Page 17 of Brewbies
The few times Gemma accompanied Cady on her morning coffee run, Darby had admired the knitting maven’s boho granny-chic aesthetic. Tonight’s ensemble consisted of a pleated purple and fuchsia plaid knee-length skirt, high-necked lace collar blouse, and a chunky magenta cardigan covered in appliqué flamingos.
Her own design, Darby suspected.
As with the bookstore, Darby had honestly meant to stop into Gemma’s knitting and notions boutique but hadn’t managed to get around to it quite yet. What with all the sexual debauchery and sinful Sumatra she’d been peddling.
“Can I help?” Darby asked, taking in Gemma’s precariously balanced armload of assorted boxes and bags.
“Sure.” Gemma gingerly transferred the topmost box into Darby’s care. “Especially because my best friend iscompletely ignoring her guests so she can phone-hump her fiancé.” The last half of the sentence rose in volume, clearly meant to be an indictment.
Cady rolled her eyes and mimed jerking off an imaginary dick. A gesture that struck Darby as deeply affectionate.
Gemma led her up a small set of steps to a larger room where a folding table had been covered with a tablecloth bearing cursive script declaring,I like big books and I cannot lie. In its center, a heart-shaped platter with an impressive assortment of iced sugar cookies and pale pink cupcakes topped with bright red cherries sat.
“Those look delicious,” Darby said.
“They are,” Gemma confirmed. “But I’d recommend saving them until the end of the meeting, if you know what I mean.” Gemma winked at her as she hauled up her burden and swung it onto the table. “I’m physiologically incapable of making more than one trip,” she declared, massaging the ladder of pink dents climbing her thin forearms.
“Same,” Darby said, placing the box down next to Gemma’s bags.
Which was when she realized it was…buzzing?
“Oops.” Gemma pawed through the contents, removing several brightly colored knots of wool to reveal an assortment of pocket-sized hot-pink vibrators. “These are from Vee—er—Vivian Prescott. She owns Vee’s Lady Garden?”
Darby was used to the precise brand of look Gemma was currently leveling at her. The unintentionally patronizing performance of a Townsend Harbor local, presenting verbal flashcards for the new kid in town. Yet another reminder of exactly what she was.
An outsider.
Which, unbeknownst to Gemma, was precisely how Darby liked it.
After the smothering confines of her blue-blood East Coast upbringing and the spectacular unraveling of her tight-knit Boston circle, she’d enthusiastically embarked on her lone wolf life. Most at home in the liminal space between solitude and civilization. Embracing the edges. Frolicking in the fringes.
Until this bullshit petition dragged her smack into the center of a small-town social skirmish.
“She was super bummed she couldn’t make it tonight but wanted to send some party favors in your honor,” Gemma continued.
Darby blinked at her. “Inmyhonor?”
Gemma’s red lips slashed upward in an uneven grin. “Yes indeedy. These are the same ones she’s giving away as gifts with every donation to the Brewbies.”
Darby’s mouth dropped open as she struggled to process this information. “Wait, what?”
Gemma lifted a condensation-kissed bag of ice from one of the grocery sacks and tore a hole in the top before upending it into a brushed metal tub. “So I one hundred percent didnottell Cady that this bullshit petition was making the rounds before it went public, because that would be violation of section 2.06 of the city council code of ethics. Which, as a city council member, I would absolutely never do. But however Cady managed to get a hold of this privileged information from a source that definitely wasn’t me, she put out a call to the BNBC.”
From another sack, Gemma began extracting bottles of rosé and poking them into the ice. “Once MayorSpewart’scity council cronies had officially passed the petition’s vote to revoke your permit, Cady created a GoFundMe page and shared it with Nevermore’s entire subscribership. Vee contacted all her suppliers, who donated a shit-ton of product, and Myrtle started a phone tree to sweep up the over-seventy constituency who still don’t know how Wi-Fi works.”
Staring at the snack assortment, the realization careened into Darby with the force of a freight train.
The rosé. The vibrators. The cookies. The sweater.
Pink.
The color of her hair. Her logo. Her life, as of late.
These women barely knew her, and here they were, mobilizing like some kind of badass Amazonian army in her defense.
Darby froze, hijacked by a strange but vaguely familiar sensation. The odd tickling in her nose. The tightening at the base of her throat.
She blinked rapidly to ward off the sneeze, but found her eyes filling instead.
