That Secret Crush (Getting Lucky #3)(94)

“I think that’s the last of it,” Eve says, coming up beside me and leaning against the counter.

“Shit, you scared me. I thought you left with Eric.”

Eric left half an hour ago and took all the extra food to Snow Roast, where Ruth was kind enough to let us have an impromptu gathering for a few friends who wanted to sample the menu. I stayed behind to help my parents clean. I thought I was on my own, washing dishes as my parents retired for the night—but Eve just proved me wrong.

“I did. I helped him carry the food, but then I came back—wanted to help you clean up. Your parents were kind enough to host; I didn’t want to leave their house trashed.”

I rinse off the platter I’ve been scrubbing and stick it over on the towels I laid out to help dry everything. “Thank you, but I think I have it covered if you want to go back to Snow Roast.”

She picks up a dish towel and starts drying one of the dishes I already washed. “Nah. Eric doesn’t need me. He’s having a great time catching up with everyone. I really think he’s been in his element since he’s moved back and started working with you again. I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard so much happiness in his voice. I feel like he was barely living when he was in Boston, but being back here, with you, with me . . . it’s reawakened his passion, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that. Knight and Port means so much to him, and all he wants is to see it succeed.”

“We all do. I have a good feeling about it. There’s so much passion coming from all different directions, and when you have this many people working their asses off to put something together, only great things can come from it.”

Pausing, she takes a second to study me. “That’s not the normal, negative Reid I’m used to.”

“People can change.”

“I guess so.” She smiles and picks up a delicate blue willow-patterned plate to dry. “Oh my gosh, your mom still has this plate?” Churchill China, a coveted “artifact” in the Knightly household, it’s worth more than anyone would want to pay for a plate. There are five left in the house, and two of them have had to be glued back together.

“Yeah, and even though it keeps breaking over and over again, she finds a way to superglue it back together each and every time.”

“I can still see the look in your eyes when we accidentally broke it. You, Eric, and I were fighting over who had dibs on a batch of cookies, right? We were all pulling on it and somehow dropped it at the same time.”

“I can still hear the crash in my head. I thought I was going to puke when I saw it cracked on the ground.”

She laughs, such a beautiful sound. “You went so pale that I thought you were going to puke too. And because your mom has supersonic ears, she came running downstairs to see what happened. The look on her face still scares me to this day.”

“That’s when Satan oozes from her pores—when someone fucks with her special Churchill China. They were my grandmother’s, so she cherishes those things. And that day, I broke one. I really thought that was the end for me. Dead at thirteen.”

“We didn’t come over for two weeks—we were too scared she was going to slit our throats with the broken pieces.”

Honestly, it’s not that huge of an exaggeration. At the time, they were her most valued possessions, and I was shocked she let us use them for the gathering tonight. But when she handed me one of the plates, she insisted they’ve always brought good luck to those who served on them, and she wanted to make sure we had all the luck on our side.

“I’m pretty sure she was planning all of our deaths, even matched up our schedules with your mom so she knew when to strike.”

“And she did, on Halloween.”

I throw my head back and laugh. How could I have forgotten about that?

Eric, Eve, and I liked to trick-or-treat as teenagers because, honestly, we liked candy, and no one cared that we were too old. They were just happy we weren’t getting into trouble somewhere else.

We would try to hit up all the houses in town and then go to the outskirts, where the houses are pretty huge and the families would hand out king-size bars. Only the brave went out to the woods since it was always so spooky, but it was worth it.

Since the houses were so far apart, we would bribe Griffin to drive us around in Dad’s van and pay him in candy. He never complained since he and Claire would just hang out in the car and make out until we got back.

A few weeks after the plate incident, we were trick-or-treating, and after we made it all the way to the Carlsons’ hilltop mansion, we went back to the van to hit up the next house. I reached for the door handle and opened it up, and out shot a screeching woman wearing a black cloak and a mask, who tackled all three of us to the ground as she leaped out of the car.

I don’t think I’d ever been more scared in my life as the three of us tumbled down the hill, a screaming lady hot on our heels. We got all the way to the bottom, and I was on the verge of a serious mental breakdown when she started laughing. And that’s when I heard her: my mom.

She laughed for a very long time, and so did Griffin and Claire, who’d helped her to plan the entire thing.

“Remember how we had a hard time opening car doors after that?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t do it for so long, and my mom got really irritated with me. Of course she wasn’t mad at your mom. Nope, she just said, ‘Next time don’t break one of Mrs. Knightly’s plates, and she won’t have to scare you out of your pants.’ At least we learned a lesson. From then on, Eric and I only used paper plates.”