongue.
I don’t love thinking about middle school. On the
one hand, seventh grade was the year my dad died
of a heart attack in the middle of the hardware
store. I never thought for a second that my dad
would die in a hardware store—he hardly ever went
to the hardware store—but that day he was running
an errand.
For me.
For school.
For a science project I never finished, but I’ll never
forget, either. We were going to make a model ski
hill together to demonstrate…I don’t know.
Something. Something that’s wiped clean out of my
memory, because obviously I wasn’t in school
when we turned in those projects, after all.
But I was in school later, when everybody gave me
a wide berth. Really wide. Too wide. It was like I
had an infectious disease. It was middle school.
And it was hell, right up until Huck sat down next
to me at lunch one day, his presence taking up the
rest of the empty table. It didn’t seem to matter to
him that we’d only had art class together a few
times. He talked to me like we were best friends.
So we were best friends.
I take another confident swig of the drink and
swallow down everything except what’s right in
front of me.
My friends, dancing at an after-party, all of us in
white dresses that look ethereal and lovely in the
light from the bar. Huck’s older brother Charlie, on
the other side of the pool, his arm around Leta, who
Huck told me about one day on the water. They’ve
got a story, that’s for sure. Unlike Huck and I, who
have never once broken up with each other. We’ve
never even dated, so that kind of removes that
possibility.
That’s a good thing, I tell myself.
“What are you doing?” Huck asks, a smile in his
voice and a familiar concern in his eyes. Why is it
so familiar when we hardly saw each other in
college? Why is it so easy to be with him like this?
Best friends, that’s why.
I raise my drink. “I’m celebrating. It’s after the
party. It’s the after party.” My tongue feels strange
in my mouth, the words slipping out in odd forms.
But I probably sound normal. A hundred percent
normal. “Why are you here, anyway? And without
a drink?” I raise my hand in the air and snap my
fingers. “Let’s get this man a drink.”
Nobody hears, except for Huck. “You invited me,
remember? See you at the after party? You’ve
been talking about it for days.”
“Have not.”
“Have so. Only sober you forgot the date of the
wedding, so—”
“Shhh.” I shush him loudly, pressing one finger to
his absurdly perfect lips. “If you’re going to be
here, you’re going to dance.”
A sly smile grows under my fingertip, and my entire
soul fixates on it. “Don’t tempt me, Katie Lennon.
I’ll dance all night.”
I don’t know where I am.
Huck’s words still echo in my ears, especially the
all night part, but it’s something different that woke
me up. The gentle slide of a door on carpet. Yes.
Fresh carpet, carpet that hasn’t been worn down,
against the underside of a door.
What door is the question.
I open one eye, a tiny slit.
Oof.
That’s some sun.
“Before you accuse me of kidnapping you,” Huck
says, “you should know that you came here of your
own free will.”
Huck’s voice. Huck’s scent on the sheets.
This is Huck’s bed.
I want to leap up and gather the blankets to my
chest, but I can’t feel what I’m wearing or not
wearing and also I have a rip-roaring hangover that
makes the idea of bolting upright especially
repulsive.
“Oh my god,” I groan into the pillow. “What am I
doing here?”
There’s a featherlight dip of the bed beside me, and
I wrench my neck around to discover that Huck has
placed a breakfast tray on the other side of the
extremely rumpled sheets.
“You’re going to eat breakfast in bed,” he says, as
if this is the most obvious thing in the entire world.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
S
3
HUCK
he’s all rumpled, with pink cheeks and
bright eyes, and the last thing I want to do is
have sex with her. Definitely not. Definitely
not now, in my employee bungalow, after an
evening of watching her in that dress. Like a bride.
She really did look like a bride. I don’t think I’ll
ever forget the way she looked in the glowing
morning light in that dress, standing on the dock
like something out of a wedding photographer’s
commercial. They’ve been doing a lot with drones
lately, which is frankly fucking ridiculous, but I
wouldn’t mind some permanent drone footage of
Katie standing on the dock.
Anyway.
She runs her fingers through her hair, flipping it to
the other side of the pillow and giving me a full
view of the half of her face that’s not pressed into
the pillow. Rumpled wasn’t the right word for it.
She’s tangled in my sheets like the sheets
themselves dragged her down from heaven. Katie
wore a slip underneath her dress last night, and it’s
the only thing between her skin and the bedding,
from what I saw last night. Only now she’s
unselfconscious, blinking up at me, just surfacing
from sleep. My heart thumps like a too-fast car
skidding over potholes and my palms burn. My
palms. “You totally didn’t have to do this.”
“My last name is Bliss. Do you think I’m allowed
to slack on…” I wave vaguely in the air.
“Hosting?” Katie’s voice is waterlogged with sleep,
and she clears her throat.
“Yes. Hosting.” It’s true. I have never been allowed
to slack on hosting, and the thought of doing it
forever is what’s been keeping me out in a kayak
most mornings since I’ve been back. I’ve heard tell
that if you never quite dock at the shore, you never
have to go into an office and spend the rest of your
life in a family business that you didn’t really
choose, but— “And I’ve already cooked.”
At this moment, the family business has granted me
with a rent-free bungalow, and Katie is in my bed.
She lifts her head from the pillow to look at the
cereal and toast on the tray. I watch her expression
flicker through a combo of bemusement and
surprise and hangover that gets me, straight through
the heart.
“It’s right, isn’t it?”
She glances back up at me. “Yeah, a hundred
percent. Totally right. I can’t believe you remember
how I like my toast. Either that or your toaster
sucks.”
“My toaster is top of the line.” She laughs.
“Maybe. I wasn’t really paying attention. It came
with the unit.”
“Came with the unit,” Katie echoes. “You didn’t
want to pick out your own toaster when you came
back?” She drops her head back down on the pillow
and closes her eyes. It’s ridiculously intimate,
dangerously intimate. We were best friends from
middle school onward and I’ve never seen her like
this before.
Not until last night.
“I didn’t know if I’d be staying.” I sit down on the
edge of the bed, and my entire body—every inch of
my skin, every muscle—pulls tight to the concrete-
hard knowledge that I could have slept here, this
bed, last night.
I could have slept here all night.
I did sleep here, in the beginning, because I was
worried she might be sick. I wanted to be close by.
But the hairspray and silk lingerie smell of her—
with the one-of-a-kind sunshine scent of her skin
underneath—made it fucking impossible. Maybe if
I’d been drinking, too, but like an idiot I was stone-
cold sober. And breathing her in all night like that
pulled me dangerously close to a line I’m not going
to cross with her.
I can’t cross it with her. The couch in the living
room sucks, is what I’m saying. It looks nice on the
surface but underneath it’s nothing but hard
cushion and springs.
She opens her eyes again. “What do you mean, you
didn’t know if you’d be staying?”
“Just…” I shrug one shoulder. “Just considering all
the options. For after the summer.”
Katie purses her lips. “I don’t believe you. And it’s
already fall, so…”
“Your cereal is getting soggy.”
“Oh, isn’t it always?” She rolls her eyes, an
exasperated smile curving the corners of her lips.
“Hear me on this.” I put a hand out and rest it on
cycek77
Arkusze
E-book english 
LOVE ON YOU A BLISS BROTHERS NOVEL
AMELIA WILDE
CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Epilogue Connect with Amelia Also by Amelia Wilde
T 1 HUCK hat “Morning Mood” song is stuck in my head. I dip the kayak paddle into the water again, trying to get the sound to match another song. Any other song. Cotton-Eyed Joe. Anything. But my mind is filled with that sunrise flute. It’s not surprising, really, because it is pretty close to sunrise. Kind of close, anyway. The sun’s been up for an hour, maybe, and I’ve been out in this kayak the whole time. If I paddle in one direction, there it is—the stretch of white-sand beach with the event stage on one end. In the far distance I can see the outcropping with the hidden pool where Roman’s famous incident got rolling back in June. Charlie’s out here,
too, way down on the beach—running, as usual. In the sand, like a masochist. He looks a bit more relaxed, I guess. At least he’s got Leta here now. Asher is another story. Asher is always another story. And Charlie tends to trail off when he talks about that whole thing, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the resort after all. What I can say is that I’m glad he’s not running for hours at a time anymore. That was a bit much. I appreciate a good workout as much as the next guy. You don’t get abs like these—you know, kayaking abs—from lounging around all day in a beach chair like Beau. Just kidding. Beau secretly works out early in the morning so he can still maintain a small piece of his image as the life of the party at Bliss. Even if he’s not the toasted life of the party anymore, I can see him doing this in thirty years. Hanging out. Having a great time. My heart seizes with dread at the thought of spending thirty years here. I always knew I’d join the family biz one day—who wouldn’t?—but now that I’m back at the resort… Well, there’s a reason I’ve been doing so much kayaking and sailing and floating out on the water. The reason is because it’s my job for the time being. But the secondary reason is that I’ll
probably die if I settle into the office with Roman or spend the rest of my life hosting parties like Beau or hermit myself away in the finance building like Charlie. Even Driver changed his life to be at Bliss more. I dig the paddle into the surface of the water and take a deep breath. It’s too early in the morning to be worried about that type of shit, and the sun on Ruby Bay is really something else. The front of the kayak comes around in a wide arc, giving me a panoramic view. A tiny voice in my head says kayak away, man, kayak into the sun, but all I’d find on the other side of this body of water is a rickety campground sandwiched between the ritzy houses that pack themselves close to the shore. So what do I do? I swing back toward Bliss. I’ve still got time before the boathouse opens and the guests filter down from their rooms and suites. We’ve got some regulars from the club side, and we’re nominally open to the public, and— There’s a bride on the beach. A bride. My heart does a jagged flop up into my throat, such a weird sensation that I almost gag on it. What the hell did I miss? Is there a wedding going on at the boathouse? Am I seeing things?
The paddle in the water jiggles under my hand and the tip of the kayak swings too far to the shore, too fast. All the kayaking and hauling on ropes has obviously strengthened me past what I realized. I blink long and slow. She’s still there. It’s not a hallucination. She turns toward me, raising one hand to shade her eyes at the exact moment I dig in hard on the left side to turn myself around. Too hard, like an idiot, so my wrist turns awkwardly along with the rest of my core. Fortune smiles upon me by sending an errant wave in from the middle of the lake, where a speedboat zips by, and the kayak dumps me into the water as unceremoniously as anything else I’ve ever done in my life. Balls. Balls, it’s cold. Technically the water is warm, with all the heat of the summer collected near the shore, but out here it’s over my head and frigid. Speaking of balls, mine react by shrieking and pulling themselves upward with such force I feel it start to cramp. I kick hard for the surface, which is tough on account of my seizing balls, and break into the sunlight. The kayak is only about teen feet away, floating underneath a rain of…laughter. And where the hell did the paddle get to? Right. On the other side of the kayak, where it’s at its most convenient.
“Balls.” I spit the word into the water and duck under again, swimming under the kayak to get to the paddle. Paddle. Boat. Me. I know who’s laughing now. That voice can only belong to one Katie Lennon, my best friend and professional asshole. All right, all right—she’s not always an asshole. She’s usually funny and kind and quick to laugh and all the many things I would want in a girlfriend, if I was looking to destroy one of my oldest friendships with a thing like that, which I am not. I do the only possible maneuver to get myself back into the kayak, and by the way, I pull it off seamlessly, without my swim trunks coming off into the waer. That would be too much for this moment. Then I get the paddle from where I shoved it under the kayak’s attached bungee cord and speed toward the woman who is still doubled over on the dock, laughing her ass off at me. A few feet from the dock, I put out the paddle and use it to balance the boat into a good enough position to glare up at her. “How are you laughing? I could have drowned.” She stands up straight, white dress falling over her honest-to-god perfect body, and tilts her face up toward the sky. Katie takes a deep breath. Her
smile is so wide, and so brilliant, that it almost strikes me down right here. Right back into the damn water. “I mean—” Eyes closed like this, she looks like something out of a painting. A goddess. One could almost pretend that the tear on her cheek was from some kind of rapture and not busting a gut over the fact of me flipping a kayak. “What was that, even?” “A nautical accident. It could have been a catastrophe, and here you are, laughing until you cry. Some friend you are.” She opens her eyes and looks down at me. “I’m your best friend, jackass.” “I am not a jackass,” I sniff. “You should be profoundly relieved that—” “Listen,” Katie says, smoothing down the front of her dress, each word still punctuated by laughter. “I need the day off.” I do a double-take, which makes her laugh again. Laugh…continuously. She hasn’t stopped, really. “Today? You need today off?” I crane my neck to look around at the sun. “Seems a little late to be—” “Look, you know about the wedding.” I do know about the wedding. I know about her friend Libby’s wedding, because she’s been
hassling me about it since I got back to Bliss. The wedding itself is going to be held in a church in downtown Ruby Bay. The reception is at the VFW hall, and the after party is at a suite at the resort. “I know it’s next weekend.” “Yeah, not so much.” “Are you telling me…” I hold up a hand. “Are you telling me you are in a wedding and got the dates wrong?” “I got the timing right, if that counts for anything. We’re doing hair and makeup in the suite.” “And you just found out about this now?” “I found out about it last night. But I didn’t want to bother you.” Katie makes such a stupid face when she says this that I a burst of laughter bubbles up and escapes me. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t care that much about bothering you. But I knew you’d make fun of me, and—” “I would never.” Katie sticks her tongue out at me, and it’s completely at odds with her dress. “I’ll see you at the after party.” She lifts the hem of her dress delicately away from the dock and turns to go. “Wait.”
She waits. “Why are you dressed like the bride?” It is a white dress. Thin straps. Fucking gorgeous. Katie wrinkles her nose, and my heart does a loop on the biggest roller coaster that can fit inside my chest. “It’s a royal wedding thing. She liked the look.” Then she narrows her eyes and grins at me. A second loop. “Why? You like?” Right there, with the sunlight in her hair and the reflections from the water playing over that silky fabric, I’m fresh out of sarcastic shit to say. “Yeah. I do.” “Well.” She flounces the hem of the dress again. “Don’t fall in love with me because of the dress, Huck. That would be so awkward.”
T 2 KATIE he first thing I do at the poolside bar is look for Huck. Should I be looking for Huck? Probably not. It’s still technically Libby’s wedding day, which means we should all be pouring our energy toward the bride and nothing else. That’s what friends are for. But Libby has had her tongue down her new husband’s throat since the moment we got on the party bus. And now—now his tongue is down her throat. They’ve switched it up. Good for them, keeping it spicy. She and Jeff have been together since I met her my second semester in college. Libby—good ol’ Libs—has the kind of personality that draws people to her like flies. Desperate, grasping flies who need the warmth of a sunny personality. I wouldn’t consider myself that
desperate. I mostly present as a fun-loving, easygoing person, but maybe that’s just around Huck. Maybe that’s why I look for his dark hair and gray eyes right away. I’ll admit it—I’ve found a lot of…well, peace and comfort in those eyes over the years. I wouldn’t say I especially need peace and comfort in this moment, since the party bus was well-stocked with champagne and nobody knocked over any of the decorative candles at the ceremony. Old habits die hard, I guess. I’m not really looking for the habit to die, by the way. Don’t get the wrong impression. It has a natural expiration date, which is the end of the boating season at Bliss, which is…soon. This year, Huck’s brother Roman told me when he hired me, is a little different because of the weather. It was warmer earlier in the summer. That meant nothing at the time. But now it’s nearing mid-September and still warm. The boathouse is still full of people coming and going. When it’s done, I’ll go too. Don’t ask me where I’ll go, because I don’t know yet. That’s another thing Huck doesn’t know, although we’ve talked about almost everything else.
Everything except the way I feel when those eyes settle on mine from where he stands across the pool. Yikes. A shiver rockets down the length of my spine, and all around me, the other bridesmaids shout woo! I don’t know what we’re woo-ing at, but I join in just in time. Oh—there. The woo signaled the arrival of a tray full of shots. “You ladies are my best bitches in the world,” Libby cries. The sound of her voice surprises me because she’s been so busy making out with Jeff that she’s largely been silent since we left the VFW hall. This event—this is where we’re all supposed to cut loose. A celebration of the celebration, Libby called it during the planning phase. Now that we’re out by the pool in the unseasonably warm September air, it makes more sense. We’ve survived the battle of the ceremony and reception, and now it’s time to celebrate friendship. “Let’s drink,” she finishes, and then another woo goes up around me. We do the shots. I’m feeling loose. Feeling good. The dress looks good on me—Huck was right. No, it looks better than good. It looks great. “How’d it go?”
My heart skips a beat, then goes thundering on ahead, fueled by the shot. “Shit, you scared me.” “I scared you?” Huck’s eyes dance in the light from the pool. “You just waved me over here.” “I totally didn’t.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “You beckoned me with your eyes.” “I beckoned—” Another curl of heat in my gut. The vodka must be potent. “I looked around, that’s all.” “And I saw you, that’s all. And I came over, because we’ve been friends since middle school— do I really need to tell you all this?” Skepticism flashes through his eyes. “What kind of wedding was this?” “Beautiful.” It comes out more like booful. Gotta try again. “Beautiful. They’re very married.” The thing is, I had more than one glass of champagne on the way over. We all did. “The second round is on me, too!” Libby shouts, and there’s the bartender with another tray full of drinks, decorated with tiny umbrellas. They’re blended. Oh, man, they’re blended drinks, and sweet enough to mask the taste of alcohol. The first sip takes me straight back to middle school. We
used to go to the 7-Eleven two blocks down from Ruby Bay High School and get Slurpees after school. I can still feel the lift in my chest when the bell rang and it was time to walk down to that slightly dingy store and taste…freedom. Plus, middle school is where I first met Huck. The second sip is significantly less sweet. Bittersweet. I swallow it anyway, though my throat goes tight like an invisible fist has tightened its fingers around my neck and hot tears congregate at the corners of my eyes. I’ve gotten really, really good at holding them behind a velvet line and shoving them back into place. A wedding reception after-party is no time to burst into tears. Right? It’s Libby’s wedding day and we’re all having a great time. The bartender turns up the music—a throbbing beat by Pilot Five—and Jeff dips Libby so he can better access the back of her throat with his tongue. I don’t love thinking about middle school. On the one hand, seventh grade was the year my dad died of a heart attack in the middle of the hardware store. I never thought for a second that my dad would die in a hardware store—he hardly ever went to the hardware store—but that day he was running an errand. For me.
For school. For a science project I never finished, but I’ll never forget, either. We were going to make a model ski hill together to demonstrate…I don’t know. Something. Something that’s wiped clean out of my memory, because obviously I wasn’t in school when we turned in those projects, after all. But I was in school later, when everybody gave me a wide berth. Really wide. Too wide. It was like I had an infectious disease. It was middle school. And it was hell, right up until Huck sat down next to me at lunch one day, his presence taking up the rest of the empty table. It didn’t seem to matter to him that we’d only had art class together a few times. He talked to me like we were best friends. So we were best friends. I take another confident swig of the drink and swallow down everything except what’s right in front of me. My friends, dancing at an after-party, all of us in white dresses that look ethereal and lovely in the light from the bar. Huck’s older brother Charlie, on the other side of the pool, his arm around Leta, who Huck told me about one day on the water. They’ve got a story, that’s for sure. Unlike Huck and I, who have never once broken up with each other. We’ve
never even dated, so that kind of removes that possibility. That’s a good thing, I tell myself. “What are you doing?” Huck asks, a smile in his voice and a familiar concern in his eyes. Why is it so familiar when we hardly saw each other in college? Why is it so easy to be with him like this? Best friends, that’s why. I raise my drink. “I’m celebrating. It’s after the party. It’s the after party.” My tongue feels strange in my mouth, the words slipping out in odd forms. But I probably sound normal. A hundred percent normal. “Why are you here, anyway? And without a drink?” I raise my hand in the air and snap my fingers. “Let’s get this man a drink.” Nobody hears, except for Huck. “You invited me, remember? See you at the after party? You’ve been talking about it for days.” “Have not.” “Have so. Only sober you forgot the date of the wedding, so—” “Shhh.” I shush him loudly, pressing one finger to his absurdly perfect lips. “If you’re going to be here, you’re going to dance.”
A sly smile grows under my fingertip, and my entire soul fixates on it. “Don’t tempt me, Katie Lennon. I’ll dance all night.” I don’t know where I am. Huck’s words still echo in my ears, especially the all night part, but it’s something different that woke me up. The gentle slide of a door on carpet. Yes. Fresh carpet, carpet that hasn’t been worn down, against the underside of a door. What door is the question. I open one eye, a tiny slit. Oof. That’s some sun. “Before you accuse me of kidnapping you,” Huck says, “you should know that you came here of your own free will.” Huck’s voice. Huck’s scent on the sheets. This is Huck’s bed. I want to leap up and gather the blankets to my chest, but I can’t feel what I’m wearing or not
wearing and also I have a rip-roaring hangover that makes the idea of bolting upright especially repulsive. “Oh my god,” I groan into the pillow. “What am I doing here?” There’s a featherlight dip of the bed beside me, and I wrench my neck around to discover that Huck has placed a breakfast tray on the other side of the extremely rumpled sheets. “You’re going to eat breakfast in bed,” he says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the entire world. “Good morning, sunshine.”
S 3 HUCK he’s all rumpled, with pink cheeks and bright eyes, and the last thing I want to do is have sex with her. Definitely not. Definitely not now, in my employee bungalow, after an evening of watching her in that dress. Like a bride. She really did look like a bride. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way she looked in the glowing morning light in that dress, standing on the dock like something out of a wedding photographer’s commercial. They’ve been doing a lot with drones lately, which is frankly fucking ridiculous, but I wouldn’t mind some permanent drone footage of Katie standing on the dock. Anyway. She runs her fingers through her hair, flipping it to
the other side of the pillow and giving me a full view of the half of her face that’s not pressed into the pillow. Rumpled wasn’t the right word for it. She’s tangled in my sheets like the sheets themselves dragged her down from heaven. Katie wore a slip underneath her dress last night, and it’s the only thing between her skin and the bedding, from what I saw last night. Only now she’s unselfconscious, blinking up at me, just surfacing from sleep. My heart thumps like a too-fast car skidding over potholes and my palms burn. My palms. “You totally didn’t have to do this.” “My last name is Bliss. Do you think I’m allowed to slack on…” I wave vaguely in the air. “Hosting?” Katie’s voice is waterlogged with sleep, and she clears her throat. “Yes. Hosting.” It’s true. I have never been allowed to slack on hosting, and the thought of doing it forever is what’s been keeping me out in a kayak most mornings since I’ve been back. I’ve heard tell that if you never quite dock at the shore, you never have to go into an office and spend the rest of your life in a family business that you didn’t really choose, but— “And I’ve already cooked.” At this moment, the family business has granted me with a rent-free bungalow, and Katie is in my bed. She lifts her head from the pillow to look at the
cereal and toast on the tray. I watch her expression flicker through a combo of bemusement and surprise and hangover that gets me, straight through the heart. “It’s right, isn’t it?” She glances back up at me. “Yeah, a hundred percent. Totally right. I can’t believe you remember how I like my toast. Either that or your toaster sucks.” “My toaster is top of the line.” She laughs. “Maybe. I wasn’t really paying attention. It came with the unit.” “Came with the unit,” Katie echoes. “You didn’t want to pick out your own toaster when you came back?” She drops her head back down on the pillow and closes her eyes. It’s ridiculously intimate, dangerously intimate. We were best friends from middle school onward and I’ve never seen her like this before. Not until last night. “I didn’t know if I’d be staying.” I sit down on the edge of the bed, and my entire body—every inch of my skin, every muscle—pulls tight to the concrete- hard knowledge that I could have slept here, this bed, last night.
I could have slept here all night. I did sleep here, in the beginning, because I was worried she might be sick. I wanted to be close by. But the hairspray and silk lingerie smell of her— with the one-of-a-kind sunshine scent of her skin underneath—made it fucking impossible. Maybe if I’d been drinking, too, but like an idiot I was stone- cold sober. And breathing her in all night like that pulled me dangerously close to a line I’m not going to cross with her. I can’t cross it with her. The couch in the living room sucks, is what I’m saying. It looks nice on the surface but underneath it’s nothing but hard cushion and springs. She opens her eyes again. “What do you mean, you didn’t know if you’d be staying?” “Just…” I shrug one shoulder. “Just considering all the options. For after the summer.” Katie purses her lips. “I don’t believe you. And it’s already fall, so…” “Your cereal is getting soggy.” “Oh, isn’t it always?” She rolls her eyes, an exasperated smile curving the corners of her lips. “Hear me on this.” I put a hand out and rest it on