Page 16 of The Weekend Crashers
She’d been gone now longer than they’d been together.
“To you, Scott.” He takes his seat and downs a shot of whiskey, just as a woman appears at the table. She’s wearing a sticker name tag that reads “Maggie.”
“Excuse me,” she says, hands on her hips. “You know, you’re not the only guests at this inn. Can you please keep it down a little? We’re at an event right next door and we can barely hear ourselves think.”
“I’m sorry—I can’t hear you,” Scott says, clearly messing with her.
“Isaid, we’re right in the next room and can barely hear ourselves think!”
“Well, this is a bachelorparty,” Scott says, emphasizing the wordparty.
“You’re being very rude,” the woman says. She has wavy dark hair to her shoulders, bright blue eyes, and would probably be very attractive if she didn’t have such a sour expression on her face. Scott starts to snicker.
“You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Cole says to Scott.
Okay, this is enough. Aidan stands up again. “Sorry we disturbed you. We’ll try to keep it down.”
The woman starts to say something, stops, and turns and walks out. Beside him, Cole is bickering with Scott. What’s gotten into those two?
“Boys, come on now,” Barclay says. “I thought you’d agreed to play nice this weekend.”
Aidan doesn’t know what that means, but from the look on Cole’s face, he does.
“Am I missing something?” Aidan says.
“Apparently, everyone at this table is missing something: I’m twenty-four. I’m a grown man. I think you and Grandpa and Uncle Ritchie forget that sometimes.”
Cole gets up and leaves.
Ritchie? What does his brother-in-law have to do with anything? He looks over at Ritchie, who just shrugs and takes a swig of his beer. Aidan doesn’t like feeling clueless, especially not when it comes to Cole. He prides himself on being a hands-on father. It was shocking to find himself a single parent when he first lost his wife. But he gained his footing. He learned to juggle running the business and being both Mom and Dad. Still, he always envied friends who were able to provide their children with a two-parent home. They tookturns playing bad cop; no matter what issue or crisis they were dealing with, one of them always had the bandwidth to be the good guy. To be a friend and not just a parent. Aidan never found that balance.
Once, when Cole was a freshman in high school, he discovered Cole trying to make a bong out of a cored apple. It was funny, really. He was so far from getting it to work. But there was no margin for error, for laughing, when he needed to be stern and set an example. And there was no one to talk to about it behind the closed bedroom door after Cole went to sleep. Aidan always felt like there was a third dimension to parenting he couldn’t experience.
But now, it’s time to relax. Time for the victory lap; he’d done his job. Cole was a decent, responsible young man. But clearly, something is going on. Fortunately, he has an entire weekend to figure out what that something is.
In the meantime, he’ll make sure to avoid the angry brunette.
Chapter Ten
Piper follows Hannah Elise to a small room on the second floor that appears to be serving as a makeshift knitwear studio. It’s filled with bins of yarn, boxes of needles, an automated yarn spinner, a sewing table and clothing racks on wheels filled with handknits on velvet-cushioned hangers.
“This rack is all my designs,” Hannah Elise says, separating a few of the hangers. “Feel free to try anything on.”
“Really?” Piper is thrilled. She truly is a fan of her work. “These are extraordinary,” Piper says, pulling out a pair of patchwork pants with a drawstring waist and flared bottoms. “Is this the pair you made from all the different leftover yarns?” They were spectacular. Weeks ago, Hannah Elise posted a video showing a pile of half-used balls of yarn in every color and shared her obsession with “scrap wear.”
“Yes, and they’d look amazing on you. Can I take a few photos? I haven’t had a decent chance to post them yet,” Hannah asks.
Piper wants to say yes, and at any other time would have. But she can’t put herself out there after what happened at Betsy Toledo.
“I’ve sworn off social media for the weekend,” Piper says.She means for it to come off as light and half joking but it sounds like she’d just announced she’s in rehab.
“Hmm,” Hannah Elise says.
“What? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t feel the same if it were you.”
Hannah picks up a pink metal crochet needle and works it casually through bulky butter-colored yarn. “Maybe at one point I would have. But now I know better.”
Piper is skeptical. “I find it hard to believe you ever had a bad moment on social media.”
