She should have been here. I stared at the empty wooden chair next to me, and it stared back. If furniture could talk, this rickety piece of shit was telling me I was an idiot.
Fucking fantastic. Now I wasn’t just contemplating talking furniture, the talking furniture was smarter than me.
“Have you heard from Aubree?”
“What?” Maya’s mention of my long-time best friend nearly had me jumping out of my skin. I should have expected her name to come up, but I hadn’t fully prepared myself for it.
Maya narrowed her eyes at me like I was acting strange. Which I was. My friends and I met at Juke’s Box every year to kick off Winterfest weekend. We had since we were teens, since Juke wasn’t one to worry himself much about silly things like excise laws.
Instead of enjoying the company and the tradition, I couldn’t stop obsessing over how wrong everything felt without Aubree Baxter.
“What time did she say her plane was landing?” Maya asked, rooting in her purse for her phone.
Across the table, Sami tapped at her phone. “She landed an hour ago.” She bit back a laugh. “She said her dad sent a limo to pick her up.”
“We could have done it,” Maya said. “I hate that she’s alone the whole drive from the airport.”
“Right.” Craig Walton drummed his fingers on the table. “A limo ride is so tough. She’s probably sipping champagne as we speak. Poor Aubree.”
Even though he’d gone to high school with us, Craig didn’t really fit into our little group. He’d inserted himself into it over the last couple of years, hoping—best I could tell—to find his way into Bree’s pants. If there was a God above, that would never happen.
My mind spun. Aubree. Here. Tonight.
The last time I’d seen Aubree, she’d been naked in my bed, the sheets pooling around her hips. It wasn’t an image I’d soon forget, nor was it something I was going to share with this crowd.
“Kennedy,” Maya said, “did Bree say how long she’d be staying? Will she be here for our Winterfest toast?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at Maya’s need to give everything syrupy sweet labels. What she called “Winterfest toast,” the rest of us called “Meeting at the old bridge and drinking spiked hot cocoa.” We did it every year at the end of Winterfest, and this year would be no different.
Or would it?
Hell, I hadn’t even known Bree was coming. How would I know how long she’d be sticking around? “We haven’t touched base in a while,” I confessed.
“Really?” Sami frowned, looking as confused as I felt.
Last time I’d texted Bree and she’d bothered to respond, she’d said she wasn’t coming home for Winterfest this year. I’m kind of over it, the text had said. Which had just pissed me off because I wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t over “it”—she was over me. She shouldn’t punish herself and everyone who wanted to see her because of me. Because of what happened in October. She’d never missed a Winterfest.
“So, she’s coming?” Christ. I sounded like a pathetic little boy asking after his celebrity crush.
Sami narrowed her eyes at me. “Aubree wouldn’t miss Winterfest.”
“You sure about that? She’s little Miss New York City now.”
Bree was also the only person I knew from Abbott Springs who understood I was more than just another Hale destined to run Hale Construction and act as Abbott Springs’ mayor. I would never be as unpredictable as Bree, but she made me want to take a chance.
October be damned. I couldn’t wait to see the little punk.
Coming back to Abbott Springs was a little like putting on pajamas after a long day’s work. My shoulders relaxed as the limo stopped to drop me in front of Juke’s Box.
The air was crisp and the fresh snow crunched under my boots as I climbed onto the sidewalk. A block away, tiny colored lights winked at me from the town square, where they were hung for the weekend’s Winterfest activities. Some long-dormant emotion tugged in my chest at the sight and I tamped it back down where it belonged. If I was going to do the whole Winterfest thing this year, I had to keep my shit together. No gushy nostalgia, no unrequited love self-pity.
I pulled open the door to the bar and was smacked in the face with the raucous sounds of Abbott Springs’ only decent bar. The air was filled with the clattering of pool balls and the sounds of laughter, and the DJ set up his equipment on the backside of the dance floor.
“Aubree!” Sami called from the back. She and Maya were grinning and waving. Before I could head her way, three other people were calling me out.