“Let me help you with the wrangling, then I’ll go help Nat.”
“I’ve got the kids, it’s fine.” Serena shot her a look indicating that Gill was the one being antsy and overboard about the set-up for Rachel and Theo’s party.
Couldn’t be wronger. Gillian was cool like a mojito with extra mint. Theo’s brewpub and restaurant, Elixir, was closed to the public for the night, and the friends converged in advance of everyone else to decorate and otherwise manage all the couple would need to celebrate their engagement. And their forthcoming baby. And Theo’s name day on top of the rest.
She and Serena had hauled Rachel’s daughter Hannah and Theo’s son Andres to the Children’s Museum for the afternoon, getting them plenty tired and a little too sugared up. Worth it. They’d cracked each other up at the rubber duck races and Andres showed off an unsuspected skill on the dance floor in the motion room. Now they needed to herd them into Elixir, but Natalie texted to ask for help with the balloons. Because what the party needed was balloons. It wasn’t already a decor explosion with Theo’s glittery name day banner and the baby-shaped confetti and a mass of pink and white bouquets scattered everywhere. Not to mention all the Valentine’s Day decorations still covering Elixir’s walls and windows.
May as well throw in a steamer trunk covered in bon voyage stickers and a few fireworks and perhaps a petting zoo.
Still, Serena seemed as under control as someone herding two excited little kiddos could be, so Gill went in search of Nat. She was parked around the side of the brewpub, and the sight of her crouching into the backseat of her SUV trying to get ahold of all the balloon ribbons wafting around her just about did Gill in.
“Didn’t you tie them in bunches before you loaded them up?” She slid into the passenger seat and batted back some of the orange and green and blue floating orbs.
“Don’t you be logical with me, Gillian Bellamy. I am not in the mood.”
“Or maybe you should have brought the helium tank here and filled them on site?”
“The mood. Not in it.”
She snagged a handful of ribbons and started to wrap them into a knot. Nat copied her, until they had all the balloons corralled in bunches and moved to draw the bunches out via the back seat.
“Gillian.”
She whipped round, heart racing. Only because she was startled, not because Vic’s voice made her heart race. His laugh didn’t hide the noise of the shutter clicking as he took pics of her, half-crouched and wrestling with a multihued bunch of curling ribbon and a balloon they’d missed about to escape into the sky.
“Oh. I forgot you’d be here.” Lies. Obfuscation. Nonchalant pretense.
He shrugged like he believed her. “All part of the service.”
Natalie slammed her car door and joined them. Her bundle of balloons somehow looked as tidy as she always did. “Hi, Victor. Things good?”
“Sure are. Forecast for next week is great, by the way. I’ve got a few ideas I’ll email you about for the photo shoot.”
She gave Nat a look. Didn’t even pretend she wasn’t, because no matter how nonchalant, Vic was gonna see through her.
“I didn’t tell you Victor’s doing our engagement photos?”
Gillian’s need to answer Natalie hovered in the negative range. All three of her best friends getting married in a six month period? Fine. Busy, but fine. She was happy for them. And okay, it made sense they’d look into the same vendors, despite how different those weddings would be. Rachel and Nat were using the same florist, and Nat had booked Serena’s caterer the day after Serena’s wedding. It seemed a bit much, though, for each and every one of them to have Victor Anthony taking their wedding pics.
He stepped to her and snagged the flyaway balloon. Tied it to her wrist like they were kids at a carnival. Reached behind her to shut the car door. Smelled like lemon with an inky, metallic undertone.
“Okay, gotta get this lot inside,” Nat said, chirpy as fuck. Gill wasn’t letting her get away with that. She spun away from Vic and marched behind her scheming friend, all too aware of the balloons bobbing in her wake like a pastel manifestation of every one of her turbulent emotions.
Anton woulda told her to lighten up.
Or made some bad science-adjacent joke, more like. Told her to inhale some of the helium from the balloons so she could float up away from her bad mood.
Once, he’d have been just as likely to tease her as her little brother. Back when it seemed wisest to pretend she was like a sister to him, too. All part of the pretense of belonging to the Bellamy family unit. The lighter-than-helium dream of fitting in with Anton’s over-invested, high-expectations, rules-and-chores-and-order household.
Not that his folks neglected him, exactly. Not that he wanted for food, clothing, shelter, or benign good wishes. Even now, they texted like … well, not like clockwork. Like a little wind-up toy with a mostly-reliable spring mechanism. All part of the free range parenting that might have suited someone like Anton just fine. If Ton had been left to pursue his own interests, he’d still have topped the charts in his favorite classes, and earned competitive scholarships, and never feared the consequences of coming out, to boot.
Vic, though, got through school because Mr. Bellamy kind of scared him, and life would have been miserable without Anton to ground him in the reality of their daily lives. So he tried to not disappoint the man, for fear he’d no longer be welcome at the dinner table. Be told to get his toothbrush out of the striped cup by the sink. Be labeled a Bad Influence.
Looking back, neither his folks nor the Bellamys were so very extreme. And he and Anton had planted roots deep into each other’s corner since the day they’d sat at the same second grade table and the boy at the next table called them the Tony Twins. His kid perspective, though, was a confusion of being always adrift and worried and determined to cling to the rock of Anton’s family.
So even once he was old enough to notice and name his crush on Gillian, he didn’t deviate from the role of extra little brother. Weekly sleepovers with Anton were more important than youthful fantasies about girls too old for him anyway.
Now, though? Now he weighed the bedrock of his friendship against the possible soaring heights of a relationship with Gillian, and wasn’t ready to resign himself to the idea that he couldn’t have both.
“Let me get the door.”
It wasn’t a little-brother joking, but it did stop her in her tracks. Irritated as much at his words as at her friend for going inside without her, would be his guess. She gave him such a sarcastic smile, almost enough to catapult him fully back into their later teen years. Back when any kind of offhand notice from her would fuck him right up for the hours more he’d be spending surrounded by her family. Too bad for her he wasn’t that always-horny kid anymore. Now he was all about nuance.
“You look great, by the way. Don’t want you to think I’m so distracted by your balloon halo I don’t notice that dress and that lipstick.”
Pursing her raspberry-dark lips at him, she turned fully to face him. “Not buying this innocent act, Vic.”
“Whose innocent act you mean? Natalie’s? Yeah, me neither.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I have words for her, too, later.”
“You got words for me, Gillian? I’ll take ‘em. Lay it on me.”
She just looked at him. Narrowed eyes, shifting jaw.
“Or actions, if your words got lost somewhere in your big brain. I’m told they speak louder than words, even ones as adept and erudite as yours.”
“You should consider shutting up, Victor Anthony. I’m not fooled by this whole ‘who me’ pretense you’re shoveling out.” She accompanied her statement with a flourish of her hand at him, likely not considering the way it made the balloon he’d tied to her wrist bob against the rest of the bunch.
He smirked as at least five bright orbs bounced into the back of her head. And took a picture, cause that was worth at least nine thousand of her super smart words.