“Velvet, I’d like you to meet my good friend Gracie. Gracie, this is Velvet.”
Some of Velvet’s good humor evaporated at the sight of the gorgeous blonde by the kitchen island. Tall, bronze, fair haired, heavily pregnant, and glowing. Velvet suddenly felt very short and self-conscious. Who the hell was this? Whose baby was that? Something like a panic was threatening to break out as the woman moved forward to shake her hand and Jonah pushed her forward to do the same.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.” The woman said with an enviably captivating smile. She was beautiful. And Velvet’s opposite in almost every visible way, with the exception of being heavily pregnant.
Jonah laughed a little self-consciously. “Gracie and I have been best friends since we were kids.” He explained warmly.
Friends? Velvet stared at the belly that was even larger than her own and prayed hard that it wasn’t Jonah’s. If it was Jonah’s she’d throw herself off a bridge. She hoped she was smiling pleasantly enough. Lord knew she’d practiced hard enough at that goddamn finishing school her mother had insisted she attend. Hopefully her smile was soft and kind and welcoming.
“Oh!” She gushed sweetly. “I’m so happy to meet any friend of Jonah’s!” It sounded very genuine. She shook the woman’s hand but then tugged a little, and went up on tiptoes to kiss her cheek in greeting. The golden Amazon seemed embarrassed but stooped in time to make the second peck easier for Velvet.
Velvet had almost always wanted to be tall and blonde. She knew it was premature and uncharitable to feel envious and jealous of this woman, but she was finding it difficult to avoid. As a girl all her dolls had been blonde and tall and bronze and flawless like this woman. And she’d always been pale, and short, and stuck with dark, dark hair. She’d tried dying her hair blonde once during one particularly rebellious summer when she was fourteen. And it had been an unmitigated disaster. She’d done it after Holden’s wedding; when her childhood crush had taken for his bride a tall, graceful, golden swan of a woman who—
Velvet took a step back and looked at ‘Gracie’ again, this time with a different sort of scrutiny. The woman seemed startled at the sudden intensity of Velvet’s stare but she smiled warmly enough despite. Perhaps she’d been forced to attend finishing school as well.
“Oh my goodness, Grace Sinclair?” She asked her with an incredulous smile.
Grace’s smile deepened and she nodded. “Yes.”
Velvet sighed with relief. Not Jonah’s lover. Not Jonah’s baby. Not a threat afterall. Phew. “Your wedding was absolutely exquisite.” She declared earnestly.
Grace laughed and exchanged a quick glance with Jonah before replying. “Thank you.”
“You were radiant!” Velvet continued, meaning every word. “You looked so regal—like something out of legend.”
Grace looked taken aback. “Wow. Thank you. So much.”
“I think that was the most perfect wedding I’ve ever attended.” She asserted eagerly. Hell, that wedding had made her attempt to dye her hair blonde! Which had, of course, resulted in a very disgusting color and texture and a very expensive trip to the salon to fix it, and then an extended trip to Europe; her mother believed she’d needed time away from the influences of Cedar Falls and a certain boy she’d been sneaking around with. The disastrous dye job had had nothing to do with that boy and much more to do with her broken heart over a handsome young man who’d never paid her the slightest attention, but the rebellious streak probably did have something to do with that boy, and all the liquor he’d encouraged her to drink.
“Oh,” said Grace, her eyes getting far away, trying to recall, trying to place Velvet at the wedding. “You were with your mother, right?”
Velvet nodded vigorously and climbed into a stool at the kitchen island with some help from an ever attentive Jonah, and signaled Grace to do the same. Grace, Velvet noted, didn’t have to climb into her stool, and as a result looked flawless settling in, even despite the off-kilter balance of the belly.
“You were there?” Jonah marveled, moving to put the shopping bags down out of the way. “I was there.”
Velvet smiled and tried to recall a tall red-headed man at the wedding, but she was drawing a blank.
“Jonah gave one of the readings.” Grace added fondly.
So he hadn’t been in the wedding party. Velvet tried hard but she couldn’t remember him there. From the look on his face he was having the same problem.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see you—“ He said, sounding sorely disappointed with himself.
Velvet giggled. “I was fourteen-and-a-half years old!” She said playfully. “And not at all developed!” He blushed and she wrinkled her nose, enjoying his embarrassment. “I don’t blame you for not seeing me.”
“You were just a kid.” He marveled. The way he looked at her now told her that he found her to be an absolutely beautiful woman, and she loved how powerful and strong that made her feel. Her mother still treated her like that silly fourteen year old she’d been when she’d shipped her off to Europe. Vaughan always treated her like a little girl too. A little girl he liked to fuck, but a girl nonetheless. Jonah made her feel like an equal. She loved him.
Velvet sighed and splayed the fingers of one hand over her belly, happy and content. “We’ve seen eachother so many times before we saw eachother for the first time.”
Jonah’s face softened, his smile fading slightly, into an expression of wonderment, transported by the hopelessly romantic sentiment.
“Your family’s old friends with the Sinclairs, right?” Grace asked after letting the two lovers share that moment of sappy smiling.
“Oh my goodness yes!” Velvet answered excitedly, snapping out of that sweet moment with her hero. The Sinclairs had gone into the windows & doors business not long before the Calders had started in the home appliance business, and their families were old friends. Some relatives were intermarried, if she remembered correctly. “We all used to have soirees and travel together, vacations and dinner parties and social events at the country club and all that!”
“Excuse me, Love, can I get you something?” Jonah interrupted, pulling a tall glass from a cabinet.
“Oh lemonade, pleeeeeease.” She said with a grateful smile. She’d been craving that lemonade since just after she’d left the house that morning.
“It doesn’t give you heartburn?” Grace asked, sounding as if the very thought of lemonade was causing her acid reflux.
“Oh, no, it doesn’t.” Velvet felt sympathetic.
“Wow. I’ll stick to iced tea, Jones.”
Velvet smiled a little. They all called him that. All the people from his past. She hadn’t yet used that pet name for him. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d let that nickname stay with those who’d known him growing up. Maybe she’d always call him Jonah, or some other endearment, but never Jones. Maybe she would be different.
“Yeah, I’ve been lucky so far—none of the things they say will cause heartburn have been giving me any trouble at all.” She listened to the lemonade pouring into her glass and felt a twinge of needing to pee, but she was too eager to get to know Grace to leave just yet.
“I’ve asked Gracie to stay for lunch.” Jonah told her as he handed her the tall, cool glass.
Velvet felt thrilled and allowed it to show all over her face. “Oh good! Now we can talk and talk!” She got the sense that underneath the polite, affable veneer, that the idea of spending hours in her company made Grace Sinclair somewhat less than comfortable. Hmm. Why?
Jonah chuckled as he refilled Grace’s iced tea and then moved to re-fill his own too. “Velvet’s been relentless about getting Nolan to tell her incriminating things about my childhood. Look out, now she’s got a new source to pump for information.”
Grace laughed shortly. “Well if it’s dirt you want, you’ve come to the right place—I think I know where all of Jonesey’s skeletons are hiding.”
Jonah groaned, but the women laughed.
“Oh don’t be so conceited Jonah!” Velvet scolded lightly, “We have other things to discuss besides your gorgeous self.”
“Don’t tell him he’s good-looking, he’ll get a big head.” Grace cautioned dryly.
Jonah chuckled, shaking his head and holding his hands up. “I’m just the humble chef. I’ll be busy over here with the stir-fry, and I won’t speak unless spoken to.”
“Good.” Replied Grace tartly. “You’ve trained him well.”
Velvet laughed merrily. “Yeah, he should know better than to fool around when two pregnant women are waiting for their lunch.”
Jonah tried to press his lips into submission and look appropriately contrite but there was no quelling his grin. “I’m on it, I’m on it. Your wish is my command.” And he began dutifully shuttling the pre-cut vegetables over to the counter by the stove.
Velvet turned to their guest with a buoyant smile. “When are you due?”
They shared a look and then laughed with mutual appreciation. It was that question that pregnant women tired of very quickly and yet it just had to be asked, it seemed. “Early September, so, really, any time now.”
Velvet sucked in a breath. How exciting! “Oh my goodness, are you scared?”
Grace raised her eyebrows. “I suppose I am, a little, but honestly I am ready to be done with being pregnant already.”
Velvet heard Jonah chuckle, but true to his word he didn’t interject, just continued with the lunch preparations.
“I’m scared.” Velvet confessed. “I almost wish I could just stay like this!”
“Don’t you want to meet him?” Jonah asked, looking around for the proper utensil. “Hold him?”
“You’re not here.” Scolded Grace. “This is girl-talk.”
Jonah found the wooden utensil he’d been searching for and made an exaggerated motion that signified he was ‘zipping his lips’ and turned back to the stove. Velvet laughed. She adored him.
“I guess I do. I want to meet him and see him and all that, but I honestly love being pregnant.” Sometimes she felt a little weird about that, especially when so many women behaved as if it were awful and uncomfortable and miserable. She almost felt guilty that she was having a good time with it.
“Ugh!” Groaned Grace, looking harassed. “Yeah, I felt that way a couple months back too—but when you get close I bet you’ll change your mind. It’s like: alright already, enough!”
Velvet laughed. “What are you having?”
“A boy.”
Velvet felt tingly and giddy and maybe even a little sentimental. “Oh! I’m having a boy too! They’ll only be about a month or so apart probably. This is so exciting! Is Holden thrilled? I bet he wanted a boy first. Are you excited? Or did you want a girl? I wanted a boy so I’m so excited. Oh, I hope they’ll be friends! Let’s have them be friends! How could they not be? We can all be friends and go on vacations and trips and have birthday parties and live right near each other and everything!”
Velvet realized a little too late that she was doing that thing she often did when she was excited: letting every thought in her head find voice in a rapid-fire, over-zealous, dizzying string of babbling. Grace looked faintly overwhelmed. Velvet bit down on her own lips to keep from spewing more inanity. She always felt like a stupid little girl whenever she did this. Except when she did it to Jonah. He always seemed to thoroughly embrace her rambling and even appreciate it. So far, anyway. She hoped he would always enjoy it as much as he did now. Vaughan loathed her babbling. Of course, Vaughan had some very interesting ways to shut her up…
Velvet flushed even as Grace laughed kindly at her crazy stream-of-consciousness. Velvet smiled apologetically and tried hard to stop thinking about Vaughan’s cock in her mouth. She hated him. She didn’t want him anymore. She needed to forget every single thing about him that she’d ever liked or found attractive, or pleasurable, or sexy, or arousing, or dreamy… or else she was in trouble. Serious trouble.
“Um, yes, I am happy. It didn’t matter to me, girl or boy, but yeah, Holden is strutting around as if he’s accomplished something great by having a boy.” She laughed and Jonah rapped over-loudly on the wok with the wooden spoon before resting it on a papertowel on the counter, and turning his attention to the rice.
Velvet felt guilty enough to imagine he’d caught her thinking about Vaughan. She had to remind herself that such a notion was ridiculous. He couldn’t read minds. He was remarkably good at reading her moods and emotions, remarkable both because he was so perceptive and because he’d only known her for about two weeks—but perceptive is not telepathic. Her secret thoughts were safe. Were her own. He didn’t need to know. He couldn’t know.
“Oh my goodness. Holden as a dad. Wild.” Velvet said, a little breathy. “You know I had the biggest crush on him?” Grace raised her eyebrows in polite surprise, but Velvet knew her confession had set the woman on edge. Velvet laughed gaily. “Oh yes, for years and years and years! Ever since I was maybe seven years old.” She laughed at herself and took a sip of lemonade. Over at the stove the vegetables sizzled and popped and Jonah had stopped to listen but was pretending not to listen. “I always thought he looked just like prince charming from the Disney movies, and well, like I said, our families were always together so I developed quite a crush.”
“Oh my.” Grace said with that captivating, almost too-wide smile of hers. “And did he, was he ever aware?”
Velvet laughed loudly. “Oh my God! I imagine I made quite a little fool out of myself trying to get him to pay any attention to me, but he was so much older than me—The most attention I ever got from him was like an older cousin. He was never mean or anything, but, no, he never ever looked at me in the way I dreamt he would.” She giggled and tossed her eyes to where Jonah was half-heartedly pushing the vegetables around with the flat bamboo spatula.
Grace looked enormously relieved. Velvet wanted to shake her head. How could this gorgeous, tall, blonde, bronze, beauty ever feel threatened by her? The notion was ridiculous.
“We should have you both over for dinner some night!” Velvet exclaimed. “I haven’t really spoken to Holden in a year or more! I mean he must have been at the party, but I didn’t see him.” Velvet frowned. She kept bringing up the party like that, and she really didn’t want to. She almost wanted to forget the whole thing, except that she needed to remember it, needed to remember what her husband had done to her, and needed to remember what Jonah had done for her too.
“That would be nice.” Grace said, but her eyes were on Jonah. “I’m sure Holden would love to get reacquainted now that you’re not just some little cousin-like-creature to him.”
Velvet chuckled. “In his eyes I’ll probably always be that annoying little girl that followed him around like a love-sick puppy, but it would be nice to do ‘couple things’. Especially since you and Jonah are such good friends!”
Two things were warring at the forefront of Velvet’s brain. First was the notion of getting to do ‘couple things’. She was so thrilled about this possibility. She and Vaughan had never once done anything with another couple. None of his friends were married, and, well, neither were any of hers since most of her friends were still in high school. It was a warming and pleasant feeling to think that she’d get to socialize as part of a young, but not school-aged set. And the fact that she and Grace were going to be new mothers at the same time was even better! Now she’d have an ‘in’ with the social circle of mothers in Cedar Falls—and it didn’t hurt at all that Grace was married to Holden Sinclair, which meant that her son would be, well, the same social rank as Velvet’s. They’d probably both attend Cedar Prep together!
The other thing she was exceptionally intrigued with was this friendship the woman had with Jonah. Velvet had never, ever had a male friend in her life, and so far the closest thing she had to it was with Jonah’s brother Nolan—but that relationship was still in its infancy, so Velvet really had a lot of trouble imagining a male best-friend. Unless maybe if he were gay. Most of the magazines she read often asserted that straight men and women could not actually be friends. Not really. That there would always be an underlying sexual tension. That eventually they would sleep together.
Of course, that was for single men and women, and of course Grace was married and of course now Jonah was with Velvet. Velvet smiled, as she always did when she thought about being together with Jonah. Then she frowned. But, Grace had not always been married to Holden and Jonah had not always been with Velvet.
Grace was saying something and Velvet had missed most of it. “—next Saturday, as long as I haven’t had the baby by then, of course. If that happens all bets are off.” She smiled and laughed lightly and Velvet followed suit, taking her cue quite blindly. Hopefully Jonah had been paying attention. She’d ask him later.
“So how long have you two been friends?” Velvet asked casually, though she was beginning to feel an uncomfortable prickling on the back of her neck.
“Forever.” Replied Grace, sounding as if it were exhausting to think about. “Our parents are all best friends—bridge partners and all that jazz, so we were practically raised as one big family.”
Velvet nodded. “Like me and Holden and the Wards.”
“Yeah.” Said Grace. “Only we were all close in age—Sam is about two years older than me and Jonah, and Marty and Nolan were in the same grade, so we were all really good friends.”
Velvet thought about little Caleb and felt a special empathy for him—being so much younger than the others, tagging along behind them, never quite a part of the action. She promised herself she’d become his friend, if he’d have her, since they were kindred spirits in that way.
“Were you a tom-boy?” Velvet asked, thinking about all those boys. She herself hadn’t been allowed to climb trees or play sports or anything remotely tom-boyish, and she’d always thought girls who could do the things boys did were the luckiest girls alive.
“Hell yes I was.” Grace laughed and shifted on her stool. “I kicked all their asses more than once.” She boasted, then, “That smells incredible Jones.”
It did smell good. Velvet was still a little taken aback at the idea of a girl fighting with boys. “You fought Jonah?” She couldn’t imagine it. Not at all.
“Fought and won.” She said proudly. “Of course it wasn’t really a fair fight—for one thing I was about a foot taller than him at the time and for another, he’d never hit back, so it was less than satisfying.”
“You were a bully.” Jonah muttered as he began twisting the can opener on a can of baby corn.
“Can there be mango?” Velvet asked with honey in her voice.
He twisted the canopener one final rotation and removed the cut lid. “Sure can.” He answered with a soft smile. “That boy loves mango, doesn’t he?”
She giggled. She’d never cared for mango before getting pregnant, and now she wanted it in almost everything! She watched Jonah reach a long arm over to the enormous fruitbowl she’d picked out a few days before, and admired his long, lean, youthful form. He managed to dump the water from the can into the sink and then dump the baby corn into the wok even while retrieving the mango from the bowl.
“I was a little bossy.” Grace conceded. “But yeah, it was always easy to beat the Delaneys because their parents had taught them never to hit a girl. Pretty hilarious. I had a much harder time with my brothers—because there’s some code written into a guy’s DNA that tells them sisters don’t count as girls.”
Velvet giggled. She was an only child. She couldn’t imagine getting into physical altercations with boys, not even as a little girl. It was wild to imagine. Besides, the woman sitting beside her at the kitchen island, the woman who’d looked like a queen, a swan, on her wedding day, didn’t look like the type to scrape and brawl with boys.
“Oh,” Said Velvet, putting pieces together, “Sam and Marty?”
“Yeah, and I was the middle child, and the only girl, so I had to get tough or life was going to be a bitch, you know?”
Velvet didn’t know but she nodded sympathetically anyway. “So you’re a Bennett.” She Said. “Doc Bennett’s daughter?”
Grace got a look on her face that was a smile but a sort-of-tired smile, as if she got that question a lot. “That’s me.”
Velvet remembered now. Yes. It had been a good match. Holden Sinclair and Grace Bennett. Everybody loved Doc Bennett. Everybody expected the man would run for mayor one day, and that he’d win in a landslide. Hell, he’d probably run unopposed.
Grace’s eyes narrowed as she observed what Jonah was doing to the mango. “Christ almighty, Jones, why are you molesting that fruit?”
Jonah tisked but Velvet giggled. Grace certainly sassed Jonah like they were brother and sister. She reminded Velvet a little of Nolan.
“I’m still learning here, try to cut me a little slack.”
Grace stood and crossed around the counter and Jonah promptly surrendered the fruit and the knife to her without needing to be asked. Velvet blinked and then looked at them together. They’d make a very handsome couple. Their babies might have red-golden hair and purple eyes, and they’d be tall and slim and graceful and kind.
Grace lectured Jonah softly about where and how to best slice a mango, how to tackle the task, and he looked serious as he tried to absorb the lesson fully.
“Did you two ever date?” Velvet asked suddenly, unable to curb the sudden impulse.
Violet eyes and hazel eyes looked up at her in unison. They really did look good together. Dammit. And she was just getting to like Grace. She so desperately wanted to be friends. Velvet didn’t have many girlfriends and she was hoping she’d found a good one in Grace, who was also friends with Jonah and with Nolan and, oh god dammit, why did sex have to enter into everything and ruin it?
“We did.” Jonah answered, trying to sound non-chalant but coming-off as mostly cautious.
“In high school.” Grace qualified, as if that made it better.
Velvet smiled, pretending to be charmed and fascinated and amused. She was only seventeen. Excusing the relationship by saying ‘in high school’ didn’t lessen the impact one little bit. Her heart was pounding like mad and she felt a strange tickle in her spine, as if someone had filled her vertebrae with helium.
She tossed her hair behind her shoulder, swept her bangs over her eyebrows, and laughed sweetly. Jonah looked as if he were waiting for her to explode. Grace looked wary too, but there was almost a hint of a challenge in her direct hazel stare.
Jonah adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat.
“Were you serious?” Velvet pre-empted. She wanted to conduct this little survey on her own terms. Jonah would have all the time in the world to explain it his way after Grace left.
Grace looked at Jonah but he kept his eyes on Velvet. Smart man.
“Yes.” He said as Grace replied with a more non-committal “Yeah, pretty serious I guess.”
“Really?” Velvet did her utmost to behave as if this news was perfectly adorable. “Ohmygoodness, how long?”
“Oh geez, I don’t remember.” Grace said with a laugh and a wave of her hand.
Velvet smiled and then turned her inquisitive green stare on Jonah alone.
“Two years, five months.” Replied Jonah quietly.
“Wow.” Grace said, clearly a little shocked that he knew with such accuracy. He’d loved her. Very much. Velvet’s face felt tight.
“You two seem like you’d be great together.” She said, sounding genuine because this statement wasn’t a lie. She watched Grace’s eyes sink to the floor and the seemingly unflappable queen actually started to fidget. Jonah stood as if frozen, hardly breathing, hardly blinking. “Why’d you break up?”
Discovering why people’s previous relationships ended was supposed to tell you a lot about them as a partner—or at least that’s what the magazines claimed. Velvet hadn’t yet had the opportunity to have the ‘old girlfriends’ talk with Jonah, she’d been enjoying their budding relationship too much to give other women a thought. Now she felt a little blindsided and resentful that she hadn’t been prepared for this. Two years and five months? She hadn’t yet been with him for two weeks and five days!
Grace didn’t pipe-in this time, nor did she try looking for Jonah’s eyes again. His eyes stayed fixed on Velvet, fixed on her as if he were afraid to look away lest she disappear or maybe pounce.
“We became very, very good friends.” He responded slowly and carefully.
“Yeah.” Agreed Grace, sounding a smidgen relieved that he’d chosen that pleasant euphemism. “We decided we were better as friends.”
Better as friends. Rather than? Lovers. Velvet sucked in a breath. Well of course. Of course they’d been lovers. They’d dated for two years and five months in high school. They probably fucked like goddamn rabbits. Everywhere. All the time. Every chance they got, probably. She wanted to cry. But she wasn’t feeling remotely teary.
“Sounds like you stopped having sex.” Velvet said sympathetically, and she kept her eyes fixed on Grace this time instead of Jonah, offering a small challenge of her own, though in her peripheral vision she could see she’d finally shocked Jonah out of his stillness. He rubbed the back of his neck and adjusted his glasses and did any number of other small, uncomfortable adjustments, even as he chuckled half-heartedly.
Grace blushed, but she grinned and her frank hazel gaze lifted to meet Velvet’s challenge. “We decided we were better as friends.” She repeated, but it was clearly an agreement with Velvet’s shrewd assessment.
So they’d cooled off in the bedroom and that’s why the relationship had ended. How peculiar. Was that something that happened often to people? Velvet didn’t know. So far none of her relationships had ended naturally, and she was having a hard time imagining ever not wanting to have sex with Jonah.
“Was there someone else?” She asked both of them, either of them. The sooner she discovered whether or not Jonah was that type of man the better. Everyone had warned her about Vaughan Grey and she’d been an absolute idiot. She wasn’t going to make the same mistakes this time.
“No, no, no.” Grace dismissed, but Jonah was much more intense.
“Absolutely not.” He said to Velvet in a low voice, as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them. He knew what she was trying to discern, knew her fears, understood her deep vulnerability. She lifted her eyes to his again and caught a glare from the lenses of his glasses before she could actually see his perfectly violet eyes staring at her, deep into her. “Never.” He added firmly.
She forced herself to take a deep breath. Okay. So no cheating. That was a relief. But still… He’d just left her when the sex slowed down? That seemed pretty awful. Or, no, maybe she’d left him and he’d never really gotten over it all the way? Maybe he was still in love with his best friend?
Velvet slipped out of her chair with grim determination. Jonah moved to help her but he was too late—she was down and waddling toward Grace before he’d even made it around the island. “Let’s go look at the nursery!” She chirped, with a bright, bubbly smile.
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