Chapter Thirty-Nine
Christian
I rolled over toward Gretchen and pillowed my head on my forearms, playfully blowing her hair into her face. She wrinkled her nose, still asleep and batted it again. Only to have me repeat the movement as soon as she'd settled again. Finally, she blinked her eyes open, giving me an unimpressed look. “Good morning,” she said grumpily.
“Hey, put a smile on your face!” I said. “Today's the big day!”
Gretchen slowly smiled and shook her head. “Honestly, I think you're more excited than I am about this,” she said. “Which, it's my business.”
“And Mina's more excited than the both of us combined,” I said, grinning even more broadly.
“Yeah,” Gretchen said, shaking her head. She stretched widely. “So, what, it's time to get going already? I thought the ceremony wasn't going to be happening until the afternoon.”
“That's true,” I said. “But we have to go to the airport before the big event.”
“Oh, really?” Gretchen asked, frowning. “And why is that?” I could sense some mistrust behind her tone, and I hurriedly soothed it.
“I'm not going anywhere,” I told her, stroking her arm. “Jeff's flying in for the big day, though.”
“Oh, wow, really?” Gretchen asked, looking surprised.
“Yeah,” I said. “I told him about my new role as a business consultant, and he was excited. And winter's been a bit cruel to Boston this year, so I'm sure he's just looking for any excuse to get out of there and escape to someplace warm!”
Gretchen laughed. “Yeah, I can only imagine what that must be like. What time does his flight come in?”
“In about an hour and a half,” I said slyly. “I thought that before we got out of bed, maybe we could…”
I didn't have to say more. Gretchen quickly rolled so that she was straddling my hips, grinning mischievously down at me.
A little while later, we pulled up outside the arrivals terminal at the airport and waited for Jeff to come out to the car. He appeared quickly and dumped his luggage on the curb as he reached to hug both of us. “Great to see you, bro,” he said. “And great to see you too, Gretchen. I've heard a lot about you.”
Gretchen laughed and shook her head. “I've heard a lot about you too!” she said. “I'm glad that you're here to help us celebrate the opening of the new business.”
“Me too,” Jeff said. “And I'm happy to be someplace where I don't have to worry about my fingers freezing off!”
“I told you he was just looking for an excuse to get out of Boston,” I complained, winking at Gretchen.
She giggled. “Hey, isn't that just what you were doing when you first came here?” she asked. “For all I know, you're still just here because you can't handle New York's winters!”
I laughed and shook my head, loading Jeff's luggage into my new but nondescript silver car.
“So, tell me what I can look forward to today,” Jeff said to Gretchen as we drove, leaning forward from the back seat.
Gretchen laughed. “It's a good excuse to have a party,” she said. “And our new shop is down on the beach, so as it gets into the evening, we'll probably get a couple of bonfires started and have a sort of miniature luau. Good food, good alcohol, good people, what more could you need?”
“There will, of course, be plenty of pineapple on offer,” I said, rolling my eyes a little but grinning nonetheless. “You don't know how many piña colada recipes I've had to try over the past couple weeks. Mina was so intent on making them perfect.”
“Oh, woe is you,” Jeff said sarcastically. “You just had to spend your days sitting on a beach and sipping piña coladas?”
I snorted. “I know, right? How did I get this lucky?”
“You worked hard,” Jeff said quietly. “Luck had nothing to do with it.”
I glanced over at Gretchen and then reached over to squeeze her hand. “I wouldn't say luck had nothing to do with it,” I said, pleased to hear her giggle in response to that.
The beach was already pretty crowded by the time we arrived, and Mina was buzzing all over the place trying to make sure that everyone was happy. “There you are!” she exclaimed when she saw us. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to run this whole thing by myself!”
“Which you would have done an excellent job of,” Gretchen soothed.
“Sorry,” I said, grimacing a little because I knew that it was my fault that we were late. “We had to pick up my brother—this is Jeff—from the airport on the way, and the traffic was really bad getting back here; there was an accident. It looks like you've been doing a great job, though.”
“Can we get the speeches and the formal part out of the way first?” Mina asked.
“Sure thing,” Gretchen said. She grabbed her friend's hand and led her up onto the front porch, which today would double as a stage. Then, she looked back at me, frowning when she saw I was still standing there next to Jeff. She beckoned me up toward the stage, and after a sharp nudge from my brother, I slowly made my way up to join them.
“This is your day,” I said in an undertone to Gretchen.
“I never would have made it here without your help,” Gretchen shot back. “It's our day.”
The way she smiled up at me left me unable to argue.
“Hi everybody,” she said into the microphone, giving a little wave. “Neighbors and friends and whoever else our neighbors and friends have dragged along.” There was a short laugh at that. “A lot of you out there know Mina and me, and most of you are getting to know Christian as well. Now, Mina and I have been operating our businesses next to one another for years now. Lately, we've been successful at intermingling our client pool, so that people who come to me for a massage then go to her for a shake and people who come to her for pineapple then come to me for a massage. Our aim in all of this has been to give everyone the most relaxing experience that they can have on this beautiful island.”
“But there's so much more to our partnership than that,” Mina said. “I'm lucky enough to be standing up here with my best friend, and about to go into business with her. We believe that a great shop experience begins the moment you encounter the smiling face of your shopkeeper, and we both know that with the two of us working together, we're always going to be smiling.”
They continued talking along this vein for a little while, and I, along with most of the audience, I was sure, couldn't help from smiling along with them at their sheer enthusiasm at the fact that they were going to be coworkers. Finally, they wrapped it up, and together they cut the brightly-colored ribbon that had been strung across the back doors to the new place. The crowd erupted in cheers, and then it was time for the party to start.
“Just like a luau, huh?” Gretchen asked a little while later, smiling next to me as we watched people begin grilling up tasty bites for dinner.
“Pretty much,” I said, grinning at her. “Looks like Mina's having a good day too, doesn't it?”
Gretchen looked over where I was pointed and gaped at her friend. I'd been watching them over the course of the past few hours, and Mina was unmistakably flirting, tossing back her hair every once in a while, and totally focusing all of her body language toward-
“Is that your brother?” Gretchen asked in surprise.
“Yup,” I said, grinning over at her. “He's not a billionaire like some of us, but he's a pretty good guy.”
Gretchen snorted and lightly hit my arm. But I could tell that she was pleased to see Mina looking happy. “Do you think that she's ever going to convince him to leave Boston and move down here?” she mused.
“Stranger things have happened,” I said, shrugging.
“That they have,” Gretchen said. She bit her lower lip. “So, I know that you're part of the business now, as a consultant if nothing more, but…”
“Are you asking me again whether I regret moving down here?” I asked, turning to face her. “Because I definitely, definitely don't. And you don't need to ask me that every month, you know!”
Gretchen sighed. “I love seeing you here with all my friends and everyone else. You look like you're having fun, but I don't want you to feel like I'm holding you back. I know managing a little massage parlor-slash-pineapple shop probably wasn't exactly what you had in mind for your life.”
“Gretchen,” I sighed, wondering how to make her see the truth. There was only one thing that I could say. “You know that I love you, don't you?”
Gretchen stared up at me in surprise. “You do?”
“Yeah, baby. I love you,” I told her firmly. “More than you could even know.”
She stared at me for another moment and then smiled broadly. “I love you too,” she said quietly, almost shyly, as though there were anything left for either of us to be shy about. She bit her lower lip and then laughed a little. “So, we aren't just fucking anymore?”
I snorted and shoved her, almost succeeding in toppling her onto the sand. “I'll show you a good fucking when we get back home if you're going to have a mouth like that,” I told her.
“You'd better,” she said, a challenge in her eyes. Then, her expression softened a little and she gave me an uncertain look. “You aren't sorry that you came here?” she asked, clearly needing to hear it one more time.
“I'm honestly not at all sorry about it,” I told her, punctuating the words with a filthy kiss, which she eagerly returned.
“Okay,” she said breathlessly as we broke apart. “Okay, I'm glad to hear that.”