Page 83 of Best Kind of Trouble
Briar, the obedient daughter.
And now I’m going to have to sit down next toMellyand pretend she isn’t the one person I truly hate.
I lift Liam’s beer for another sip, find the bottle empty, and glance at him across the table. He must see the need in my eyes, because without a word, he takes another beer out of the six-pack, ignores the two bottle openers my mother set down beside him, and opens it on the edge of the table.
I smile as he hands the bottle to me. Part of me is glad he’s here. He’s made it clear he’s on my team. Before I met my newfriends, I didn’t even have a team. No one had ever really stood up for me.
At the same time, Liam wouldn’t be here if not for Hannah—Hannah, who made her boundaries very clear.
The smile ghosts off my face as heels click-clack toward the dining room, and my mother emerges with Melly, who is dressed in a black floor-length dress with lacy three-quarter-length sleeves. Her auburn hair is chin length and perfectly curled around her sweetheart face.
“Well,hello,” she says.
She’s not talking to me. Her eyes slid right past me as if I were wallpaper, finding Liam. His muscles are straining against that black shirt, which brings out the red in his hair.
“Who areyou?” Melly continues.
A horrible feeling creeps through me, like black mold spreading under my skin.
She obviously wants him, just like all the women at the brewery, and she usually gets what she wants…
But instead of getting up to greet her, Liam leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m Liam. I work with Briar.”
It’s obviously his turn to ask who she is, but he doesn’t.
Undaunted, she hugs my father, calling him “Uncle Don,” and then sashays around to Liam, holding out her hand.
He shakes it with a flat expression.
“I’m Melly. I’m Briar’s best friend from boarding school.”
I drop my beer bottle.
It cracks on the floor and sprays fizzy liquid. My dress is mostly unscathed, but the wood flooring under the table gets doused.
“Briar!” my mother practically screams.
Blood is beating in my ears. I can feel everyone staring at me, just like they did the night the whole staff of SilverStar quit. I hear my mother leaving the room, heading toward the kitchen. I can feel Liam taking in my shame and lack of grace.
“Still such a butterfingers,” Melly says as she helps herself to my mother’s chair.
“My mom’s sitting there.”
“I’ll move when she gets back,” she says, her arm brushing against Liam’s. Her features scrunch. “I don’t want to sit in beer.”
Liam gets up, surprisingly graceful for such a big man. “I’ll sit in it. I prefer smelling like beer.” As he passes me, he skims his fingers across my shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. It happens so quickly, I might have questioned whether it really happened if not for the heat trailing from that spot.
Emotion clogs my throat as I watch him collect the bigger pieces of glass on the floor into a pile. Then he takes the napkin from the unused place setting and swipes the chair and sits down next to me.
“So, Melly,” my father says, not remotely interested in the seating arrangements or the mess. “Your father’s told me all about your success. He says it’s not easy to break into social influencing. That’s what you call it, right?”
“Yes, I’m an influencer,” she says, smirking at me. Reminding me that she played that role before, and that she was good at it then too.
My hands fist beneath the table.
“What, exactly, do you influence?” Liam asks.
“People,” she says with a wide, red-lipped smile. “People who want to look like me, or have a similar lifestyle.”
