Page 53 of Olivia's Only Pretending
I pulled open the door to find Victor standing there in a hunter green sweater that made his mocha eyes pop. My heart swirled in my chest. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“Hey,” he said almost tentatively. He shifted like he was going in for a hug, but then stopped himself, hands returning to his sides.
It was my own rules, so I tried not to feel disappointed.
“Come on in.” I stepped to the side, and he trailed into Lucy’s house.
We all piled around Lucy’s long, wooden dining table for dinner. Everyone caught Jeff, the newcomer, up to speed.
“So, how’d you two meet?” Jeff asked Lucy and Adam.
I grinned. They loved to answer this question.
“She stormed into my office to yell at me.” Adam chuckled.
Jeff’s brows raised in surprise.
“It’s true.”
“I didn’t yell at him. I did confront him. Do you know the Sweet River Summer Festival?” Lucy said. The candle in the center of the table flickered.
“Of course. I take my family every year,” Jeff said.
“Well, it was my late grandmother’s brainchild, so I’d started running it in her memory. Adam moved to town and immediately tried to take it out from under me. That was how we met.”
Adam shook his head. “I was going to let her volunteer.”
“Selling hot dogs.”
Adam burst out laughing. “We wound up working together after she confronted me, and I was honestly impressed by her passion.”
“And her hotness,” Gracie whispered behind her glass of iced tea, but loud enough to make the whole table laugh.
“You guys ran it this past summer? It was incredible, and that’s even with the storms,” Jeff said through a big bite of salad.
Lucy shimmied her shoulders with pride. “We made a good team.”
“Okay,” Jeff said, turning to me and Victor, who sat beside me. “How did you two meet?”
“Oh, uh …” I stumbled over my words, a forkful of lasagna hanging in midair on the way to my mouth. “We met at a coffee shop. Actually, we both had shown up that day to act as moral support for Adam and Lucy. But we’re not a couple.”
“Try as I might, I still haven’t won this one over,” Victor joked, in the way he always had, but his voice rasped at the end.
I gave his shoulders a playful shove in the way I always had, but the giggle felt stuck in my throat. “Be serious.”
“I got her talking about the old house she’d been renovating. Those green eyes lit up, the way they do when she’s talking about something she loves. Our conversation flowed so easy. It always does with us.” Our eyes were on each other’s as he spoke. The rest of the table faded into the background. “We were fast friends.”
“Fast friends,” I repeated. I felt an urge to squeeze his hand or press my shoulder into his, but I resisted.
“The best friendships are the ones where you can talk for hours on end,” Jeff said, breaking my attention from Victor.
I turned to him to listen.
“My late wife, Angela … She and I were friends from childhood. I used to call her my safe zone.”
“Safe zone,” Victor repeated. “I like that.”
“Angela was always my safe zone from grade school and beyond. I could talk to her about the important things, the ridiculous things, even the commercial we’d just watched on TV—all of it. Those types of relationships are a treasure.” Jeff gave a small smile.
