Always You: A Lilac Bay Novel (Friends with Benefits) Read online

  He buried his head in his hands and muttered something muffled that sounded like, I should have just let it go.

  “Yes,” I said primly, reaching over my shoulder for the remote on the counter. “You should have. Because now we’re going to watch the last ten minutes of Daytime Dale so you can see exactly how impressive she really is.”

  “No.” He sat up straight and turned pleading eyes toward me. “Please, Riley. Don’t make me watch that show. I’ll do anything. I’ll—” His eyes frantically scanned the table, apparently in search of something to offer. “I’ll give you the last bite of my cookie!”

  “Too late.” I hit the power button and punched in a seven, smiling when Heather’s face filled the screen. “Perfect timing.”

  I drowned out Andrew’s groan by turning up the volume.

  The host had just finished an interview and was now addressing the audience, something she did at the end of every episode. I relaxed into my chair, forgetting all about Andrew’s anti-Heather attitude, my entire focus on the screen. I was recording this at home, of course, just like I recorded every episode. I watched them when I got home from work, my little reward for getting through a long day of Millie’s disapproving sighs. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a nice treat to catch an episode live.

  I hadn’t been exaggerating when I said Heather Dale was my hero. I had looked up to her ever since college, the only time in my life when I lived off the island. I’d attended school downstate in Detroit, where Heather was in her second year of anchoring the news for the local ANN affiliate. Back then, I had grand ambitions of someday going into news or television, so I had always made it a point to watch as many different newscasters as possible. As soon as I saw Heather Dale on my TV I knew she was going places. She was beautiful, for starters. I had serious hair envy for her long and wavy chestnut locks. My own hair was an acceptable shade of blonde, but stick-straight and virtually impossible to style. Where I was tall and thin, Heather had a perfect curvy figure that would have suited a swimsuit model. But she was way too ambitious and professional to ever consider a career like that. She infused both her morning correspondent segment and daytime show with a mixture of hard-hitting interviews, news, politics, and culture. She could make her guests laugh and cry and shake in their boots with fear when she turned her relentless questioning on them—all in the same interview. She dressed really well—professional but stylish. She was charming, warm, whip-smart, with a killer sense of humor.

  I wanted to be Heather Dale.

  “Oh, God,” Andrew muttered. “You have that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “The one that tells me I’m eventually going to have to drive to Manhattan to bail you out after your arrest for stalking a TV news star.”

  I threw my napkin at him, never taking my eyes from the screen.

  Of course I didn’t want to stalk Heather Dale. I just found her inspiring, that was all. And, honestly, who could blame me? It was pretty damn hard to find beautiful, successful, glamorous women to look up to on this island. Unless, of course, your dream was to operate a fudge kitchen or a tourist kitsch shop on Main Street.

  “I grew up in a small town,” Heather was saying on the screen. “And as much as I love living in Manhattan, there are definitely many things that I miss about home. I’m sure many of you grew up in small towns just like the one I called home.”

  The camera panned to the audience members as they smiled and nodded.

  “Riley, please, I’ll never say another word—”

  “Shush.” I threw another napkin. “I want to hear this.”

  “I think small towns are the back bone of this country,” she went on. “And that’s why I’m so excited to announce my next project. We’re going coast to coast, searching for America’s Best Small Town!”

  The audience dutifully clapped and cheered as the camera closed in on Heather’s face, her eyes narrowing slightly in her patented I-Couldn’t-Possibly-Be-More-Passionate-And-Engaged-About-This-Topic expression. “Guys, I’m not just talking about a feature on this show. We’re going all out here. Six weeks of competition, aired every Wednesday in prime time, our finalist cities battling for the title—which you will vote on. We’re talking prizes, money for development, grants for schools and libraries. Exposure for your town. We want to hear your stories. We want to meet your people. This is going to be huge. And I’ll be there every step of the way, helping the audience to cast their votes for the most worthy candidates.” Huge applause from the audience as Heather Dale grinned. “I am so excited for this, America!”

  I turned to Andrew, speechless, as the familiar closing music of Daytime Dale began.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Riley.” There was a warning note in his voice, his eyes widening as they met mine. “Just chill, okay?”

  “You heard her,” I cried, pointing at the TV. “Grants and prizes! A ton of exposure! We have to do this!”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t look into it—”

  “Andrew, it’s meant to be! What are the odds that we would just happen to turn the show on at that exact moment? After we just finished agreeing that this town needed a boost?”

  “Hey, I didn’t agree—”

  But I barely heard him. Already my mind was spinning. What was the application process going to be like? Would every town they chose be featured in each episode? Holy crap, six weeks of episodes. In prime time. And it was Heather Dale! Everything she touched was a ratings success. People would watch this, tons and tons of people. The exposure something like this could bring—

  “Riley, please don’t get obsessed with this.”

  I gaped at him. “What are you talking about? Andrew, this could be huge for us!”

  “I understand.” He raised his hands, placating me. “I know you like to take things and run with them. It’s a great trait. But sometimes you get a little—crazy. And I’m just saying to take a breath and chill, okay? You still have this spring campaign to get through today.”

  I sputtered, incoherent. Crazy? I didn’t get crazy. Passionate, sure. A little competitive, yes. But not crazy.

  Before I could calm down enough to tell him that, Millie appeared in the doorway to the break room.

  “Oh,” she said, in the dry, disapproving voice she reserved just for me. “There you are. Mayor Jones was looking for you. I didn’t realize you would still be at lunch…” She trailed off pointedly as she looked down at her watch.

  “Yes, Millie,” I snapped. “I’m a whole two minutes late.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll just go tell him that you’ll get to it when you’re ready.”

  I sighed, standing as I grabbed my Tupperware from the table and snapped the lid on. The combination of Millie’s mere presence and Andrew’s assessment of me were putting a huge damper on the excitement I had felt only a moment before. “You can tell him I’ll be right in.”

  She glanced at her watch again as she left, and it was all I could do not to throw a napkin at her as well.

  “Hey,” Andrew said, reaching for my wrist. I pulled away, quickly cleaning up my lunch mess, and he stood, taking my shoulders in his hands and making me look at him. “Riley.”

  “What?” I looked up at him, into those very familiar blue eyes, which right now were clearly full of regret.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, I promise.”

  “Really? Cause you spent the beginning of our break talking about how I—what was it? Like to crush people under my far-superior heel? And now you’re calling me crazy.”

  “No! I’m not. Hey.” He shook my shoulders gently when I looked away, bending his knees a little to bring his eye line closer to mine. “I love how passionate you are about stuff. I really do. It’s one of your best qualities. I was just teasing you, okay? That’s all.”

  I sighed. It was impossible to stay mad at him when he did that wide-eyed puppy-dog thing. Which I guess made me just as stupid as the other girls on this island when
it came to Andrew Powell.

  “Fine. Now get your hands off me so I can go get the bad news from Jones.”

  “It’s not going to be bad news,” he said, obviously relieved that he had been forgiven. He began to help clear away our dirty plates. “I have a good feeling about this. Here, why don’t you let me finish up here and you head down.”

  “Thanks, Andrew.” I pressed a quick kiss to his cheek to show I forgave him. “I knew there was a reason I was friends with you.”

  He cleared his throat before his cocky grin appeared once more. “You mean it’s not my grandmother’s cookies?”

  “Not just her cookies.”

  “Whatever. Call me when you’re done.”

  I waved as I headed out of the break room, trying to get my game face on for my meeting with the mayor. I could think about the Heather Dale contest later. For now, I was going to get that damn tourism campaign approved. It was like Andrew said—I might just be the most competitive person on this island. And that meant that I liked to win.

  A half hour later I sat at my desk, feeling numb—though frustration was fast taking over. All of that work, all those weeks, and what had it gotten me?

  A pat on the shoulder. Literally.

  The phone on my desk rang, startling me, and I reached for it in a daze, barely noticing the red light next to the extension for the accounting office. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Andrew said. “What happened?”

  I felt the slightest flicker of shame in my chest. Somehow, I didn’t like the idea of telling Andrew that I had failed. He’d been so sure it would work out.

  “Riley?”

  “He doesn’t think it’s a necessary investment at this time,” I replied, a new emotion joining the numbness and frustration and shame. Anger.

  “That’s bullshit," Andrew said. “Seriously, bullshit.”

  “Yeah, well. Not much I can do about it, I guess.”

  “I’m so sorry. I was positive he was going to go for it. You did such great work.”

  I shook my head, even though he likely couldn’t see me across the office. “I guess it’s what I should’ve expected. It’s like you said, people around here don’t like things to change.”

  “So what did he say?”

  I closed my eyes, remembering the exact expression on Mayor Jones’ face as he turned me down. It was that slightly bemused, slightly indulgent smile he always seemed to wear when I brought him a new idea. Like he was humoring me, like he was doing me a favor. Encouraging the kid. The anger flared again. “What do you think he said?”

  “If you tell me he said, ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it,’ I’m going to be seriously pissed off now.”

  I laughed and it sounded about as bitter as I felt. “You know your boss well.”

  Andrew swore under his breath. “Did he even look at your information? All of that research?”

  “He did. He said it looked very impressive — and a little too sophisticated for Lilac Bay.” I sighed. “To be honest, I think I overwhelmed him. You know how he gets when anyone starts to talk about website traffic and maximizing return on investment. He doesn’t get it, so he dismisses it as too complicated for the island.”

  “God, Riley. I’m really sorry. I know how hard you worked on all of this.”

  I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. I had worked hard. And it wasn’t fair.

  Before I could tell him that, Andrew spoke up again.

  “So maybe this will get your mind off things,” he said, his tone more encouraging. “I’ve been doing a little research of my own.”

  “Research on what?

  “Oh, just a little thing called the Heather Dale show.”

  I sat up straighter in my chair, the frustration and anger immediately shooting out of my system. I had completely forgotten about Heather Dale. “We’ll ignore you messing up the title of her show,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “So, it looks like they're taking submissions online,” he said. “There's an application to fill out, along with instructions for making a video. Nothing too complicated or overly long. It definitely looks like something we could do.”

  I grinned to myself. “Something we could do?”

  Andrew cleared his throat on the other end of the line, and when he spoke again he sounded defensive. “Well, it's not like I’m going to let you do it by yourself. You'd get all the credit. I mean, I know we established that you’re uber-competitive in everything you do, but—”

  “Okay, okay. Enough of that now. Tell me what we need to do.”

  “Here. Open your email. I’ll send you the link to the website.” Before he had even finished talking, a new email appeared in my inbox.

  I opened it eagerly, and there was the link to the submissions page.

  “Look, I have to go,” Andrew said, before I could take more than a cursory look. “Carl is in a shitty mood today.” Carl was the head of the financial department where Andrew worked. He just so happened to be Millie’s son, and came with the personality to match. “Apparently we need to have payroll done by Wednesday. Which makes absolutely no sense, but what can you do.”

  “You can apply for a supervisor position the next time one comes up,” I said, without missing a beat, and Andrew laughed. It was a long-running thing between us—me trying to get him to advance at work, him laughing me off. We did it automatically at this point.

  “Look over the submission page and we’ll talk after work, okay?”

  “Sounds good,” I muttered, my eyes already glued to the screen.

  “Have a good afternoon.”

  “You too. Oh.” I pulled my attention away from the screen long enough to give him an actual goodbye. “Andrew, thank you for doing this. Seriously.”

  He chuckled lightly on the other end of the phone. “Hey, it's the least I can do for the girl who always brings me lunch.”

  Chapter 2

  It took Andrew and I the better part of a week to finish our application. The instructions on the website called for a three minute video audition in addition to the written application, and we had both agreed that this was where our little island could truly shine.

  Spring was a beautiful time on Lilac Bay, and not just because the grass got a lot greener. The real appeal of the island in April is its people. Winters on this bay in northern Lake Michigan take their toll on all of us. Not only are we confined to our houses by heavy snow and cold temperatures, but we eventually become confined to the island itself. There is no bridge connecting us to the mainland—when the bay starts to freeze our boat access cuts off completely, trapping most of us here for the duration of the season. We have a small airstrip that allows for emergency travel and food deliveries, but the cost of airfare keeps casual travel to a minimum. For many, the winter months are the most challenging part of living on this island. Every fall, without fail, some family decides they can’t stand the thought of another winter, and moves to the mainland. We even have a name for it—the November Migration.

  But the harshness of a Lilac Bay winter makes the spring particularly beautiful. Once the ice has melted, once the trees start to bud, there’s a palpable relief on the faces in town. April is filled with a quiet excitement thrumming though the population—pure joy that we’re still here, that we’re outside, that a warm summer awaits us. In April, we’re at our best—excited, joyful, kind, neighborly.

  And this was what Andrew and I wanted to capture in our video. We spent our lunch breaks and hours after work each day taking video of the town, the shops, people out and about doing their shopping, catching up, gathering in the square for no other reason than the fact that they could. We also carefully recorded some interviews with our friends and neighbors, telling them that we were working on a promotional video for the town’s website.

  After we felt satisfied that we had enough video, we pulled out my trusty Sony point-and-shoot and spent another long afternoon taking picture after picture to include in our application.

  “Wouldn�
�t it be nice if we had professional stock photographs on file at Town Hall?” I asked Andrew, not quite ready to be done feeling bitter about my department’s lack of investment in the town. “Like, I don’t know, maybe in the tourism promotion department?”

  In his typical, look-on-the-bright-side fashion, Andrew pointed out that the photos we took were nearly as good as a professional's anyway. He had a point. We had been lucky to have the weather cooperate—our photos showed vibrant green rolling lawns in the Town Square, budding trees, pops of bright colored flowers, all in front of a brilliant blue sky and the sun dappled sparkling waters of the bay. They looked beautiful, if I did say so myself. In fact, our whole application looked good.

  Andrew, who had a knack for techy stuff, downloaded a video editing program from the Internet and we managed to get all of our film pasted together. We’d even set the whole thing to music. It probably wasn’t the flashiest submission they would get, but so what? Lilac Bay wasn’t exactly a flashy place. The application we had put together felt like us, and I was proud of it.

  So I was surprised to find Andrew, camera in hand, when I showed up for our weekly Rec League game at the high school sports field on Friday night.

  “What’s with the camera?” I asked, dropping my duffel bag at his feet. “I thought we were done.”

  “We are,” he said. “Well, we were. But I figured I could get some good shots during the game. You know, Lilac Bay in all its glory, the townspeople and tourists alike, enjoying a good old-fashioned game of baseball. What could be more all-American than that?”

  “Excellent point.” I looked around the field for confirmation. “So we’re playing baseball tonight?”

  That was the thing about the island Rec League—you never really knew what you were in for until you showed up. Though we were technically a softball league, we only had enough players to make up four teams—and that included a team whose revolving roster consisted entirely of tourists who wanted to sign up for a game or two during their week on the island. It was hardly enough to form an entire league, and it got pretty old playing against the same people every week all summer long. So the Rec League would occasionally bring in teams from the mainland. And that meant we were constantly switching between softball, soccer, kickball—basically whichever teams we could convince to take the ferry out to the island on a Friday night. We’d even played a rousing game of Frisbee golf once against a group from Elk Rapids, though we’d all agreed never to invite that particular team back when a wayward Frisbee ended up konking Mrs. Parker’s schnauzer, Buttons, in the head.