Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Lovely.
That’s code for reading one of her cringe gossip sites.
She pretends she doesn’t follow them, but she does religiously.
Julia Sage doesn’t do sweets, so she consumes crazy amounts of salacious rumors instead.
The moment someone breaks up with their partner or old friends fall out or everybody’s favorite heartthrob becomes a wretched cheater, she knows.
Portland is a smaller city, but not so tiny it doesn’t have a spinning gossip mill. And when the Blackthorns are involved, the rags from Boston to New York strike first.
Oof.
It just never occurred to me that I would be the talk of the town after I’ve trotted out in public with Ethan Blackthorn.
That’s what happens after a whole evening together, announcing our engagement to glowy-eyed rich people.
And now the whole world knows it.
The only one who doesn’t at this point is Mr. Sneed, my boss, and that’s only because he wouldn’t know town gossip if it hit him in the head with a hardcover special edition of War and Peace.
I rub my eyes, suddenly exhausted.
My entire life just flipped at the speed of a car wreck.
“So?” Mom prompts, perched on the edge of the counter. “Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”
“Mom, you can’t sit there. We’re still open.”
She looks around. “There are no signs saying I can’t.”
“Mom, I work here, and I’m the one telling you,” I hiss.
“Oh, Hattie.” She sighs—sometimes I feel like our roles are reversed and I’m the adult—but she slides off and gives me a dazzling smile. “There, now stop delaying. Dish.”
I wince.
Guess I really was that transparent.
“What do you want to know?”
“What don’t I want to know?” Her eyes are shiny and she’s wearing a matte red lipstick, making her look a little like a painted clay character. “How did you get together?”
“Well,” I say awkwardly, “we knew each other as kids.”
“Oh, I know that. But didn’t he go away? And he just came back?”
“Basically, yeah.” I feel like I’m reciting bullet points of Ethan’s vague personal history. “But we, uh—we kept in touch? Margot was an easy bridge. I think she always wanted to set us up.”
If he finds out I said that, I’m dead.
Here I am, making up a history on the fly even I won’t be able to keep straight.
“Wow. He’s been in love with you since you were teenagers? That many years ago?” Mom has whale eyes bigger than an excited puppy, clasping her hands together.
“No. God no. We didn’t get along too well when we were young, if you remember.”
She nods. “Okay…”
“I don’t know. Things just changed. It was all very sudden.” I think about Ethan’s intense blue eyes and the way he forbid me from ever speaking to Cooper Daley again.
Almost like he was jealous.
I’m misreading signals, I’m sure, because Ethan Blackthorn doesn’t strike me as the jealous kind.
Certainly not when he’s only pretending to be into me.
Then again, how can I know for sure if I’ve never seen him into anyone else?
He used to be a serial dater, yeah, but that’s not the same. It’s not like I was there for that.
“There must be more. Tell me,” Mom demands. “They said you looked very cozy with him in Kennebunkport.” She wags her eyebrows. I want to scrub the image out of my brain with bleach. “Was the proposal romantic? Are his parents still nice? How long have you been dating? My, I haven’t seen the Blackthorns in years…”
The questions keep coming like machine gun fire.
“Um. Um!” I say. “We weren’t dating that long, but…” God, what do I say? My palms are slick. Whatever I say now, I’ll need to remember to tell Ethan later and suffer the consequences. “I haven’t reconnected with his parents yet. We’re having dinner soon.”
That is, if I can get the time off.
Mr. Sneed is a notorious tightwad when it comes to PTO. He doesn’t like to handle customers on his own, preferring to hole up in the back office.
I’m way better at customer service anyway than his wooden, grouchy face.
The ball of stress in my stomach snowballs.
“Oh, dinner?” Mom echoes. “That’s perfect. Make sure you let me know when and where. I’ll join you!”
“What?” My heart leaps up my throat. “Mom, I don’t think that’s—”
“Nonsense! We’re going to be one big happy family now and someone has to make sure you don’t blow this. The Blackthorns are high-class people. Practically New York royalty. You need to impress them and take it seriously, Hattie.”
I gawk at her. “Mom, you can’t come.”
“Of course I can, honey. I’m sure they’ll love you, but it’s Ethan Blackthorn we’re talking about.” She ghosts a kiss against my cheek. “You simply can’t let a man like that start to wonder and get cold feet, can you?”
My eyeball twitches.
So. Close. To. Smacking. Her.
A whole new humiliation opens under me like a portal to hell.
I didn’t know it was possible to dread an event more, but my mom pushes the limits.