Page 65 of Hers for the Weekend

Everyone turned to look at him, and he grinned unapologetically while stuffing a forkful of salad into his mouth.

“We wanted to have some time to get used to it, time that was just ours,” Tara said.

Holly remembered the two of them, singing at the top of their lungs in the car, and how she’d wished for more time exactly like that. In their little bubble, where neither of them was faking or wearing a mask, where they were two people drawn like magnets to each other with no complications. No matter how much she was coming to love this group, if they ever really dated, they would have to figure out a way to carve out some space that was just theirs.

Of course, they wouldn’t date.

Tara released her hand to run a finger down Holly’s cheek. “Some things don’t have to be a group experience,” she said, dropping a featherlight kiss on Holly’s mouth.

“It’s a bit ironic,” Annie said to Tara over the next course, “that we never met for all the years you and Miri were engaged, but now here we are, meeting at her wedding to another woman.”

Sawyer looked at Annie, and then around the room. “How do you know Miriam, again? And how does she know… all of the rest of these people?”

Annie laughed. “Don’t you know about Miri’s Old Ladies? We’re all junk shop dealers across the country, and she’s like our daughter. She checks in on us, makes sure we get to our doctors’ appointments, that all our legal affairs are in order, and such. There are many people in this room who would not be in business, or even alive, if not for Miriam Blum.”

“But she’s based here now, taking care of Carrigan’s, isn’t she?” Sawyer asked.

Annie waved this off. “Oh, sure, but Noelle and Hannah both knew going in that Miriam came along with the Old Ladies and that she would have to build in time not only to make art but also to travel to all the shops. There was never any question of her abandoning her old friends for her new ones.”

The way that all of the team here, not just Noelle and Miriam as a couple, had put their needs on the table and come up with a solution that fit all of them—without sacrificing anyone’s happiness or asking anyone to make themselves smaller—was eye-opening. Every part of the life they’d all built here was based on that, not what was expected or what they feared.

“Lawrence!” Elijah called out, hailing a man walking past. He was average height but built stocky, with wide shoulders under his dress shirt. He had brown skin and a black ponytail, and Holly noticed that his knuckles had tattoos that read “Chef” and “Life.”

He hugged the Greens and Esther and shook hands with everyone else. “The infamous Tara Chadwick!” he declared. “Cole talks about you incessantly. I’m glad to finally meet you.”

Holly wondered how Tara felt about being on the receiving end of so many people who’d heard about her.

“I actually wanted to introduce you to Tara’s girlfriend, Holly,” Elijah said. “Holly is an experienced waitress and short-order cook, and a fantastic baker. I know you said you might be looking for a pastry chef. Maybe we could lure them both up here?”

Lawrence snagged an empty chair from a nearby table and pulled it up next to her.

“I have actually heard about you,” she told him.

He grinned. “All bad things, I assume.”

“Ernie said you were the hot chef, between you and Levi,” Holly said, and watched his eyes widen. “And she asked me to find out if you were single.”

“Oh, I love you. I do not, however, need a pastry chef. I’m focused on staffing my camp for Mohawk kids right now, and I prioritize Native applicants for that.”

“As you should!” Holly agreed. “What a rad project.”

“Lawrence worked at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, we should mention,” Jason Green told her. “If he’s not hiring, Chef Harlow is around somewhere. She has the only Michelin-starred restaurant in the area.”

From a table over, a giant red-haired man with an equally giant beard said, in a deep baritone, “A baker and a waitress? I own a cafe, and I would love to chat. Look at our hair, we’re basically siblings.”

Esther cleared her throat. “Actually, Shoshana Rosenstein offered her a job earlier today, along with culinary school tuition.”

“No, no, no, she can’t go to Iowa!” Elijah argued. “They both clearly belong in Advent!”

Jason elbowed him. “You want Tara on your trivia team, full-time.”

“I need a lawyer friend,” Elijah pouted. “No one will be nerdy about the law with me.”

Tara raised an eyebrow, and said in that perfect drawl, “As much as I would love to get nerdy about the law with you, I would not flourish above the Mason-Dixon line. I am a delicate hothouse flower, and I can only blossom in climes where the air itself is a weighted blanket.”

“We’re never visiting Charleston, honey,” Sawyer said, his mustache ends turned down in disgust. “Sorry.”

Cole shrugged. “Tara’s the only person I love there, anyway, and if she won’t move here, I’m going to force her to vacation with me in increasingly remote locations without access to electricity for her flat iron until she agrees to leave that horrid place and live somewhere that doesn’t suck.”

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