Page 33 of First Comes Marriage

Tessa accepted the bar of chocolate with a happy sigh. “You’re too good to me.” She peeled back a corner of the bar and took a bite, her eyes falling closed and a look of pure bliss crossing her face. “Maybe I’ll have the crew at the bakery make me a carrot cake cheesecake tomorrow.”

“Have them make whatever you’d like. You own the place,” Kyla said.

Fortified by her chocolate bar, Tessa turned her attentionback to Sabrina. “Well, if we can’t watch a romcom, we’ll have to talk. Tell us everything about yourself.”

Sabrina laughed, startled. “Everything is…a lot.”

“Let’s start with how you met Baz,” Tessa said between bites of chocolate. “Jamie said you guys had history.”

Sabrina opened her mouth but found she didn’t know where to begin.We met while volunteering?True, but probably not what Tessa was looking for.He almost married my sister?Also true, but too complicated.He’s the one I always wondered about, my ‘what if’ guy.Oof, definitely not something she was ready to share with these women, no matter how friendly they were.

Kyla reached across the couch and placed a calming hand on Sabrina’s arm. “No need to dive into the deep end right away. How about something easier? Tessa owns the best bakery in the state. I have a boudoir photography studio in town. What do you do?”

“I’m opening a pottery studio,” Sabrina said, flashing a grateful smile Kyla’s way.

“Like mugs and vases?” Tessa asked.

“Sure, and…other things.” Sabrina glanced between the women. If anyone would understand Sabrina’s specialty, surely it was the owner of a boudoir photography studio and a woman who’d married her father’s best friend. “I had a studio in Maine before I moved here. We were mostly known for hosting break-up parties.”

“What’s a break-up party?” Kyla asked.

“When people want to get together with their friends and wish their ex good riddance—metaphorically, of course—they can book a break-up party. There’s wine and a safe space for the airing of grievances.” She steeled herself in case she’d misjudged these women and powered through. “And I teach them how to make a clay penis to represent their ex. I fire it in the kiln overnight, and the next day they come back, and we have a smashing party.”

“Where you smash the penises?” Tessa asked, leaning so far forward in her seat that Sabrina was almost afraid she’d fall.

“Yes. Where we smash the penises.”

Tessa and Kyla looked at each other, slow smiles spreading across both of their faces.

“Ilovethat,” Kyla said at last.

“That’s brilliant!” Tessa leaned back in her chair with a laugh. Her eyes sparkled in a way that made Sabrina sure Tessa had been the friend in high school who convinced you to cut class and spend the day at the beach instead of learning trigonometry. “What if someone doesn’t want to smash it?” she asked.

“Then I guess they don’t have to. It hasn’t come up before. Why?”

“What if someone wanted to…I don’t know…make use of their new clay dick?” A surprised laugh burst from Sabrina’s lips. “I mean, theoretically, of course, if someone were to spend all that time crafting the perfect pottery penis, they might want to give it a test drive. Could someone do something like that? Theoretically?”

“Sure, theoretically,” Sabrina said. Dammit but she liked these women. “I’d have to do a little research to be sure, but I think that with a food grade glaze and the right firing the pottery would be body safe.”

“Hmm,” Tessa said, popping the last bite of chocolate bar into her mouth. “Food for thought.”

Chapter Eleven

In all the years Baz had lived in his condo, he’d never had a guest in his guest room. He knew that was the room’s purpose, had furnished it accordingly, and yet there was something unsettling about hearing the muted sounds of movement on the other side of his bedroom wall. When he’d toured the condo before buying it, the bed in the master had been on the opposite wall, and now he knew why. With his headboard up against the wall he shared with the guest room, he could hear every time Sabrina tossed and turned in bed, and he had no doubt she could hear each of his frustrated exhales in return.

This wasn’t working.

He reached above his head and rapped his knuckles against their shared wall. The movement on the other side stilled. “You up?” he asked, barely raising his voice.

Another frustrated harrumph through the wall.

“I can’t sleep.” Then, quieter, to herself, “Stupid nap.”

“On the couch?”

“Yes! Why is that thing so comfortable? A couch has no right to be that comfortable.”

He chuckled to himself and climbed out of bed. A moment later, he was knocking on her door. At her startled gasp, he leaned his shoulder against the wall beside her door, crossinghis arms over his chest, and waited through the shuffling and muffled curse when she tripped over something before she pulled the door to her room open.

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