Just Tell Her
NICOLE PYLAND
Chicago Series Book #2
Charlie Adams has two best friends. Ember Elliot and Hailey Grant, the woman she’s secretly been in love with since the moment they met over a decade ago. She has watched Hailey date all the wrong women and never said anything about how she wanted to be Hailey’s forever love.
Hailey Grant had a first love that she was comparing every other woman to. When that woman comes back into her life, Hailey has to get to know her again after all this time. As Hailey tries to figure out if her first love is actually her forever love, she sees something is different about Charlie.
When the two women embark on new relationships, they’ll have to finally confront their growing attraction for each other and decide if they can be brave enough to risk the most important friendship they have for possibly something more. Charlie might just be the girl who gets the girl after years of watching Hailey be miserable with other women who didn’t deserve her, and Hailey might have just had the right woman by her side this whole time.
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This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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By the Author
All the Love Songs
Chicago Series:
Introduction – Fresh Start
Book #1 – The Best Lines
Book #2 – Just Tell Her
Coming Soon:
Book #3 – Love Walked into The Lantern
(Available for pre-order)
Copyright © 2018 Nicole Pyland
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9996221-7-9
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
EPILOGUE
COMING NEXT
CHAPTER 1
“Can you believe it? I mean, seriously,” Hailey asked of Charlie as they sat off to the side at their best friend’s engagement party. “Everyone’s pairing off and getting married. I’m including Ember in that group. Ember is getting married!”
“Alyssa and Hannah will probably have a kid in like a year,” Charlie added.
“We’re still single with none of that on the horizon. Alyssa and Eva are both younger than us and somehow ahead of us. Ember and Hannah are both around our ages.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with age, Hails. It’s about finding the right person and taking those steps with them. They all just found their person.”
“And we still haven’t,” Hailey stated.
“Right,” Charlie muttered to herself more than to Hailey.
“Well, where’s my damn person already?” Hailey questioned exasperated.
“No idea,” Charlie replied halfheartedly.
Charlie had already met her person, or at least it had felt that way. It had for the better part of a decade. Charlie and Hailey had known one another for more than ten years. They met at Ember’s family restaurant, which is where they also met Ember, and formed their bond of friendship that had gotten them through all their major life events so far. Despite life getting busier the older they got, with the new jobs and promotions, with additional responsibilities and new relationships, they’d always kept their Thursday coffee meetings. They made sure to stay involved in one another’s lives. That had sometimes been a problem for Charlie because she had been madly in love with her best friend, Hailey Grant, for a very long time. Hailey had a habit of dating all the wrong women. Charlie had to watch her get burned time and again all the while imploring Hailey silently to just pick her.
“I’m glad Ember and Eva stayed here. I would have hated Ember leaving Chicago. I know it wouldn’t have been that far away. We still would have seen each other, but we would miss out on so much.” Hailey waved at a very excited Ember who was standing next to Eva laughing with expressive eyes. Ember held up a finger indicating she’d be right over. “God, look how happy she is. I want that.”
“Hails, you’ll get it someday. You just have to find the right woman first.”
Charlie gave Hailey the same mantra over and over. She grew more and more frustrated that she had to continue to deliver it because she wanted Hailey to see her as that woman, but Charlie hadn’t ever told Hailey how she felt. She’d only revealed her feelings accidentally while intoxicated to Ember. Ember had kept her secret though, only revealing her feelings to Eva, because you do that when you enter a relationship with someone, apparently. Charlie had been in relationships in the past, but none had ever come close to resembling what Ember and Eva had found.
They’d formed a new group of six with the addition of Hannah and Alyssa. The longer that went on, the more Charlie wanted someone like that for herself. It got harder not telling Hailey how she felt, but she also knew she wasn’t that brave. She’d never been brave where Hailey had been concerned. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. When the three of them met at the restaurant, Charlie had nearly asked Hailey out on a date. Unfortunately, Hailey hadn’t known that the reason Charlie had approached her was to ask her out. Hailey had started in on how hot Ember was and that maybe she’d ask her out. Charlie told her to go for it and walked away with a lowered head. They’d all only known one another for a few months at that time, and Charlie had used every minute of those months working up the courage to ask the girl out only to hear her talking about Ember. Ember, of course, was still in her date-every-woman phase and never asked Hailey out. Hailey met someone else and then someone else.
◆◆◆
“Why are you two over here?” Ember approached and sat down in the booth next to Hailey and across from Charlie. “The party is going on all around you. You’re missing it.”
The party was being held in Ember’s family restaurant, which was always closed on Sundays. There were about sixty or so people moving around the space, enjoying food, drinks, and the sound of the soft music playing from the overhead speakers.
“We just needed a break from the love fest,” Hailey explained. “I’m so happy for you guys though.”
Ember laughed and slid her ash blonde hair behind her ear allowing Charlie to catch another glimpse of Ember’s new engagement ring, which seemed to fit her so well.
“She’s totally happy for you,” Charlie echoed and earned a wry grin from Hailey. “What?”
“Okay. So, here’s my problem.” Ember leaned over the table. “I have a lame older brother and no sisters, but I do happen to have two best friends. I was hoping that you guys would be my bridesmaids.”
“Of course, Em,” Hailey returned with a smile. “Whatever you nee
d, we’re there.”
Charlie took a moment to glance at Hailey while she was engaged in a moment with Ember. Hailey’s blonde hair had been put into a braid that she wore down one shoulder. Her green eyes were as magnificent as ever. They flickered a little with the light from the small candle in a red holder on the table. Her hands were small, with long fingers that Charlie just wanted to hold. There were other things she wanted to do with them too, and many a night, she’d touched herself picturing Hailey doing it with them instead. Mostly though, she thought about how it would feel to hold Hailey’s hand. She wanted to be the only one that got to intertwine her fingers with Hailey’s and lift their joined hands to her lips to kiss Hailey’s soft flawless skin. Hailey’s lips were full. Charlie had to constantly remind herself not to stare at them.
“Charlie?” Ember’s blue eyes were on her.
“Huh?” Charlie had zoned out and had no idea what she was being asked.
“Bridesmaid?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” Charlie agreed. “You know that.”
“I don’t really know what to do about the whole maid of honor thing. You two are both my best friends.”
“We can both do it,” Hailey suggested. “It would make things easier.” She lifted one shoulder and looked at Charlie. “We’re both really busy at work right now. We could share the responsibilities. It could be fun.”
Planning a friend’s wedding with the woman she wanted to marry one day. ‘Yeah, that could be fun,’ Charlie’s internal voice rang with sarcasm.
“Sure,” She agreed again and took a long drink of her gin and tonic.
Ember squinted her eyes in Charlie’s direction as if she was considering something. Ember was always on her case to tell Hailey how she felt. The problem was while Charlie had always been the dry, sarcastic one of their threesome and the necessarily assertive one at work, when it came to relationships, she’d never been brave. Every day that passed, she felt less and less so, because it meant that she and Hailey had known one another for yet another day. Their friendship had lasted so long and was so important to Charlie that the thought of any awkwardness arising when Hailey inevitably told her that she just wanted to be friends made her sick sometimes. The thought that she could lose Hailey from her life was enough to not tell her and live with the pain she felt every time Hailey met someone new.
At least that hadn’t happened lately. Hailey had finally taken her friend’s advice and hadn’t just fallen for another woman that was just trying to get her into bed or who was bad for her. She hadn’t had anyone to talk about at coffee for over three months, and those were three blissful months for Charlie Adams.
“When were you two thinking about having the ceremony? That kind of tells us when we need to start working on things.”
“Well, here’s the thing.” Ember glanced over at Eva who was talking to Hannah.
Charlie watched as Eva somehow felt Ember’s glance and smiled when their eyes met. Ember didn’t even say or do anything from what Charlie could tell, but Eva excused herself and headed over.
“You rang, Ember Elliot?” Eva sat across from Ember and next to Charlie.
“They want to know the date,” Ember shared.
“Oh,” Eva smirked at Ember. “So, we were going to wait a while since we just got a house, just got engaged and that’s what everyone thinks we should do, but we don’t want to wait a while.”
“My mom is also concerned because my aunt isn’t well,” Ember explained. “She’s had some heart problems recently. She’s Mikey’s mom, so she’s basically like my second mother.” Ember’s cousin Mikey was the chef at the restaurant and was essentially another brother to her. “We thought about doing it next February since that’s the anniversary of when we met and when we proposed, but I don’t know if she’s going…” Ember began to fade.
Eva reached her hand over the table. Ember slid her own into it. Charlie thought back to Hailey’s hands.
“Em, I’m sorry,” Hailey consoled.
“We want to get married this summer,” Ember stated and lifted her eyebrows up in concern at her friend’s reactions.
“This summer?” Charlie nearly choked down another sip of her gin and tonic. “It’s March, November.”
“That’s confusing,” Hailey pointed out.
“I used her full name for emphasis,” Charlie remarked.
“I know it’s a lot, but I’m presenting at that conference in June. We’d already planned to take a two-week vacation after that. We thought we could have the wedding before that and fly to Miami. I can present my article, which will only be about three hours of work at the stuffy event. Then, we’d have two weeks together to celebrate,” Eva explained.
“It’s fast, we know,” Ember continued. “But we don’t want anything big. Honestly, we’re looking for something small. It shouldn’t take too much work.”
“The only thing that might cause some problems is the location,” Eva added.
“You want to do it here, right?” Charlie presumed.
“Not exactly.” Eva looked to Ember to reveal the information to her friends.
“We’re going to do it in Iowa.” Ember smiled. “It’s in Eva’s hometown. All of her siblings have been married in this barn on one of the neighboring farms. It’s like this tradition.”
“And I’m not always one for tradition, but it’s important to my parents and-”
“It’s where we first danced,” Ember interjected. “And we kissed for the first time in that tree house and slept to-”
“Gross, Em. We don’t need to know that.” Charlie waved a hand to get her to stop talking.
“We slept, Charlie. That’s all, remember?”
“I want to do this for them because we don’t go there very often. It’s not too far away from here, so getting Ember’s side there shouldn’t be difficult.”
“I think it’s cute, guys,” Hailey joined in. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem. Do you guys want separate bridal showers or together? Do you want to do one bachelorette party or two? Oh, there’s this place that makes amazing cupcakes in Evanston. I used to get them for professors when I was at Northwestern.”
“Because you were a kiss-ass,” Charlie pointed out.
“Because I liked my teachers,” Hailey corrected with a glare in her direction.
“She’s a weirdo,” Charlie offered the group.
“You realize I am a professor, right?” Eva delivered to Charlie with a smirk.
“I’m sure you’re the only one that deserves the cupcakes,” Charlie returned with a smile.
“And we don’t know that stuff yet,” Ember told Hailey, returning them to their original conversation. “We haven’t talked about the other stuff that comes along with weddings. We just thought June and Iowa.”
“Well, you’ll want to figure it out soon because it’s like three months away, Em.”
“I know. We will,” Ember said.
“Alyssa and Hannah will be my duel maids of honor. Is that how you say that?” She checked with Ember. “Or is it duel maid of honors?”
“You’re the one with a Ph. D in English, babe.”
“Literature. There’s a difference,” Eva corrected her. “We thought it might be fun for the four of you to work together. We’ve all been spending so much time together lately. There would be four of you to handle things, but we don’t expect anything. We’re not hiring a wedding planner because my sister wants to do that instead of being in the wedding.”
“It’s true. She’s already asking us for a guest list. It’s kind of cute.” Ember smiled at Eva.
“We were thinking we would all get together when Ember and I are on a break from school in a couple of weeks. We could start figuring things out officially then. We could have lunches or dinners and maybe do dress stuff on the weekend.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Sure,” Charlie echoed and finished her drink.
“Thanks, guys. I know it’s soon, but honestly, it’s about mor
e than just my aunt. I want to marry this woman like crazy.” Ember continued to hold onto Eva’s hand on the table.
“We just bought a house together, but she doesn’t seem to think that’s enough of a commitment,” Eva joked with them, but never took her eyes off her fiancée.
“I’m locking you down, girl.” Ember lifted her eyebrows.
“Okay, we get it. You like each other,” Charlie joined in on the joking. “I have work tomorrow, and I am exhausted. I’m going to head out.” She went to move out of the booth.
“I’ll go too,” Hailey offered. “I’ll drive you home.”
“I can walk,” Charlie stated as Ember and Eva slid out of the booth so that Hailey and Charlie could get up.
“Why? I can drive you. I have my car.”
“You live in the opposite direction of where I’m going.”
“Ember, give her the math, please.” Hailey crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the stubborn Charlie while she asked Ember to do something they’d both started to do the moment they found out their best friend was a math genius.
“Well, Charlie is right. You live in the opposite direction.”
“Thank you,” Charlie matched Hailey’s playful yet stern posture.
“But Hailey’s more right, or is it righter?” She glanced at Eva who just smiled. “She only lives fifteen minutes that way. You live five minutes from here by car. It makes more sense for her to drive you, given the traffic patterns at this time of night in combination with the freezing weather you’d have to walk through. You’ve also had at least two gin and tonics, which isn’t good for a nighttime solo walk in the city. The ice would likely make you walk slower, so it’s more like a fifteen-minute walk home in the dark in a major city rife with crime.”
“Rife?” Charlie rolled her eyes at Ember. “Your fiancée has expanded your vocabulary there, Em.”
“Math holds, Charlie,” Ember retorted. “She should drive you home. It will take her only five minutes. She can take Lakeshore back home, which will be deserted this time of night.”
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