as Tennyson bugged the crap out of her, she was glad someone who understood how infuriating her mother was stood right beside her.
“Hillary. And Mother.”
“I heard Hilly wasn’t doing well,” Tennyson said, her hand grazing Melanie’s back before Tennyson seemed to think better of it. “Um, that she still battled bulimia. I thought I would try to go visit her. You know I always loved Hilly. She’s the best.”
“She is,” Melanie said, her voice softening. Tennyson had always loved Hillary. When they were younger, Tennyson always sought Hillary out to fix her hair, check that her eyeliner was straight, or just gossip about the older girls Hillary knew. Her concern was sincere.
“Is she well enough to see me?”
“I don’t know. My mother hides so much.” As soon as she said the words, she wished she hadn’t. Because it was like taking the gauze off a wound before one should, making blood pulse out and splatter the grounds. Reminding her of what was once hidden and how Tennyson had unearthed the secret and then used it against Melanie. Reminding her about the hurt that still sat in their family, fat and oozing, with her mother refusing to acknowledge that it was still there and needed to be dealt with.
“Everyone hides things,” Tennyson said, her voice . . . regretful.
“I guess.”
“All I’m saying is that everyone here has things they don’t want others to know. Everyone here has regrets, wrinkles, and crazy uncles. Everyone has a closet with a skeleton.” Gone was the cocky, brash woman, and in her stead was a woman who perhaps had weathered her own battles, who understood that things hidden away could corrode a person, leaving her a shell. What things had Tennyson hidden? What hurts had she borne? Melanie had never considered that the invincible Tennyson might have deep scars or places still unhealed. She’d been too busy hating her to see her as an actual person.
This woman didn’t feel like the one who barged into her house with sunglasses, stilettos, and a dog in her purse. This woman was her old friend. If Melanie squinted enough, she could see the freckles Tennyson hated and the scar from a bike wreck nestled in her eyebrow.
“Well, my mother has always been the warden of our vault of secrets.”
For a moment they were both silent. The world whirled around them in unbelievable fashion, people laughing, clinking glasses, jugglers performing, an empty gondola floating like a forgotten centerpiece. But for one small moment, she and Tennyson were suspended in something deeper than they should be flirting with. Something laced with regret and hemmed with uncertainty on how to proceed with who they now were. It was like standing on a cliff, deciding whether to jump into the water and embrace the danger and exhilaration . . . or turning around and climbing back down, deciding the fall could break a person apart.
Tennyson snapped out of her sudden reverie and smiled brightly. “My mother and Bronte are here. They wanted to say hello to you. I mean, if you want to say hello.”
“I will. Let me get a drink,” Melanie said, grabbing another Aperol spritz off a passing waiter and nodding toward the open tent where Tennyson’s family had to be sitting.
Fifteen minutes later, while Bronte was laugh-snorting her way through a story about Tennyson and Melanie trying to learn how to drive Heathcliff’s old Mustang, Marc Mallow stepped to the front of the tent and struck his fork against his glass, demanding attention.
“Hello, everyone. Welcome to Emma and Andrew’s wedding shower. I hope you all have been enjoying the food, drinks, and entertainment.” Marc did a weird jazz hand circle with one hand, a bit of razzmatazz. The people gathering around him nodded because who didn’t enjoy stuffed jumbo shrimp and crawfish étouffée pistolettes? And free top-shelf liquor? And mimes? Well, there were plenty of people who didn’t like mimes, Melanie being one. She didn’t nod for that reason alone.
“As you know, Tennyson has so lovingly thrown this party in celebration of her only child’s forthcoming nuptials in August, and she has a special gift she’d like to bestow on the happy couple,” he said, motioning Emma and Andrew forward.
The betrothed couple clasped hands and looked slightly embarrassed by all the attention. Emma’s ears had turned scarlet, a true indication of her nerves, but she smiled and looked adoringly at Andrew, who kept looking down at her like she was the second coming.
Had Kit ever looked at Melanie that