“Thanks,” she says, gratefully taking it.
Paige pulls the shawl up onto Rachel’s shoulders. “You’re very forgiving of her, you know,” she says.
“Who?” asks Rachel, unnecessarily.
“You know who.”
Rachel shrugs. “What else am I supposed to do? She’s going to be family soon and you know what they say…？”
Paige looks at her with raised eyebrows.
“You can’t choose your family…” Rachel goes on.
“She should certainly come with an instruction to only take in small doses,” says Paige, half laughing.
Rachel chuckles. “I’ll give you that, but once the wedding’s out of the way, we’ll probably not see that much of her. It’s poor Will we should feel sorry for.”
“Why have we got to feel sorry for him?” asks Jack, returning to the terrace with two glasses of red wine. He hands one to Rachel, and Noah gives another to Paige.
“Ssh,” says Rachel, pulling Jack toward a sunken seating area. It’s only as she collapses into the cushions that she realizes that a firepit is simmering in front of her.
“Don’t you find it tiresome?” asks Paige, sitting down.
“What?” asks Jack.
“Her!” says Paige, nodding her head in the direction they’d last seen Ali.
Jack takes a large slug of wine.
“She’s just so full-on,” says Paige. “Even before she’s had a drink.”
“You’re full-on, even before you’ve had a drink,” says Jack, laughing.
“I get why she rubs some people up the wrong way,” says Rachel, eager to dispel the growing sense that a ruckus is brewing. It often does when Jack and Paige get together, because they’re both so hot-headed and keen to prove themselves right that they could argue over the price of a pint of milk. “But I think she’s a laugh. The world would certainly be a duller place if she wasn’t in it, that’s for sure.”
“You were moaning about her earlier,” says Paige.
“I wasn’t,” says Rachel. “I was just talking about how she seems to wind some people up.”
“Namely, Jack,” states Paige.
Rachel widens her eyes, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
“Whoa,” says Jack, holding his hands up in the air. “Don’t bring me into this.”
“But you have got a problem with her?” presses Paige.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” says Paige. “It’s written all over your face.”
“And since when were you able to read my expressions?”
Here we go, thinks Rachel, as she brings her feet up under her and swirls her red wine around in its glass. Once they get started, Jack and Paige are like a sparring brother and sister who seem to enjoy getting a rise out of each other. It’s good-humored for the most part, the pair of them playing a ping-pong game of banter—each of them desperate to win the volley—but it’s been known to get a little out of hand. Rachel suspects it’s because they both work in high-pressure jobs and are used to—perhaps even thrive on—being constantly challenged by someone else’s opinion.
Defending herself, or someone else, is what Paige does for a living—“the Rottweiler with a handbag” is how she’s known within the legal profession. If you were ever in trouble, she’s who you’d want onside to get you out of it. But while her ability to argue her way out of a paper bag may well be of use to someone accused of murder, when the same tactics were used to wage a war on your husband, it could be a little overkill.
Rachel rolls her eyes at Noah and he smiles knowingly back, no doubt wondering, like her, how the four of them could ever be best friends. If a stranger looked at them, they would probably assume that it was her and Noah who were a couple; the pair of them sharing an easy, laid-back attitude that Jack and Paige couldn’t even imagine possessing. They were happy just bobbing along, seeing the good in everyone and everything, while Jack and Paige cast a cynical eye over the minutiae of life.
Yet somehow, collectively, it worked. Perhaps because they all got something from each other’s spouses that they didn’t get from their own.
“So, what’s your problem with her?” Paige asks, like a dog with a bone.
Jack looks into his glass, as if he’s deliberating whether to say what he’s about to say.
“I…” he starts, before looking around. “I … just don’t trust her.”