A Very Merry Mess (Cider Cove Sweet Southern RomComs #3)

Ryanne

RYANNE

“It hasn’t been too weird,” I say to Hillary, who’s video-called me from her apartment in LA. “What do you think of this dress? Am I trying too hard?”

“What are you doing?” she asks. “It’s adorable. I love the puffy sleeve.”

The dress is black, with a square neck and falls in tiered waves in a boxy style over my ample chest and hips. I love it because it feels like wearing nothing, and while it’s simple, it has some embellishments—like the puffy sleeve—that make it seem like more than it is.

“I don’t really know what we’re doing,” I say. “He mentioned a lot of things. I just said yes.”

“Mm, yes, you did.” Hillary smiles when I look at her. “Oh, don’t wear that face.”

“What face?”

“The one that says you’re worried about this.”

I sink onto my bed. “I am worried about this.”

“It’s Elliott.”

I give her my eagle-eyes. “Exactly. It’s Elliott.”

“Did he say why he’s never wanted to be serious with anyone? Until now,” she adds quickly.

Everyone is always very quick to add that, including me. I shake my head. “I didn’t ask him.” I study my hands, and I sport some pretty, newly-painted-pine-tree-green fingernails, with the fourth one a bright white. My nod to the Christmas season without going overboard.

“I should ask him, right?”

“I mean, maybe?” Hillary seems to be guessing as much as I am.

“Did you feel so…uncertain about Liam?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “Remember how I sent him a text meant for that other guy? I actually think he was the one who was super uncertain about me.”

“I was not,” Liam calls from somewhere off-screen. He enters the frame as Hillary looks to her left. “I mean, not after you explained.” He leans down and presses a kiss to Hillary’s forehead, all while using a towel to dry his obviously wet hair.

“What are you two doing today?” I ask, my eyebrows sky-high.

“Liam’s apartment is being fumigated,” she says. “So we’re going for a bike ride today.”

I lean closer to my phone as Liam exits the frame. “He’s living with you?” I hiss.

“No,” Hillary hisses back playfully, her dark eyes sparkling. “He helped Mister Jacobs next door with his garbage disposal and got all wet. So he rinsed off here—in the kitchen sink—and is just drying up.”

“No diamonds?”

She holds up her naked left hand in response.

“The documentary is almost done?”

“We’re on schedule for our March-one deadline,” she says.

“So maybe you’ll get married in April and move back to Cider Cove.” I lift my eyebrows, glad when Hillary smiles in return.

I miss her, and while I know things will change when she and Liam get married, at least she’ll be next door instead of across the country.

“What’s the hot-goss with Claudia?” Hillary asks. “She won’t tell me anything.”

“She’s crazy-busy,” I say. “Moving offices in a couple of weeks. Beckett is looking for another house a little closer to Beaufort, and neither of them will say anything about a proposal or a possible wedding date or where they’ll live when they get married.” I sigh, because while I’m happy for Claudia, I want to know all of the above.

It takes some time for me to adjust to change, and I just want things in the Big House to stay how they are. Of course they can’t, and we’ve enjoyed a few good years here with just the six of us.

“What are you doing with your hair?” Hillary asks, and I reach up to touch it.

“I’m just going to go with my standard—a ponytail I’ll curl into one big ringlet.”

She smiles at me and touches two fingers to her lips and then the screen, covering herself for a moment. “Love you, Ry. I want a full debrief tonight.”

“You and everyone else,” I grumble, though I’ve always wanted all of their dating news too. I’ve never really had a boyfriend to talk about, and while my roommates know about my insane crush on Elliott, I’ve never really delved deeper or confessed more to them.

The call ends and I finish getting ready. I skip downstairs and snag one of Tahlia’s banana nut muffins from the cooling rack in the kitchen. She’s put up a cheery Christmas tree window cling on the microwave and written “Family meeting 7:30 PM” on it in black erasable marker.

I should be done with my phone call with my mom, safely in my stretchy pants, with a bag of cookie dough M&Ms, and ready to give an update by then.

Someone knocks on the front door, and I turn that way. It’s not eleven yet, which means it can’t be Elliott—unless I missed a text from him. I check my phone on the way out of the kitchen, and I didn’t.

No one else seems to be home, or at least downstairs, so I open the door to find a man wearing gray-blue clothing from head to toe, and it only takes me two seconds to realize he’s a tow truck driver.

“I’m taking that SUV there.” He gestures somewhere lazily behind him. “I was told someone here could sign for it.”

“That’s me,” I say, and I take the tablet he hands me and use my finger to sign for the removal of Elliott’s car.

“You’ll get an email when I drop it off at Clydesdales.” He nods at me and leaves the porch. I stand in the doorway and watch him load up Elliott’s car, which definitely looks like the front wheel needs to be reset.

I snap a quick pic and send it to him. They just took your car, and I just realized you might be waiting for me to pick you up this morning.

He calls, and I swipe it on with a giddy smile on my face. “Hey.”

“Heavens, no,” he says, and I giggle at his disgusted tone. “I’m ten minutes away.”

“What are you driving?”

He clears his throat, and I move to sit in Emma’s rocking chair. “My mom’s car.”

“How did you get to your mom’s?”

“Does that really matter?”

He’s grouchy this morning, and somehow that makes me smile. “Yes,” I say. “It matters to me. I could’ve come to get you. I’d have let you drive my car.”

“I already had to sign away my firstborn so my mom would let me take hers,” he says, his tone grumbly and husky and delicious all at the same time. “Which is better for me, because I’m not going to have a firstborn for a while, and she’ll forget by then.”

I laugh and toe myself back and forth. “So you want kids?” This is a new development, because Elliott has never wanted anything serious—and kids are Serious with a capital S.

“I mean…” He lets the words hang there, and I’m not sure what to make of them. “If they could have your starry-starry eyes, I’d take a couple of kids,” he finally says.

The air gets whooshed right out of my lungs. Things between us shift violently, and I wish he was here so I can see his face, judge his expression, watch the way his hands fiddle. Something.

“I’ve said too much,” he says. “I’m hanging up.”

“Wait,” I say, but the call disconnects as he says, “You’re so stupid, Elliott.”

I look at the screen as it goes dark, my pulse thundering through my chest and radiating out with painful barbs with every beat.

And it’s beating hard. Thrashing, really.

I don’t know how Emma finds comfort in this chair. The rocking doesn’t soothe me, and I get to my feet to go find some candy. Maybe some coffee M&Ms, though I’m already too keyed up.

I’m rummaging through my stash in the lower cupboard beside the stove when Elliott’s voice reaches my ears. “Ry? It’s just me.”

I stand up suddenly, my lungs seizing. I can’t breathe, and my head feels like it’s floating away from my body.

The back door opens, and Emma and Tahlia come in. “Elliott’s here,” Tahlia says needlessly, as the god of a man has just appeared in the doorway leading into the kitchen.

They’re both wearing dresses, which means they went to church this morning, and Tahlia starts to unpin her hat as Elliott and I stare at one another.

“You’re not drinking anything, are you?” he asks.

I blink, the perfect retort right on the tip of my tongue. But I can’t get it to come out, and something loud and shrill shrieks through my head.

And my chest. By the time I realize it’s my lungs crying for air, my legs are wobbly. I reach out to steady myself against the back of a dining chair, but I miss it.

And I know: I’m going to pass out.

As I do, my last thought is Will Elliott and I ever get a date that starts normally?

And the last thing I see is Elliott’s panicked expression as he lunges toward me.

My ears have stopped working completely, and then blissful darkness swallows me whole.

“Did she hit her head?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you see the way Elliott caught her?”

In that moment, I feel Elliott everywhere around me, and Tahlia’s voice echoes in my head.

“She’s waking up,” Elliott says, and he smooths his fingers across my forehead, “Ry, sweetheart, wake up.”

I want to do what he says, so I fight to open my eyes. I manage to do it too, and everything comes rushing back. I’m lying with my head in Elliott’s lap, and his hands feel like they’re everywhere .

“Whoa,” I say as I try to sit up.

“Just stay for a second,” he says, and I relax into him.

“I passed out.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Yep.”

I focus on him though Emma is talking about getting me some orange juice, and Tahlia wants to know if I’ve eaten that morning.

He’s wearing a sexy pair of bright blue glasses that have huge trapezoidal frames—and I barely passed geometry, so my junior high math teacher would be proud I know what a trapezoid is.

Ell didn’t shave this morning, and while he’s not smiling, his gaze is powerful as it locks onto mine. “You wanna sit up?”

I nod, and he helps me do that, scooting closer so I can lean on him if I need to. I don’t need to, but I want to, so I do.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I was looking for some candy, and I just stood up too fast.” I wave away the muffin Tahlia offers me. “I had one. I just got lightheaded for like, two seconds.”

Emma’s poured two glasses of juice, but I ignore them as I let Elliott help me to my feet. He keeps one big hand on my elbow, and I like that.

“We can just—” He cuts off when I throw him a daggered look.

“I just need a jacket,” I say straightening my dress. A bolt of mortification thuds through me when I have to pull the square neck into place to cover my shoulder and bra strap appropriately.

My legs tingle, like my skirt hadn’t covered them right when I’d fallen, but I have no way of knowing that. I’m certainly not going to ask, and I let Elliott slide his hand into mine and lead me into the living room.

“Which jacket do you want?” He pulls open the front closet and looks inside. “Uh, I’m going to be useless here.”

“Oh, this will be fun,” I say. “Which one do you think is mine?”

He gives me a look filled with venom and faces the closet again. We all use it, and it’s currently stuffed so full that not another thing will fit inside it. Tahlia added hooks to the back of the door, and various sweatshirts and sweaters hang from those—piled one on top of the other until another one won’t stay on.

Elliott studies the various outerwear in the closet like it holds the secrets to all of the universe’s mysteries. I find it absolutely adorable, and I giggle.

He turns back to me, his eyebrows drawn down. “Do I lose points if I get it wrong?”

“We’re on a points system?” I scoff. “If so, I’m like, at negative-fifty for the hot chocolate spitting incident. Oh, and another fifty down for breaking a glass and splashing orange juice into your shirt.” I cock my hip and fold my arms while his glare continues.

“And what’s fainting worth? Negative one hundred?” I nod to the closet. “We work together and have for years. If you can’t pick out one coat I’ve worn, ever, then, yes, we might have a problem.”

He growls something under his breath and faces the closet again. “This one.” He pulls down a red puffer coat I’ve thankfully worn before. Technically, it’s not mine, but it’s too small for Claudia now, and I adopted it.

“Thank you,” I say as I put my arm in the first sleeve. He helps me with it, I grab my purse from the couch, and we leave the Big House.

“I want to just say something,” he says. “And I can confess more in the car.”

“Car confessionals,” I say, grinning. “We do seem to do that a lot, don’t we?”

He gestures to the driveway. “My mom hasn’t gotten a new car in ages.”

I blink as I take in the enormous—and I mean, like-a-boat-enormous—car sitting there.

It’s a gold four-door Cadillac from probably the mid-eighties, and I have no words for it.

Because it’s gold .

Claudia would probably call it Tarnished Trumpet, and that makes me start to laugh again.

I also now know why I heard him berate himself on our phone call. No way that thing connects to a device, and I lead us down the steps to the sidewalk.

“Come on,” I call over my shoulder to him. “I can’t wait to ride in this thing.”