Restored (The Walsh Series Book 5) (4 page)

"The Patriots are playing in Foxboro tonight," I said as I passed Tiel a bowl of veggies. "Magnolia has season tickets."

Her eyes widened as she chuckled. "Ah, yes. His
bro
, Magnolia."

"Yeah," I murmured.

Talking about Magnolia, the landscape architect whose romantic advances I'd missed for months until she took it upon herself to kiss me while Tiel watched last winter, was akin to handling a live grenade. No matter what I did, it was ending with an explosion.

And to add a little extra boom to that explosion, Magnolia and Riley had bonded over their shared love of New England sports. If they weren't cheering on their favorite teams from the sidelines, they were doing it at Boston's best taverns and pubs. He insisted their relationship was strictly platonic, and he seized every opportunity to remind me that the disaster with Magnolia was all my fault. He didn't see any reason to refuse forty-yard-line seats because I was deaf to shameless flirting.

It wasn't that Tiel was dwelling on my massive cock-up with Magnolia. But there was some truth to the old adage about letting things heal by leaving them alone. The constant presence of Magnolia—even if only in Riley's outings and her work on the Turlan project—wore at the wound.

When we finished eating, I refilled Tiel's wine glass and elected to dive back into wedding talk. "Forget your parents, forget my siblings, forget everything," I said, wise enough not to drop Magnolia's name twice in one evening. "Tiel. I want to be married to you. I want to be yours, and I want you as mine. This is about us, and nothing else. Please, sweetheart, let's pick a date, and then we focus on the important things, like honeymoon destinations and what to name our kids."

She smiled and set her glass down, then rounded the table to nestle on my lap. Her hair was cut short, just barely brushing her shoulders, and as I buried my face there, I was hit with the delicate aroma of her shampoo. My lips trailed over her neck and collarbone, and my arms roped around her waist. There was something about her skin, her scent, her smile that grounded me.

"You and your smooth lines," she said, pulling her phone from her back pocket. "Let's take a look at—oh. Huh."

I glanced to Tiel and then her phone's screen, and found her staring at a message. "What is it?"

"An email from my father." She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth before continuing. "They—my parents—want us to spend Thanksgiving with them. They…they're looking forward to meeting you."

I murmured in agreement, although the sound was something closer to a dubious grunt. These people had been horrible to Tiel. This evening's phone call only validated my opinion.

But they were still family, and it was Tiel's decision how we proceeded.

Her thumb passed over the screen as she reread the message several times, her brow wrinkled and her lips pressed tight, and I wanted to take it all away for her. I wanted to save her the agony of grappling with a toxic relationship, and I wanted to shield her from the pain that would eventually come from it. I was optimistic about many things, but a sudden about-face from the parents who'd treated Tiel like a second-class citizen her entire life wasn't one of them. Regardless of what she decided, she'd end up hurt.

"What do you want to do, Sunshine?"

She set her phone on the table with a decisive nod. "I want to go upstairs and get out of these clothes, and then I want to listen to some Van Morrison while you do perverted things to me, and I don't want to talk about any of this stuff. Not tonight, and maybe not for a few days. Is that okay?"

"Sweetheart, I am committed to loving you, honoring you, and fucking you senseless any time you want." I nodded toward the staircase. "Be naked when I get up there."

N
ovember

"
O
h
, let me see, let me see," Lauren squealed from across the pedicure spa. She'd caught Andy examining my ring when she arrived—I'd never before been so aware of my chipped nail polish and violin string-calloused fingers—and immediately made her way toward us while also trying to unbuckle her heels.

"It's lovely," Andy said, glancing up at me with one of those half smiles that I was now interpreting as her version of glee. "I'm thrilled for you, and Sam."

She was a tough nut to crack, but the more time I spent with her, the more I admired her. She was calm and intelligent, and though she didn't say much, she was always genuine and kind to me. When Sam and I reunited after his time in Maine, I knew I had to salvage my relationships with his siblings and their significant others, and I figured they were going to make me work for it.

I was wrong.

The day after Sam and I started over, we went to a barbeque at Patrick and Andy's apartment. I was actually shaking in my sandals and terror-sweating like a beast, but Andy welcomed me into her home, hugged me, and then put me on fruit salad prep in the kitchen. I ended up pulling her aside after many glasses of sangria and apologizing for all of my prior offenses and extreme displays of awkwardness.

She shrugged it off, confided that she had plenty of her own awkward, and told me to get my ass to pedicure night or weekend brunch on the regular. That single, sloppy interaction shed light on the real Andy, the one I'd missed the first time around. The same went for Lauren, but I hadn't gained much traction with Shannon yet.

"Thank you, and—oh!" Lauren's arms closed around my shoulders, and for a small woman, she was alarmingly strong.

"It's so good to see you!" she cried, squeezing me tighter. "And you're getting married!"

I gulped back the flare of panic that shot up every time I heard those words. The panic had roared to life after that call with my parents. They didn't come out and say that I'd failed before, or that I was missing something essential to growing a healthy marriage, but their silence said everything.

And it wasn't a matter of cold feet for me. I wanted this, I wanted to make it work, and I wanted to quiet the doubt in my mind, but I couldn't erase the thorny fear that I'd never be enough for Sam.

It was like those signs at amusement parks that read "You Must Be This Tall To Ride," and I didn't measure up.

"I'm so excited. It's amazing," I said, emotion ringing in my voice. "And overwhelming."

Lauren offered a knowing nod, and gestured toward the bank of massaging pedicure chairs. "Let's sit down and get you a drink. You're engaged, which means everyone is up in your business and you deserve a steady stream of hard liquor."

"Shannon couldn't make it?" I asked.

Andy and Lauren exchanged a long, loaded glance before Andy said, "She was still at the office when I left."

Thanks to a certain fiancé, she was probably avoiding me.

"All right," Lauren said, holding up her hands. "This is what we're going to do. If she tries dodging us again, I'm going to that little ginger's office and dragging her out by her Burberry scarf."

"She's avoiding you, too?" I said.

At the same time, Andy said, "You're a lot braver than you look, Miss Honey."

"We are
not
devoting an entire drunk pedicure night to talking about how I'm going to take on the Black Widow and win," Lauren said, reaching over to grab my wrist. "Let's talk about pretty things. Show me that ring again."

Before we could delve any further into Shannon's apparent refusal to see any of us, Lauren launched straight into a detailed accounting of Matt's proposal two years ago, their holiday trip to Mexico where they surprised her parents with the news, and their wedding planning activities. It was good to hear about their struggles and stresses, and it was a sharp reminder that Lauren wasn't the annoyingly perfect Barbie doll that I pegged her for when we first met.

"I probably looked at five thousand dresses before I picked one," Lauren said. "I went to every shop in the state, and almost went to New York. I had dozens of bridal magazines and designers' catalogs, and hundreds of pins on my Pinterest board, but I couldn't work up more than a 'meh' for any of them. I couldn't decide on anything, and I remember calling my mother one afternoon and having an enormous meltdown. I thought my wedding was doomed. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn't finding The One."

Andy laughed into her margarita glass. "You tell that story with more angst than when Frodo Baggins tells the story of the One Ring, and he lost a fucking finger in that ordeal."

Lauren turned toward me with a smirk. "She gets to be sassy because she found my dress on her first try."

Shaking her head, Andy said, "You were looking at traditional princess-y dresses and super crazy trendy dresses—as if any of that was you—and forgetting that you're fun, cute, and sexy." Andy glanced at the shimmery aqua paint going down on my toes. Best I could tell, she was sticking with black polish. I'd never seen her in anything lighter. "You're fun, too. No poufy tulle ball gowns or cathedral trains for you, Tiel."

"I am just trying to digest the idea of getting
married
again. I can't start thinking about the wedding-industrial complex yet," I cried. "There's a million things I'm trying to figure out right now, the least of which is what I'll wear, and…
fuck
, this is overwhelming."

Lauren dumped the contents of her glass into mine. I stared at it, certain I couldn't manage that much tequila.

"You've been engaged for what? Five days? You're doing the best you can, and that's all you have to do."

"When you
are
ready, give me a call," Andy said, completely ignoring my momentary freak-out. "I'd love to look at dresses with you."

Lauren leaned toward me, and stage-whispered, "She has wedding fever."

"I do not have wedding fever," Andy said, holding out her glass for a refill. "I happen to enjoy weddings, and all the beautiful things that go into them. It's the one time that people are completely fanciful in their decision-making, and I dig that shit."

"Oh, you'll love this," Lauren said, dropping her hand on Andy's arm. "One of the teachers at my school is getting married over the summer, and the whole thing is Harry Potter-themed. I saw the mock-up of her invitations today. So cute. I didn't tell her that you'd want to steal it because brides want everything to be unique to them, but I wanted to snatch a copy for your super-secret wedding pin board."

While Lauren and Andy discussed the details of a wizarding wedding, I pushed back my panic once again. I knew I wouldn't be able to conquer any of it until I cut the strings on my up-and-down relationship with my parents. To be fair, it was mostly down, but my father made a point of calling and sending regular emails, and I counted those gestures as ups.

Even if they were loaded with passive-aggressive guilt trips.

My first instinct was to pass on the Thanksgiving invitation. I wanted to interpret it as a lukewarm peace offering, but I knew it was nothing more than an inspection. My parents wanted to get a look at my fiancé, and it didn't matter whether he was Gandhi, JJ Watt, and Bill Gates rolled into one incredible package because they'd find fault somewhere. As the polish dried on my toes and Andy continued gushing about the fun she'd have planning a Harry Potter wedding, I started wondering whether I had it all wrong.

Years of self-preservation taught me that I was better when I had some distance from them. I doubted myself less, and their dismissive comments owned less real estate in my mind. But I was beginning to believe it was time for me to go home and turn in my Disappointing Daughter card.

After Lauren, Andy, and I parted with promises to meet for lunch soon, and devised some aggressive plans to get Shannon out of the office, Sam and I grabbed a late dinner at a trendy taqueria that we loved. Though I knew he was itching to ask whether we were headed to New Jersey later this month, I didn't want to discuss it in a crowded restaurant. Our best conversations were the ones we had in bed. It wasn't about sex; it was the shelter of intimacy that we'd created, and I craved our cocoon.

"How was class today?" Sam asked.

We were tucked close together at the bar, our elbows bumping as we traded pots of guacamole, chimichurri, and tomatillo salsa. Somewhere in recent months, we adopted some new eateries and watering holes as our favored spots, and redefined our preferred activities. We still enjoyed plenty of live music, but I didn't feel as though my soul was withering if we missed a few shows anymore.

I shrugged and took a bite of my taco before responding. "Good."

He peered at me over the rim of his glasses, his eyebrow raised and his lips twitching into a smile. "Seriously, Tiel. Turn down the enthusiasm."

I avoided Sam's eyes, instead busying myself with the guacamole.

I truly believed that I was going to grow into my new role any day. It was everything that I wanted: days spent teaching and researching music therapy at the collegiate level, and a respectable salary and benefits. It was a sensible, stable job.

But that sensible, stable job forced me to cut way back on private music sessions with my little buddies, and the pressure to get tenured was suffocating. My YouTube posts had slowed to a trickle. There were days when my violin workouts—I was deep into Bach's solo repertoire, a body of work that was so rich and transcendent that I often found myself discovering new nooks and crannies with each attempt—felt uninspired. Where I once had an endless well of research topics in mind, the pail was now coming up empty. I figured I'd get the hang of it all before the fall term ended, and if I didn't, there was always time to reboot during the spring term.