Page 6 of Breaking News

With a sigh, I stared at the Gardners’ fence, catching the tiniest bit of movement between the slats. Then I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of her laughter echo between the houses.

I hoped Xander knew how lucky he was to be the man who made Jillian Taylor sound likethat.

chapter three

Jillian

June wasn’t my favorite month just because of my birthday.

There was something about the start of summer that made me feel brand new, when I could finally shed all the layered clothes and feel the sun on my bare skin. And on the Gardners’ patio in my Dolly Parton t-shirt and holey jean shorts, I soaked it all in. Surrounded by some of my favorite people, this was setting up to be the perfect night… as long as I could continue ignoring my neck pain.

And my inexplicable hip pain.

“Are you okay?” Meghan asked, handing me a hard seltzer. I tilted it so the ice cube slid off the top onto the stone patio where we stood. “You’re wincing.”

“I’m fine!” I lied with an enthusiastic shake of the head, running my hand along the two ibuprofen in the pocket of my shorts. Normally I took them before my breakfast, and sometimes worked in a second dose by mid-afternoon. But days like today, when my random aches and pains were particularly stubborn, I was popping ibuprofen like candy.

I suspected it was my cheap mattress. I’d get around to purchasing a new one someday.

Meghan was more observant than I’d hoped. Flipping her jet-black hair off her shoulder, she studied me as she said, “Jill, when are you going to go back to the doctor?”

“To say what? Myeverythinghurts?”

“Exactly that, yes,” she said, glancing up when Chase slid his arm around her waist. “What happened to your poker game?”

Every Friday night, the guys played poker inside while us women held a half-assed book club meeting in the backyard. We normally spent all of ten minutes talking about the book of the week before we got sidetracked beyond the point of no return. “It’s too nice a night to stay inside. Besides–”

I didn’t get to hear the rest of Chase’s sentence, because a sharp, icy shock ran down my neck, followed by the unmistakable chill of an ice cube sliding down my back. I tensed up and gasped, turning my head to see Xander with a rare grin on his face. “Xander Pierce, I’m going tokillyou!” I caught the ice cube midway down my back and threw it at him. He covered his face with his hands just in time.

“Play nice, you two. Little eyes are watching,” Mason teased, nodding at his daughter, Finley. She was kneeling on the patio a few feet away, drawing a jellyfish with a chunk of pink sidewalk chalk. Mason and Kendall couldn’t find a sitter that night, so we all had to watch our language in front of the six-year-old. Meghan was having the most difficult time with it, having dropped at least five F-bombs.

My eyes moved to Abigail, who immediately glanced down at the drink she was holding as Xander’s slipped his hand up the back of my shirt. He was only lightly stroking my skin, which seemed innocent enough, but it was like she’d witnessed something she shouldn’t have.

There’d been this unspoken awkwardness between the two of us since Xander and I first went public with our relationship back at the Woodvale Comic Con a few weeks ago. Xander and Abigail had been best friends since childhood, a fact that never bothered me. Yet I got the impression there was more under the surface there than I’d ever be able to comprehend.

But I wanted to be her friend. I cleared my throat, making her look at me again. “Abigail, when will Shanda be in town again?”

I knew very little about Abigail, except that she was a librarian, and she was casually dating a woman named Shanda who lived a couple hours away. Last week, we all begged her to bring Shanda to one of our Friday night gatherings, but she insisted she was too shy for something like that.

Abigail pulled her long, red hair around to one side of her neck before she answered my question. “Well, probably never,” she admitted with a weak laugh. “I don’t think it’s going to work out with her.”

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Oh no! I’m so sorry to hear that. We were all rooting for you.”

Abigail shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m the one who ended it. I just couldn’t do the long-distance thing anymore.”

Instinctively, I glanced at Xander. His hand slipped from my back to his pocket, his focus locked on Abigail. And as she went on, detailing the many reasons she didn’t want to keep seeing Shanda, he stood completely still, never once taking a sip from the beer in his hand.

And then I caught it. The quickest, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glance between the two of them. It probably meant nothing, but it was almost like there was a telepathic exchange of words between them. Like they could effortlessly read each other after all those years of being best friends.

Would I ever have a connection like that with Xander?

As quickly as the jealous thought entered my head, I pushed it away just as fast. I wasn’t going to be like this. With her retro glasses and sweet, high-pitched voice, Abigail was one of the most genuine people I’d met. And I’d met alotof people in all my years of reporting.

“You know what?” I asked her, handing my drink to Xander. “I think a break-up calls for tequila shots.”

“I’m in,” Kendall blurted, approaching us from behind as she took a bite of a fresh strawberry.

“What’s a tequila shot?” Finley asked, making us all chuckle. She had a streak of pink chalk on her nose.

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