Always You: A Lilac Bay Novel (Friends with Benefits)

by Rachel Schurig

  No, all in all it was probably better not to show the producers a Libbies meeting. Besides, it was a funny thing about booze and these women. Once they got a few drinks in them, they became downright bawdy. Present company excluded, of course.

  Libby’s place was only just starting to fill up when I arrived. I said hello to a few friends—Iris was there already, along with Sherry and Margaret, a friend of Posey’s who worked at the Island School. No sign of Jenny yet, so I grabbed myself a glass of wine from the counter and mingled a bit.

  Of course, the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was the show. People were still buzzing from seeing themselves on TV. “That horrible ex husband of mine, you know, Barrry,” Denise was saying in a low voice. “Do you know he had the gall to call me after the show aired? He said I looked great, but I know he’s just trying to get close to me because he hopes I’ll invite him up. Such an asshole.” For all she said about her ex being an asshole, she sounded pretty damn pleased with herself.

  “I can’t believe they actually chose my interview to show,” Jill was saying, a smug little smile on her face. “I mean, out of everyone on the island, all the people they could have chosen, they picked me! What are the odds?”

  “She helped out the odds by undoing the top three buttons of her shirt,” Libby muttered, passing me in the other direction. “Jenny just walked in,” she added, before being swallowed up by the crowd of chit-chatting women.

  It was easy enough to find my friend—I was, after all, taller than everyone else in the room. “Jenny,” I called, pushing my way through. “Over here.”

  Her face lit up in relief when she saw me, and I felt a pang for her. Would she always be this nervous out in crowds? I hoped not. She just needs more practice, I told myself as I reached her side.

  “How are you?”

  “Good!” she said brightly, her eyes darting around nervously. “I’m so glad you asked me to come.”

  “You might be regretting that by the end of the night,” Iris said, joining us. “I just saw my cousin come in with her supplies. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be one of our more successful attempts.”

  “Worse than the time we forgot the cupcakes were in the oven and nearly burned the store down?”

  Iris made a face. “I mean, she said something about kale.”

  A few minutes later we were all seated around tables in the tasting room behind Libby’s store. She hosted wine tasting for some of the biggest wineries down on the Leelanau Peninsula in this room. Which, come to think of it, was a pretty good outing to show the camera crew. Our proximity to some of the best wine in the Midwest was definitely one of the draws of the island.

  Unfortunately, we’d be having nothing so appealing as a wine tasting that night. As Posey passed around ingredients, I started to get the feeling that Iris had most definitely been right.

  “Excuse me,” Sherry called from a table on the far side of the room. “I thought you said we were making your grandmother’s famous cherry fudge cookies.”

  “We’re making a recipe inspired by her cherry fudge cookies,” Posey corrected in her happy little voice.

  “Then what in the hell are these bean sprouts doing on my table?”

  “Sherry, those aren’t bean sprouts,” Posey said. “They’re mung beans!”

  “Explain yourself,” Cora Hanson said in a dark voice, glaring at something that looked like caviar on her table but I was pretty sure Posey had called chia seeds.

  “We’re doing a healthy makeover!” Posey said. “I figured since we’re all going to have a bunch of opportunities to be on TV in the next few weeks, we probably all want to be looking our best. And the best way to do that is get our diets healthy!”

  No one in the room spoke. We were all too busy staring at Posey in horror. The thing was, Rose Powell’s cherry fudge cookies were legendary. You didn’t just mess with something like that, television cameras or not.

  “I’m going to need some liquor to get me through this,” Sherry sighed. “What did you bring to drink?”

  From a bag, Posey pulled out several gallon jugs of a greenish pale liquid. “Green tea!”

  “And what did you bring to put in the green tea?” Libby asked.

  “I have honey and agave nectar to sweeten it and—”

  “Hang on.” Jill stood up, her hands on her hips. “Are you telling me that you’re going to make us eat cookies made out of kale, and you’re not even going to give us any booze to deal with that fact?”

  Posey looked miserable. “Paul and I are doing this cleanse,” she mumbled, scuffing her red converse against the stone floor. “So I can’t drink. Or eat chocolate.”

  “And you wanted to drag us all down into that hell?” Iris asked. “Nice one, Posey.”

  “Absolutely not,” Tessa agreed. “I did not pay for a babysitter so I could drink green tea and eat kale cookies.”

  “The kale is only a little part of it,” Posey argued, but no one was listening anymore, instead grumbling to their neighbors about the waste of a night.

  “Oh, I feel bad for her,” Jenny murmured. “It looks like she tried hard.”

  “She broke the cardinal rule of the Libbies,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “No healthy shit.”

  Jenny giggled but cut off when a few people stood up. “Does that mean it’s over?”

  She looked so disappointed at the prospect that I felt bad.

  “Let’s see if we can turn things around,” I told her, standing. “Who wants to order pizza?” I called out.

  “Ooh, pizza would be great,” Libby said. “I’m starving.”

  “And we can raid Libby’s fudge counter,” I added. “And her wine.”

  “Great,” she said as everyone chattered in agreement. “Clean me out right before the season starts.”

  “Would you rather eat mung bean cookies?” I asked.

  She was up before the words were out of my mouth. “Who wants to help me with the wine?” she called.

  Ten minutes later we were all munching on fudge and drinking wine while we waited for the pizza guy. Posey finished packing up her supplies and joined Jenny, Libby, Iris and I at our table.

  “Sorry, Posey,” Jenny said. “That was kind of mean of everyone. The cookies sounded really…interesting.”

  Posey shrugged. “It’s my own fault. I broke the cardinal rule of the Libbies.”

  “See,” I muttered. “Told you.”

  “It was all Paul’s idea anyhow,” Posey continued. “He’s been trying all these new recipes for this cleanse thing.” I met Iris’s eyes across the table and wondered, not for the first time, what in the world Posey saw in her fiancé.

  “Anyhow, we’ve been eating nothing but veggies and juice for the past week.” Posey laughed a little but I thought it sounded sad. “So pizza is sounding pretty darn good to me right about now.”

  From the front of the store, a voice called out a hesitant hello. “We’re back here!” Jill called, her eyes flashing in a way that made me feel sorry for the pizza guy. He clearly had no idea what he was walking into. Luckily the kid turned out to be no more than fifteen. Young even by Jill’s standards.

  “This is much better,” Cora said a few moments later, bringing a paper plate back to her table. Posey merely whimpered as she scarfed down her slice in seconds flat.

  “What do we do now?” Jenny whispered.

  “Now it’s time for the good stuff,” I told her. “Now we drink and gossip.”

  The girls didn’t disappoint. No sooner had I finished speaking than Cora called out to me from a neighboring table. “Hey, Riley! What’s this I hear about you hooking up with the hot new dining room manager from the Big Hotel?”

  “Oooh,” several of the women chorused.

  “Riley, you got yourself a man?” Sherry called. “Feel free to let him sleep over at the apartment, I don’t mind.”

  “I would hope not,” I told her. “Considering the fact that you’re my lan
dlord, not my mother.”

  “I’m just saying I support you, dear.”

  I raised my wine in her direction. “Thanks, Sher.”

  “I notice you’re not denying it,” Cora said. “So you are hooking up with him?”

  “I’m not.” I took a swig of my wine and smiled at her. “Yet.”

  That, of course, elicited several wolf whistles from the girls, and a little squeak from Jenny.

  “You haven’t even been on a date yet!”

  “Which is why I’m joking,” I told her.

  “Oh.” She looked embarrassed, but then she smiled, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “He is awfully cute. I wouldn’t blame you for hitting that.”

  I nearly choked on my wine, and Libby had to pound me on the back. By the time my eyes had stopped watering, Jill was well on the way to redirecting the gossip towards her.

  “No one ever cares about my love life,” she said, her usually husky sex-kitten voice sounding very near to whiney. “Why doesn’t anyone ever ask me if I’m seeing anyone?”

  “Because,” Libby told her patiently. “We all know that you’re going to tell us whether we ask you or not.”

  “And whether we want to hear it or not,” Iris added.

  “Well,” Jill said, taking on an expression of martyrdom that really didn’t fit her in the slightest, “maybe I wouldn’t always be the first to offer up information about my love life if my best girlfriends ever showed the slightest interest in my relationships.”

  “Maybe if your relationship stories didn’t so often involve handcuffs and whips, we would be more interested,” Cora said, to a chorus of laughter.

  Never one to be embarrassed by her interest in sex, Jill bowed from her stool, a wicked grin on her face. “You’re just jealous, Cora. A few whips and chains might do you good.”

  “Oh, God,” Posey muttered. “Do we have to have the whips and chains conversation again?”

  “Yeah,” I called out. “You’re going to scare Jenny away.” I was joking, but there was some truth to the statement. Jenny’s wide-eyed gaze was currently flicking back and forth between Cora and Jill, and I couldn’t quite tell if she was fascinated or terrified. Or maybe a little of both. In any case, her bawdy teasing from a few moments ago was long gone.

  Jill turned her smile in Jenny’s direction, and I was pretty sure the terror won out on my friend’s face. “I always find that fear heightens the experience, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sit down you poser,” Sherry called from the back. “I’ve got years of experience on you in the bedroom department. I could tell you a thing or two.”

  Posey slapped her hands over her ears, but the rest of us were laughing.

  “Sorry, Jenny,” Libby said, patting the younger woman’s arm. “Some of these girls can’t seem to help devolving into sex talk when they get tipsy. They’re as bad as pre-teen boys.”

  “People will assume Jill is the worst because of the whole sexy librarian look,” I added. “But I’d put my money on Sherry. She can be downright filthy when the mood strikes.”

  “Does Jill really use handcuffs and whips?” Jenny whispered.

  “I think it’s all talk,” Libby assured her.

  I wasn’t so sure I bought that, but I figured there was no sense in freaking Jenny out any more than she already was. Though everyone was laughing right now, I knew that there were people in this room who had a pretty low opinion of Jill. And there were definitely people in the town at large who looked down on her. That, apparently, was the consequence of being a woman who enjoyed sex and wasn’t afraid to talk about it. Particularly in a small town. Personally, I’d always found Jill’s frank discussion refreshing and pretty damn amusing. And there was no doubt she looked pretty killer in her endless wardrobe of pencil skirts and tight blouses.

  More power to her, I thought, looking down at my normal uniform of faded jeans and old track t-shirt. Not for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to be so confident, so feminine, like Jill. I just wasn’t born with the right genes, I supposed. But that was no reason to blame Jill for flaunting hers.

  “I don’t know about that, Sherry,” Jill was saying smugly. “Maybe you should ask Andrew Powell about my bedroom experience.”

  Wait—what did she just say?

  I turned to gape at her, certain I hadn’t heard that correctly.

  “Oh, God,” Iris moaned. “That’s my cousin. Can we not?”

  “Yeah,” Posey agreed. “Please spare us the details, Jill. Some of us are related to him.”

  Okay, so maybe I had heard it correctly after all. But she had to be full of shit, right? I mean, Andrew and Jill? There was no way. They had absolutely nothing in common. Well, except for the fact that they were both on the promiscuous side.

  And knowing both of them, that’s really all they needed.

  The thought sent my stomach spiraling somewhere near my ankles. Why did it bother me so much? It was just sex.

  Sex with Jill, a little voice in my head said. Not some random day-tripper from the mainland. Not some tourist you’ll never see again. Jill Franklin. Andrew was hooking up with Jill Franklin.

  Which, of course, was absolutely none of my business. And definitely not something to get worked up about. And yet—the niggling little sense that something about this wasn’t right just wouldn’t go away.

  “You girls are no fun,” Jill said. And then, thankfully, she dropped it.

  And that, unfortunately, did absolutely nothing to stop me from thinking about it until the end of the meeting.

  Chapter 12

  On Friday evening I met Gina and the camera crew on the dock off the ferry. “Welcome back,” I told them, handing cups of coffee from the paper carrier I’d picked up from Rose’s cafe.

  “Thank you,” Gina said gratefully. “It’s a pretty long trek to get out here.”

  “I can imagine.” There were no direct flights from New York to the nearest airport in Traverse City, which meant the crew either needed to book an inconvenient connection or fly into Detroit and drive the rest of the way. “There’s a bunch of snacks and bagels waiting.”

  “Great.”

  We started up the dock towards Town Square, where a large crowd was already waiting for us. The instructions for our shoot this week had been vague. Everyone who wanted to participate needed to meet at the gazebo at six in comfortable clothes and be prepared to stay until evening and come back again tomorrow. Those were the only details we had, and everyone was pretty much going crazy trying to guess what they would have us do.

  “Any hints?” I asked as we made our way across the lawn.

  Gina laughed and shook her head. “You’ll just have to wait like everyone else.”

  Luckily, I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as she had greeted the rest of the committee, Gina grabbed the megaphone and jumped up onto the gazebo steps. “Good evening, Lilac Bay!” she called. “Thank you so much for being ready to go on time! I think we’re going to have a good time with your challenge this weekend, so I hope you’re all rested!” She looked out into the crowd. “Mayor Jones, will you come up here please? From Riley’s application video I have a feeling that you’re really going to enjoy this one.”

  “Oooh,” I muttered to Andrew. “Maybe it’s sports-related.”

  “That wouldn’t be too bad,” he began, but then Gina was talking again.

  “Your task this weekend is to plan and perform a flash mob.”

  The crowd in front of the gazebo was silent.

  “Did I hear that right?” I whispered. Surely she hadn’t said—

  “I figure you guys have a nice advantage, what with your mayor being so proficient at dancing,” she continued, an arm around his shoulder.

  Oh my God, they were going to make us dance? All of us?

  “The challenge involves everyone working as a team,” she said. “You’ll need to choose people to choreograph the dance, choose the music, and practice until you’re ready to do the entire thing on camera.
You’ll just have one shot—no do overs if you mess up.”

  The crowd erupted into whispers and Gina pulled the megaphone away from her mouth to whistle loudly for attention.

  “Couple more things, guys, and then you can get to work. We’re looking for as much creativity as you can muster here, okay? We’re asking you to put on a full presentation. So that means everything counts—the clothes you choose to wear, the way you want to decorate for the shoot, the theme you come up with. Everything. I’m going to meet briefly with the committee to go over some guidelines, and then you can get started. You have tonight and tomorrow to get it done.”

  As soon as she stepped down the crowd broke into excited chatter. “You better get over there,” Andrew said.

  I glanced up at him. “Don’t you dare think about leaving,” I said. He held up his hands in surrender and I took off across the lawn in a jog, my brain spinning. Gina was already surrounded by the other committee members.

  “Okay, guys, here are the rules,” she said. “Based on the size of your town, you need to have at least one hundred participants in order for it to count. Of course, having more will only help you. We’re looking to be wowed here.” She rattled off a few more rules. “Any questions?”

  I felt like I should have a million, but my brain felt too fuzzy, too panicked. This was one of the most important days of the entire competition, and I was at a loss.

  “There’s a list of songs that we’re licensed to use,” she said, passing me a piece of paper. “You can choose any of them. Your dance needs to cover the entirety of the song, okay?” She grinned around the group and I forced myself to take a deep breath, to look calm before we made eye contact. “I have total faith in you,” she said. “Have fun with it.”

  And then she was gone, leaving the seven of us to gape at each other.

  “Is anyone else freaking out right now?” Libby asked. “I don’t have the slightest idea how to choreograph a flash mob!”