Practice Makes Perfect (When in Rome, #2)(9)
It doesn’t matter. Because the fact is, when I started keeping people at arm’s length was when I started really finding happiness—and I’ve never met anyone who’s made me want to challenge that decision.
No one.
Not Gretchen, not the woman I met in Italy last year, not Jada from Texas, not Allie from Indiana, and not even…
My thoughts snag on the one name I can’t bring myself to lump in with the others for some concerning reason:
Annie Walker.
CHAPTER FOUR
Annie
After leaving the restaurant, I go straight to Amelia and Noah’s house for an Audrey Hepburn movie night with the girls. Before going in, however, I change out of Emily’s dress and back into my usual overalls and T-shirt in my truck, and then shove the dress into my purse. It’s fine—it’s dark. No one saw anything.
My sisters and I have adopted Amelia’s practice that if anything goes wrong, hurts, or makes you feel cloudy, you turn on an Audrey film and inject her smile into your heart until it heals. Or you know, just generally have a girls’ night and gossip and eat popcorn.
That’s what’s happening tonight, while we’re all four curled up in various parts of Noah’s living room (or I guess I should think of it as Amelia’s living room now) watching Funny Face. When Amelia first came to town a little over a year ago, we had never seen an Audrey movie. Amelia, however, is capital O obsessed with her. And after watching her movies, my sisters and I are too.
“Nope,” Amelia says abruptly over the sound of the movie as she points to the hallway off the living room. “I saw you. Go back into your room.”
My brother Noah emerges from the hallway wearing a sulky face. “Come on. Just let me watch this one with you guys. You can’t keep me from my own damn living room.”
Amelia has been very firm in protecting our early tradition of girls’ night, and her engagement to Noah hasn’t changed it. The funny thing is, I don’t think he actually wants to watch the movie. He just loves to push Amelia’s buttons, and she loves to have them pushed. Match made in heaven.
“Excuse me—it’s my living room, too, now. And this is girls’ night. No boys allowed.”
Noah rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’m going to James’s house.” James is Noah’s best friend and like our second brother. He owns Huxley Farm next door (next door meaning several acres over).
“I’ll send a courier pigeon when we’re done,” says Amelia.
Noah slaps a ball cap on. “Just call.”
“We’ll flash the lights twenty times when it’s safe to come back and get frisky, Lover Boy,” says Maddie with a devious smile. Noah hates the nickname we gave him when he was first falling for Amelia. We’ll never let it go.
Noah frowns. “Call me when it’s over so I can come to bed. Some of us are not teachers on summer break and have actual jobs in the morning.”
Emily cups her hands around her mouth to get a good projection going. “I’ll turn on the hose and shoot a stream of water at James’s window when we’re on our way out, so you know the coast is clear to come home and make sweet, sweet love to Amelia!”
Noah tries his very best not to smile, but we can all see it there, lurking. He looks at me next. “Nothing from you?”
I shrug. “Tell James I said hi.”
My sisters and Amelia all boo, and Noah just grins at me. “I like you the best.”
He turns and leaves, but no sooner has the front door shut behind him than it opens again. Noah storms back inside. He walks around the back of the couch where Amelia is sitting, puts his hands on her jaw, and tilts her face up so he can kiss her goodbye.
When I first saw Noah and Amelia together as a couple, I was shocked. Well, we all were. The affection between those two was so easy and freely given. I’ve never seen Noah like that with anyone else. It’s inspiring watching the way they have managed their long-distance relationship all while dating within the limitations of Amelia’s fame.
“Ew,” says Madison with a disgusted laugh. “You’re going to kiss her Spider-Man style? It wasn’t a good look for Tobey, and it’s not a good look for you either.”
Emily throws a pillow at Maddie, and she deflects it with a karate chop.
“I love you,” Noah says in a whisper to Amelia after the kiss, but I’m sitting close enough to hear it.
I smile down at my lap because I adore Amelia and Noah’s relationship. I think it must be similar to what my parents had. Sturdy, deep, and dependable. And they sure look at each other with hearts in their eyes just like I’ve seen in all the photos of my parents. It’s the kind of love that just works and makes everyone around them envious. It’s what I want. The superglue-sticky, not-going-anywhere, till-death-do-us-part relationship. Someone to step up beside me and lend me his hand where we’ll walk happily together through life.
Noah eventually leaves, and Amelia’s cheeks are completely pink as we watch my personal favorite out of all of Audrey Hepburn’s films, Funny Face. I deeply relate to Jo—the character Audrey plays. Jo works in a bookstore (which would be my dream job if I didn’t already have a dream job owning my own flower shop), and she is considered quiet and introspective, maybe even a little plain.