Once and for All(73)

“So,” Ambrose said now, as I wrapped a larger pillar candle, “what’s the latest on the dating front? You’ve been awfully quiet since Alien Lover. Hope you haven’t had trouble keeping up your end of the bet.”

“Nope,” I said. “Last night I doubled with Jilly and Michael Salem with one of his friends, also a food truck kid.”

“Wow, that’s a big community, huh? It’s like homeschooling.”

“It is,” I agreed. “This guy, Martin, his parents do dumplings. I hear they are delicious.”

“And what about Martin?”

I sighed, picking up another votive. “Very nice, super cute, and totally hung up on his ex.”

He made a face. “Yikes.”

“Yeah. Her name is Eloise. To me she kind of sounds like a nightmare, but he is hopeful it’s just a matter of time before she comes to her senses.” I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “It wasn’t awful, though. At least I got to see Jilly.”

“She’s been busy?”

“She’s always busy. But now she’s in love, which means any of her spare time is all about Michael Salem,” I said.

“That always sucks. When your friends go totally MIA.”

“Nah, I’m happy for her. She deserves it.” I bent down, arranging the candles in the box at my feet. “Jilly has always been a hopeless romantic, but she’s never really had a serious boyfriend. It’s a first for her, all this walking into the sunset. So it’s huge.”

I could feel him looking at me as I stood back up, bunching up some more paper. “What about you, though?”

“I just told you. Alien guy on Monday, Martin last night, and Ben and I are trying to work out something this weekend, since I’ll be free. So not only I am totally still in this, I’m actually ahead of what we agreed on. Which is why I’m already thinking about good prospects for you when you can’t go the distance with Lauren. Maybe Eloise will still be available.”

“Maybe,” he said, and I laughed. “But I wasn’t talking about the bet.”

I looked at him. “Oh. Then what did you mean?”

“The whole in love, hopeless romantic, huge thing. When do you get that?”

“Have to win the bet first,” I said, and laughed again.

He didn’t. “I’m serious, Louna. The bet aside, you want that, right? The sunset walk?”

Immediately, I felt myself tense, my guard going up. “I mean, sure,” I said, trying to sound light, easy. “Who doesn’t? But it only happens so often.”

“You think there’s a limit on sunset walks?”

“I think,” I said, “that we’re all entitled to great loves, but not an endless amount. If you’ve had one, it takes a while for another to come around.”

“A great love is just that, though. Great.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“So it doesn’t usually involve a bad breakup, like yours did. Which is the opposite of great.”

Now I was kind of stuck. I cleared my throat, recalibrating. “Things end,” I told him. “Even with the best—or greatest—of beginnings. And yellow and blue make green. Such is life, right?”

I wrapped another large pillar in tissue, then put it in the box. After a few moments of silence, Ambrose said, “I can’t decide if you’re really this cynical or just guarded.”

“Maybe both,” I said.

I was trying to be funny, or at least lighten the mood. It was bad enough to be surrounded by the evidence of a romance that had crashed and burned; did we really have to share our own war stories, as well? The moment I thought this, though, I felt a pang in my heart. Ethan wasn’t a battle for me. Loving him had been the easiest thing I’d ever done. Maybe that was why I was so sure if anything else ever came even close, it would be nothing but hard.

Just then the door opened, the beep sounding overhead. I looked over to see Lauren coming in, wearing flip-flops and a sundress, another girl following along behind her. “Hope it’s okay we dropped in,” she said to Ambrose, waving at me. I waved back. “I just really wanted Maya to meet you.”

“It’s fine,” Ambrose said, putting down the guestbook he’d been about to pack up and walking over to them. “The famous Maya. It’s great to finally make your acquaintance.”

“And you are the infamous Ambrose,” the girl, who was taller than Lauren, with dark hair and a nose ring and wearing jeans and a tank top, replied. “Who has my cousin in the best mood I’ve seen her in for months.”

At this, Lauren blushed, but still reached out to take Ambrose’s hand, wrapping her fingers around it. “Maya got the brunt of my breakup darkness,” she explained to us. “I went a bit goth for a while there.”

“If you can even imagine that,” Maya said.

“I can’t. Lauren is all sunshine,” Ambrose replied, and of course at this she beamed, glittering even more. I went back to my candles. “So. Big day’s tomorrow, huh?”

“Yep,” Maya said, glancing at the cake topper. “And I hear you can actually attend?”

“I can,” he replied, and Lauren smiled even wider. “We had a last-minute cancellation. Hence all this stuff and no use for it.”