Of course he was a friend.
A friend who was a man. Something she knew, and always had, but was a little bit more aware of right now. That was it.
He lowered his head then, leveling his gaze with hers. He looked at her. Really looked at her. His eyes searching hers, wandering over the planes and angles of her face. She could feel him looking for the answers that she didn’t have.
She balled her hands into fists, keeping them resolutely at her sides.
Tension stretched between them, long and tight. Then, heat rose in his eyes. So blatant and obvious, making such a mockery of all the vague I don’t even know what’s happening assertions that were jumbling around inside of her that she had to turn away.
She walked in front of him, toward the house, taking a deep breath, then letting it out. Doing her best to keep it rhythmic. To keep her pace slow.
So that she didn’t look like she was running.
Even though she was. She absolutely was.
He didn’t say anything, but she could hear the weight of his footsteps behind her, crunching on the gravel. More than that, she could sense his presence, and that just weirded her out even more.
When they came up to the house, she stopped on the bottom step, flinging her arms to the side and turning to face him, grabbing hold of the railing, forming something of a human blockade. “Thanks for coming by,” she said.
He blinked. “Okay.”
“It’s late,” she said. “And I have some work to go over. Things for tomorrow.” She was lying. “Because, you know, the subscription boxes.”
“Right,” he said.
“And I’m going to go to bed early. And probably, I’m going to wash my hair. I have to do some cuticle thing, with my fingernails. And scrub the dry skin off my feet. I have a pumice stone.” She wanted to grab all those words and stuff them back into her mouth. A pumice stone? She had no idea what was wrong with her. Except, if what had just happened down by the tree was actually sexual tension she had probably killed it forever.
She had just mentioned dead foot skin. She had a feeling that was in the handbook for how to turn a man off permanently.
Not that Finn had been turned on. Absolutely not.
“Okay. Well, I guess I will leave you to your...pumice stone.”
“It’s a real thing,” she said, immediately wanting to brain herself.
“I don’t doubt you. Maybe you should put them in your subscription box.”
She took a step back, up onto the next step. “They aren’t a local thing. I mean, this is a pretty volcanic region, so I imagine you could probably... But, they aren’t specific to Copper Ridge. Which is kind of the whole idea.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Lane. Thanks for the swim. I needed it.”
“Sure. Anytime,” she said, taking another step away from him. “Later.”
He turned away from her and walked to the truck, and she wasted no time scampering back into the house and closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, pressing her hand to her chest, waiting for her heart rate to go back to normal.
She made her way back toward the kitchen, the silence of the house settling around her. It didn’t feel like a refuge right now. It just felt like a big echo chamber of every stupid thing that had gone on in the past hour.
She heaved out a long, vocal breath, going to the fridge to retrieve her berries. Then she stopped and swore. She caught sight of the calendar that was hanging there, and the girl’s night she had written down on it. Unlike their casual catch-up dinner the other night, this was their official monthly let’s-never-let-life-get-too-busy-for-friends night.
They were all supposed to go to The Grind tonight for their Main Street get-together. She, Alison, Cassie and Rebecca all owned businesses on Copper Ridge’s Main Street and as female business owners they had all bonded pretty quickly.
Usually, she didn’t take a day off on girl’s night, but everything was all jumbled up in her head so her decision-making had suffered.
She could skip tonight. She could legitimately stay home with a pumice stone.
But no, that was a bad idea. If she stayed home alone there would be nothing in the house with her except the memories of today’s events, which she would undoubtedly play on an endless loop, combined with that loose thread. Which she would pull out endlessly until she had finished the damage external events had already started.
She didn’t want to sit at home alone. She didn’t want to feel sad. She didn’t want to feel regret. She didn’t want to feel at all.
So, the alternative was going out. And that was exactly what she was going to do.
SHE WAS EXCEEDINGLY grateful that she had decided to come into town. Spending time with a group of friends was precisely what she needed to lift the dark cloud that had fallen over her lately. She was being overdramatic. About everything.
Spending time listening to other people talk about their lives had given her some much-needed perspective.
Maybe the real issue was that she was working too much. Not that she needed to work harder. She needed to do something to get out of her head, most likely.
“I know he’s going to propose,” Rebecca said, talking about her boyfriend, Gage.
“That’s great!” Lane said.
“How do you know?” Alison asked, folding her arms and leaning forward on the table.
“You just do,” Cassie said pragmatically.
Cassie had been happily married to her husband, Jake, for a little over three years, and of the group, was definitely the expert on relationships.
“Well, that and he’s terrible at keeping secrets,” Rebecca said. “He left a receipt for the ring in his pants pocket, which I found...”
“When you were doing laundry?” Alison asked.
“No,” she said, “when I was going through his pants pockets.”
Lane snorted. “Well, then that wasn’t too indiscreet of him.”
Rebecca shrugged. “He had better never have an affair. He leaves too clear a paper trail.”
“You’re not actually worried about anything like that, are you?” Cassie asked.
Rebecca shook her head. “No. And I was kidding about going through his pockets. I trust Gage.”
She said it so easily, so matter-of-factly. As if there was nothing huge or concerning about
