Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,111

did, at his actions, the conclusion was unmistakable. He stocked special wine for her that he barely charged her for. Put the Spice Girls on his jukebox. Came to all her plays. Let her watch football at his house in the middle of the night.

Steadied her when she was about to fall—literally, like that time at the dunk tank, but also metaphorically, like…right now.

But she didn’t know how to say all that. So she smirked and said, “You and Sadie, eh? What was up with that?”

His eyes widened. He was surprised she wasn’t going to make a bigger deal of the apology. “Yeah, I don’t know, except she suddenly asked me out that summer. She was a year older than I was. You remember she went to Western before she came back and opened the diner?” Maya nodded. “She was still in school at that point but was home for the summer. She seemed so worldly.” He rolled his eyes, like he was annoyed with his own bullshit.

“What happened with you two?”

“Nothing. We only went out for a month that summer. She was…”

“What?”

“Boring,” he said immediately, then winced like he’d verbalized something he hadn’t intended to. “Please don’t tell anyone I said that. Sadie is really sweet. There’s just…”

“Not a lot under the surface?” That had always been Maya’s impression, but she figured she wasn’t the most reliable judge of character when it came to her runaway Juliet.

He nodded but made a face like he was chagrined to be agreeing.

“What show was it?” she asked.

“What?”

“The concert you won tickets to.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. If you ruined my play to go see, say, Beyoncé, that’s one thing.”

He chuckled. “No, it, uh, wasn’t Beyoncé.”

“Tell me who it was! Let’s see, this would have been, what?” She tried to send her mind back. “Twelve years ago?”

It was his turn to close his eyes. Ooh, he didn’t want to tell her. Which meant she absolutely had to know. “Ben Lawson, I won’t forgive you until you tell me who it was.”

He sighed, opened his eyes, and mumbled, “It was the Jonas Brothers.”

A shocked laugh ripped from her throat. “What? Mr. I Don’t Know About Boy Bands! And this would have been original Jonas Brothers, not latter-day, married-to-women-out-of-their-leagues Jonas Brothers.” She threw her head back and let herself laugh unreservedly. It felt good.

“It was free!” he protested, but he was laughing, too. “It was the trip as much as the concert.” But he sobered quickly. “It was stupid, though. I ruined your play for the Jonas Brothers. But somehow, all these years, if I’d thought about why you hated me, I wouldn’t have put two and two together. I wouldn’t have connected it back to that.”

“I don’t hate you.” Not anymore. Had she ever? Truly? “And I’m not sure it was ever hate, anyway. I…” She hardly knew how to explain it, even to herself. “I was mad, for sure. But, I don’t know, I moved back here and we had a couple legitimate business spats, and the animosity sort of accreted. And then we just…” She waved her hand back and forth between them.

“Started feuding?” he supplied, an odd cheeriness in his tone.

“Yeah, and now it’s like a habit more than anything.” It was her turn to wince. “That sounds terrible.”

“No, I know exactly what you mean. It’s like we didn’t hate each other so much as we enjoyed fighting with each other.”

Why was he using the past tense? Did that mean they weren’t going to fight anymore? The thought was oddly disappointing.

Also, forget fighting, were they going to keep sleeping together?

And if not, which would she miss more?

“Anyway,” he said, “I really am sorry.”

She sighed. She’d been trying to brush off the apology, but she was going to have to engage with it, wasn’t she? “It’s okay. I mean, I was mad at the time. I was actually really hurt.” That was hard to admit. “But really, that should have been directed at Sadie. I just…Arg. In a way, you guys did me a favor. After that play, I made sure I always had understudies. If I wasn’t acting in a play, just directing it, I learned the whole play so I could step in myself if need be.” She had learned a good lesson that day. “I got really obsessive about my backup system, until…”

“Holden.”

Right. Amazingly, though she had come up here crying, feeling like she was going to break into pieces on account of Holden, she’d forgotten about him while they were