Saltwater Secrets - Amelia Addler Page 0,18
at all.
On Wednesday, he had the day off. He debated what to do with his evening. Laura suggested that she could make dinner for him. But he’d planned to go to the committee meeting at Jade and Morgan’s and didn’t want to let them down.
Ultimately, he decided to go to the committee meeting. He could have dinner with Laura any night. He called her to let her know his plans.
“Maybe we could do Saturday night instead?” he suggested.
“Oh! That’d be great. I was thinking that we could go and do some shopping?”
Matthew closed his eyes. He didn’t want to groan, but at the same time…he didn’t want to spend his weekend shopping either. “What do you need? I thought you had all of your furniture.”
“I do, but I feel like I need to get a new plate set. The one I have isn’t really working in this apartment.”
“Ah. Are you going to go to the place with the fifty dollar plates?”
She laughed. “They’re not all fifty dollars. But of course, it needs to be bone china!”
He didn’t know what that meant, so he just said, “Right.”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun! It’ll be like old times. Oh – and I can tell you about the country club that I’m thinking of joining. You should join too! They have all kinds of events and we could do some golfing…”
“I don’t really golf anymore,” he said. It was something he’d always done with Laura’s father in an attempt at bonding. It never went well.
“But you still have your clubs, right?”
“Nope. I sold them.”
Laura gasped. “But I bought some of those for you! How could you just sell them?”
“I’m sorry – I just don’t really like golfing.”
“You love golfing! And you were so good – we can get you new ones. Anyways, how about you catch the early ferry on Saturday and we can have all day together?”
“Oh – okay. I can do that.”
“Awesome! Can’t wait!”
“Me too. Talk to you later.”
As he was getting ready to go to Jade’s place, he felt a bit guilty, imagining Laura at home by herself. He pushed it out of his mind though – he could make it up to her when they went plate shopping for four hours that weekend.
He got to Jade’s house a few minutes late because Toast refused to come inside after his potty break. When he knocked on the door, Jade answered.
“Oh!” she said. “Matthew! I didn’t know that you were coming – I’m sorry, we already got started.”
“No, I’m sorry – I should’ve texted. But I figured that once I was part of the committee, it’s a lifelong term.”
She laughed and stepped aside to let him in. “It’s not lifelong. It’s all voluntary.”
“Don’t believe her!” yelled Morgan. “She’s working us to death.”
“I am not!” Jade put her hands on her hips. “I’ve just been really busy the last week so there’s a lot to do.”
“What’s going on?” asked Matthew as he took a seat on the couch. There was some sort of crumbly cake on the coffee table – blueberry? The smell pulled him in. Next to that was a plate of cookies.
“Well,” Morgan took a deep breath. “Jade set a date for the fundraiser at her mom’s barn – a perfectly reasonable two weeks from now.”
Jade held up a finger. “Two and a half weeks, thank you.”
“Oh, that’s kind of soon,” said Matthew. “But I’m sure we can make it work.”
“Dear Jade, why is it so soon?” asked Luke. “Did you lose your calendar when you were booking it? Or did you just forget what month you were living in?”
“I didn’t intend for it to work out like this,” said Jade. “But when I looked at the dates that my mom had open, the dates the caterer was available, and any dates that wouldn’t compete with already planned events on the island…this was the only one.”
“Right – so it’ll be fine. It’s all going to be fine,” said Morgan.
Jade laughed. “If this is too much pressure, you can take a timeout and have a cookie.”
“I will eat my cookies while I work, thank you.” Morgan flopped onto the couch, a cookie in one hand and a laptop in the other.
“What can I do?” asked Matthew. “I need to earn my snacks too.”
“I don’t want to make you do anything,” said Jade. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to be part of this committee.”
Oh shoot – was Jade trying to push him out because he’d made her feel uncomfortable? Should he