Stephanie’s eyes got wide. “All of them?”
“All of them. Mom thinks it sounds like so much fun. Just a fantastic get-together for all of us. So, I told her I wouldn’t go unless I could bring you,” I said.
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll go. Do I need to bring a side dish, too, or is your macaroni and cheese the ticket for both of us?”
“I’ll get clarification next time I talk to her.” I let out a sigh and pulled myself up to sitting. “Seriously, though. Can you believe she would do something like this to me?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. She looked down into her mug, then back at me. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Yeah, coffee would be good. What do you mean, what do I mean?”
She got up and went into the kitchen. “What do you mean can I believe they would do something like this to you?”
“She invited my ex, his brothers, and his parents over for a barbecue,” I said, emphasizing the words to help her understand the supreme awkwardness of the situation.
“Well,” she said, lifting her voice up louder so she could call to me from the kitchen, “technically she invited her friend and her friend’s family over for a barbecue.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She came into the room a few seconds later with a tray holding a pot of coffee, mugs, and a plate of cookies. “Why would I be kidding you? They really are all still friends. You can’t help that. It’s a small town, Ava. It’s bound to happen. You can’t expect them to just stop associating with people they have known since before you were born because you had a bad breakup years ago.”
Thoughts of the pain and sadness of those days rolled like a dark cloud over my mind. It was more than just a bad breakup, but I didn’t want to talk about it. In so many ways I felt like I had talked about it way too much. Just not to the right person.
Regardless of that, Stephanie was right. I couldn’t expect everyone to change their entire lives just because of the end of the relationship. There was no reason my parents and Mason’s parents shouldn’t maintain their friendship.
The next night I went into the bar for work wondering if Mason or any of the boys would mention the barbecue. I’d gotten used to Mason being the first of the brothers to get to The Hollow and often the only one there when I arrived. We fell into the rhythm of getting the bar ready to open for the evening.
“How was your day off?” he asked when we’d gotten much of the work finished.
“It was good. I spent most of it with my parents,” I said.
He still didn’t say anything about the barbecue, so I wondered if his parents had even mentioned it to him yet.
“How’s your dad doing?” he asked.
“Says he’s much better, but Mom thinks it’s him being stubborn.”
He smiled and poured two shots. I caught one of the glasses as he slid it across the bar to me. We clinked the rims of our glasses together and took the shots. I never took more than one, but I had found just one calmed my nerves and made it easier to work next to Mason.
He took the glasses and put them in the sink. I went behind the bar to get the trays of salt and pepper, napkin holders, and other items we needed to put out on the tables. He reached for them at the same time, and we bumped into each other.
The way I moved suddenly made it so our bodies were pushed up against each other with my back to the bar. I drew in a breath, and Mason stared into my eyes for an intense second. In the next instant, he grabbed my face and kissed me. It was brief, but it left me stunned, and for the rest of the night, I found it much harder to concentrate on work.14MasonI knew for sure now what it was going to be like to kiss Ava again.
I also knew how she would react to it. And that was not well. As soon as the kiss ended, she scurried away under the pretense of setting up the tables for the evening. But ever since then, she had been weird. It wasn’t like she was completely avoiding me. That might have been easier. Instead, she was just kind of skirting around me. Orbiting me rather than actually interacting with me.
If only I had checked my text messages earlier that day. If I had read them when they came in rather than putting it aside so I could focus on work, I would have gotten the one from my mother. Then I would know about the barbecue the entire family was invited to at Ava’s parents’ house before I decided to spontaneously kiss her. It would have at least given me all the information I needed.