Page 59 of A Wedding in the Bay

“Yes!” Johanna pressed a hand to her face, feeling giddy all over again at the memory. “We were. We kept stealing glances at each other and whispering things to each other. I felt sure that someone was going to catch us at some point.”

Marsha laughed, and Johanna shook her head at the memory. But inside, her stomach was still fluttering with nerves. She knew that she should bring up her concerns to her friend, but she didn’t know where to begin. And she felt a little embarrassed and inclined to be secretive about the worries she was feeling. She felt a little ashamed of them, as if she shouldn’t be feeling that way. She wondered what Marsha would think of her if she brought them up.

“Well, I never did.” Marsha smiled. “You had me completely fooled. I bet when you tell everyone else they’ll say the same thing.”

“Dane already knows,” Johanna said, grimacing a little. “I’m very curious to hear what he thinks about all this.”

“You haven’t talked with him about it?”

“Not yet. I’m going to soon, though. I wonder if it’s strange for him to see me dating someone again.”

“I think it probably is to some extent,” Marsha said, nodding sympathetically. “But he loves you and he wants you to be happy. You are Everett are just darling together.”

Johanna nodded, feeling her nervousness flutter inside of her again. “Thank you. I think you’re right.”

“About you and Everett being darling together?”

“No!” Johanna flushed, laughing along with her friend. “Well—I guess maybe we are. But I mean I think you’re right about Dane wanting me to be happy.”

Marsha nodded. “I’m sure he does.” She took a bite of her scone, and Johanna did the same.

“Oh, these really are marvelous,” Johanna said, savoring the sweet, crumbly bite. “Would you give me the recipe?”

“I’d be happy to. But first, tell me more about you and Everett. After he took you out on the boat, what happened?”

Johanna continued to tell her friend all about the way her relationship with Everett had grown. “We’ve gotten closer every date it seems like,” she said, staring into space and smiling a little when she thought of him. She thought about his eyes gazing at her warmly, or his strong arms wrapped around her while they stood on the boat. “We’ve had so many conversations, and in many ways I feel like I’m just starting to scratch the surface of who he is as a person, and in other ways it feels like we’ve known each other for years. Did it feel like that with you and Willis?”

“Well, in our case we had known each other for years—or at least we’d known each other in the past,” Marsha said, laughing. “It had felt that way at first, though—when we dated each other when we were young.” Her eyes took on a faraway look for a moment. “Now our relationship is like a combination of getting to know how he’s changed, and rediscovering who he always was.”

“I think that’s beautiful,” Johanna said, meaning it sincerely. “You two are so lucky to have found each other again after all these years.”

“And you’re lucky to have found love again.” Marsha tilted her head, lifting an eyebrow. “If I may be so bold as to call it love.”

Johanna blushed, declining to answer. She told herself that now would be a perfect opportunity to bring up what she was nervous to tell her friend, but she swallowed the words. She felt she didn’t know where to begin.

“What do the two of you talk about?” Marsha asked with a smile, seeming to notice Johanna’s blushing and tactfully changing the subject.

“Oh, well, everything now,” Johanna said, relaxing a bit and leaning back in her chair. “At first, I didn’t think we’d have anything in common. But it turns out we have a great deal in common. We’re both fond of wine and old movies, and stargazing is what really brought us together.”

“Stargazing?” Marsha asked, entranced. “I didn’t know you enjoyed stargazing.”

“Oh, I do. It’s a passionate hobby of mine.”

Johanna realized as she spoke how little she had opened up to people—even to her friends, like Marsha. Perhaps that was what made her relationship with Everett so important to her. She shared things with him that she didn’t share with anyone else. “And he loves stargazing as well. We talk about astronomy all the time. Oh, and he has the most amazing telescope. That was one of our first dates. I went over to his house to look through his telescope with him.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about stargazing sometime,” her friend told her. “I would love to learn more about it, and you sound like an expert.”

“I would love to tell you about stargazing,” she said, her heart lifting with excitement. “I think you would love it. Perhaps that’s what we could do on our double date. We could all stargaze using Everett’s telescope.” She realized that she’d missed out on an opportunity to share her hobby with her friend by keeping too many things to herself.

I need to learn to open up more, she thought. I suppose I am learning—I’ve gotten much better at that since coming to Blueberry Bay. But I should share my thoughts with Marsha now.

Her stomach twisted at the thought. She still felt nervous about opening up to her friend. Sharing her feelings wasn’t something that she usually did. She told herself that she would tell Marsha what she’d been wrestling with later on—not quite yet.

“I’m just so thrilled for you,” Marsha said, clasping her hands. “This is like a dream come true for me. I’m so surprised by the whole thing, and I’m absolutely titillated by the idea of the two of you sneaking around.”

“It did feel as though we were a couple of teenagers or something,” Johanna said, laughing. “There was one time—well, it was both you and Willis, and then it was Dane—we were in his truck, and we saw you two walking past, and I ducked down and hid.” She chortled over the memory. “And then when it was just Dane, we both hid.”

“I love it!” Marsha burst out into laughter as well. “I can’t wait to tell Willis that we almost caught you.”

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