“I am. Okay. Sure. Why not?” She moved the eggplant aside. “I’ll be right with you.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and passed it to Wes. “Put your number in there so I can text you.”
Long after they’d left, after she’d served a bunch of customers, she was still thinking about Wes and his brothers. Her only focus when she’d packed up her place in L.A. was to get on her feet professionally. She hadn’t been worried about friends or dating. She had Piper and her family.
She’d needed the recovery time with just herself to reset and remind herself that she wasn’t the sum of her mistakes. Believing in Dorian for longer than he deserved didn’t make her an idiot.
Piper accused her of shutting herself off, running away from her problems, burying her head in the sand like she used to do in books. Hailey had told her where to put her counseling advice before realizing she wasn’t wrong. She’d had to deal with the impact of her relationship and get to a healthy place. She was in it. She felt it. But letting new people in still scared her. At least with Wes, she knew he was safe. He didn’t want anything other than friendship. She could be herself and if he didn’t like what he saw, it wouldn’t wreck her self-esteem. She’d also get a chance to be friends with some seemingly lovely women and his brothers.
Dorian’s words during their last argument, the final one, still rang in her ears now and again but they were quieter now.
You’re no one’s leading lady, least of all mine. You’re a boring book nerd who serves food out of a truck, for God’s sake. You aren’t even the best friend in a second-rate movie. You’re an extra. A nobody. You were a placeholder, Hailey.
Yeah, she’d retreated into herself a bit with those words. Then she’d kicked him out of her house and told him what she really thought of his acting skills.
“You say you’ve moved on, you’re okay. Prove it. Stop second-guessing the chance to really build a life here.” Now she sounded like Piper. A small laugh escaped as she swept up, turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. At least she could tell her cousin the therapy practice was working.
8
“Let me get this straight,” Piper said, taking the tray of salads out of Hailey’s hands. “First he’s a jerk, then he apologizes and you actually let him help you—total growth there, cous—and now you’re hanging with his family at a beach house?”
“Good recap. Why do you sound so suspicious?”
Piper set the tray down and turned to face Hailey, who dug through her purse, which she’d dumped on the counter, for some ChapStick. Finding it, she glossed her lips, then put it back, looked around the room with serious envy. Piper’s kitchen was a dream—one of the things they’d always had in common was their love of cooking.
“Hails. Come on. Hot guy says sorry, whips up your website, and now you’re headed to a beach house in the middle of nowhere?”
Hailey’s jaw dropped and she tilted her head. “Whoa. That’s what you got out of me telling you? I didn’t say Wes was hot. When I was here last, your friends offered to help me with some design and marketing. Why is it sinister when Wes does something similar?” Two of the women, sisters Megan and Rachel, ran an Etsy-style shop that specialized in all things stationery.
“Yeah but other than Rachel—who is in a committed relationship—none of my friends would want to get in your pants.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Neither does Wes. Trust me. It’s a day at the beach, new friends. I need to meet people somehow. I’m not into clubbing and that’s not how you meet friends anyway. How do people in their thirties start over?”
Piper came to her side and gave her a hug. “Like this, I guess. I just worry about someone taking advantage of you. Or murdering you and burying your body in the sand.”
She pushed out of Piper’s embrace, aware that her cousin’s words echoed Wes’s. “You’re a jerk.”
“But only because I love you. What’s his last name?”
The door opened and female voices danced into the room as Piper said, “Let’s look them up on the internet.”
Rachel set down two bottles of wine, one red, one white. “Who are we googling?”
Fiona and Megan followed, joining them in the kitchen. Piper took over telling the women, as she got out wineglasses, about Wes and how Hailey had met him.
“That’s so cute,” Fiona said.
Hailey was regretting her decision to share with her cousin and didn’t really think there was anything cute or worrisome about what she’d said.