“Yeah, because you refused to accept the nomination. That’s not a real win.”
Remi took a swallow of hot coffee and sat with what Audrey was saying.
“When you were off-island, it was different. Brick saw me, and I saw him,” Audrey continued.
“You don’t have to explain,” Remi reminded her. “You don’t owe me anything. And who wouldn’t fall in love with the man who just walked past the door twice trying to figure out what we’re talking about?”
“I spent so much time in my teenage years wanting to be you that when the chance arose, when Brick asked me out that first time, I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I jumped at it. And I did that without wondering if my feelings for him were real or if I just wanted him because you wanted him.”
“You loved him. You still love him,” Remi pointed out.
“He’s a hard man not to love. But it was never right between us. We were never right. Neither was cutting you out of my life. You came home after art school with all your big dreams and a job offer for a gallery in a city I’ve never been to. And I had no plans. I’d gotten my accounting degree that my parents insisted on and was no closer to figuring out what I wanted than when I was sixteen.”
“I never meant to make you feel like you weren’t enough or didn’t have enough,” Remi said.
“I know you didn’t. You loved me for who I was. The woman I couldn’t see because I was too busy comparing myself to you and everyone else.”
“You invited me to the wedding, and I didn’t go.”
“I didn’t even tell you we were dating until we’d gotten engaged,” Audrey countered. “That’s when it started to gel for me. I realized I wasn’t in this for the right reasons. I wasn’t putting on that white poufy dress for Brick and me. I was doing it to prove I was the special one. That I’d earned something you hadn’t.”
Remi said nothing.
“Then I realized something even worse.”
Remi wrinkled her nose. “What?”
Audrey’s smile was sad. “He loved you. He’d always loved you. He’d already given his heart to you. I never had a chance. And to be honest, he never had a fair chance with me either.”
“Maybe this is a conversation you should be having with him,” Remi suggested.
“We’ve had it. At least parts of it. I left out the petty parts that made me look bad. But you deserve to know. He was a great husband. He was attentive. He did my laundry. He never complained about my taste in movies.”
“You do have horrible taste,” Remi agreed.
Audrey grinned. “He’d take me out on date nights and buy me flowers. But it was your name he whispered in his sleep.”
Remi looked down at the freckles of paint, the mess she’d made. “I’m so sorry.”
“I put myself in that position. And I’ll be honest. I doubled down. I tried for a while to be better than you. To make him forget about you. But it was never going to happen. Especially not with me pretending to be someone I wasn’t.”
“So you felt like you had to leave Mackinac?”
Audrey shook her head. “I set us free. I started interviewing for jobs on the mainland, and when I got one at a design firm, I took it without even talking to him. Sure, we went through the motions of discussing whether I’d commute or he’d move with me. But we both knew it was the end.”
Remi blew out a breath. “How are you now?”
Audrey shrugged, then grinned. “I’m happy. I love my job. I work with interesting people. I date men who have never met you.”
Remi winced. “Mean.”
Audrey flashed her a wink. “The thing I need you to know is I was a jealous, petty, shitty friend, Rem. You never did anything that deserved that, and I still made it my mission to beat you instead of love you. That kind of jealousy made me a worse person, and I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to apologize.”
“I’m sorry I made your life difficult,” Remi said.
“I made my life difficult,” Audrey corrected. “You didn’t put me in your shadow. The sun was shining just as brightly on me. I just didn’t notice it. It took all that for me to find the right path, my own path, to realize I was already standing in the sun.”
Remi blew out a breath. “You know, I never felt special. I felt different.”
“Girl, that’s what special is.”
“Well, I ran away from it. I ran away from who I was and tried to be someone else.”
“It looks like you found your way back,” Audrey observed.
“I guess I did.”
“Now, as the lovable ex-wife, I need you to hear this. Don’t play with him, Rem. He’s been waiting so long for you. If you’re not all the way in, if you’re just going to pick up and move on when the wind blows, do him a favor and walk now.”
“Things are…complicated right now,” Remi admitted. “We haven’t talked about the future.”
“Well, you should at least be thinking about it. Don’t hurt him if you can help it. He’s one of a kind, and I really don’t want to dislike you for something real.”
“Message received,” Remi said, feeling just a little unsteady. She caught a glimpse of Brick’s face at the window again and fell just a little harder in love. “So what are you doing here?”
“My brother told me you and Brick finally hooked up. I figured it was time for me to do some apologizing.”
“And scare the hell out of Brick? I’ve never seen him that pale before.”
Audrey’s grin was sharp. “His face when he opened the door looked like he’d just stepped on a trapdoor. He’s probably out there wearing tracks in the hardwood as we speak.”
46
Remi sat front and center at Tiki Tavern’s bar while Brick, Darius, and her very excited father on his first bar shift handled drink orders. She was determined to enjoy the night, to forget about everything weighing her down, and focus only on having a little fun.
The music was loud, bathing the packed bar in golds and shimmers of rose. The crowd still leaned heavily in favor of the residents, but there were enough seasonal workers and early tourists to shift the balance. As she sipped her drink, straight bourbon tonight, and kept up with the conversations around her, Remi thought about what she’d be doing if this were a normal night in her normal life.
In Alessandra’s life.
She would have been painting, alone into the night. Or she might have been dressed up, made up, for an event to sell herself, her talent to buyers with the right kind of deep pockets.
Instead, she was crammed in between Audrey and Kimber and lusting after her bartending boyfriend. Kimber was doing her best to ignore Kyle, who had not only shown up but bought the last two rounds and was trying to coax her sister into a dance. Spencer—having shown up on the afternoon ferry the day before—was sandwiched in between Audrey and Darius’s boyfriend, Ken.
Brick hadn’t even blinked at the extra guest. With two kids, a separated sister, an ex-wife, and a dog, what was one more?
Remi, on the other hand, had blinked an eye on her way to bed, when she’d spotted Spencer sneaking into Audrey’s room after midnight. Audrey’s arm snaking out and dragging him inside.