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

A
fter living
on Lilac Bay Island for most of my life, there are some things that I can just count on. For instance, every year, without fail, when the trees start to bud, you can bet that the tourists will come soon after. You can also safely assume that the ferry to the mainland will only be late when you really need to get to town. Fran, the proprietor of Fran’s Fine Fudge and Treats, and Crystal, the owner of Crystal’s Fudge Kitchen, have been fighting over who most deserves the title of Number One Fudge Seller on the island for more than forty years—it would be pretty safe to bet they're not going to stop anytime soon. Every year, without fail, Patty and Gina will fight over who gets to play Mary in the town’s Christmas pageant—even though both are well past the age that would make motherhood plausible. The bay will always freeze sometime in December. The lilacs will always bloom on the island in early June.

And Andrew Powell will forever try to steal my lunch.

He has, after all, been trying ever since we were in the first grade. Back then, it was my Twinkies he was interested in. I don’t pack many Twinkies in my lunch anymore, seeing as I’m an adult now, but that hasn’t seemed to put a damper on his efforts. These days, it's my home cooked meals that Andrew is after.

“So, what do we have today?”

I paused in the act of unloading my Tupperware to shoot him a glare—which he ignored. “I think you mean, what do
I
have today. Because I’m pretty sure you had nothing to do with making this lunch.”

“Oh, come on, Riley. You're not going to let me starve, are you?” He actually batted his eyelashes at me. Who did he think he was dealing with?

I raised an eyebrow at him across the table, but his attention was firmly on my container of chicken Kiev and mashed potatoes. “Andrew, you're thirty years old now. I think it's time you learned to bring your own lunch from home.”

“I
did
bring a lunch from home.” He gestured at the brown paper bag on the table, shooting me the cocky, self-satisfied smile that would bring just about any girl on the island to their knees. Thank God it didn't work on me. “But you know I’m completely worthless when it comes to cooking.”

“Don't give me that crap. You Powells are like culinary royalty around here. Your family owns a third of the eating establishments on Lilac Bay. You're telling me you can't make a sandwich? It’s bread and cheese and a piece of deli meat. Rose Powell’s grandson can’t handle that?”

He shrugged. “What can I say, Riley? Sometimes the apple really does fall far from the tree.” He made a pathetic face that didn’t fool me in the slightest. “I just wasn't lucky enough to be born with any of the talents of my grandparents. We can’t
all
be successful.” The pathetic expression turned brave. “I’ve accepted my lot in life.”

Do not laugh
, I reminded myself. No matter how ridiculous he might look. Andrew could get just about anyone on this island to eat out of his hand with the slightest turn of his lips. It was very important that I, as his best friend, kept his ego in check. Even if it sometimes felt like a losing battle.

“If you think the self-deprecating act is going to work on me, think again.” I leaned across the table so he would have to meet my eyes. “You're forgetting something, Andrew. I know you better than just about anyone. And I know for a fact that you don't have a self-deprecating bone in your body.”

And there was that grin again. It was no wonder the female population on the island reacted to him the way that they did.

Andrew Powell was, in a word, gorgeous. There was no use in trying to deny it, much as I might like to sometimes. He had that classic Powell coloring so familiar in the members of his family—wavy dark reddish hair, ivory skin, dark blue eyes. His face alone would've done the trick, but of course he had also been blessed with a killer body—the kind of physique that tended to drive girls to distraction. Andrew was well over six foot, with broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a jawline any moody male model would've killed for. In the summer he spent as much time as possible outside, fishing and hiking and playing on the island’s Rec Sports League, which meant that the skin on his arms took on a golden, freckled hue that somehow made him look even better. The type of man that turned people—girls and guys—into babbling idiots wherever he went. Guys wanted to impress him, girls wanted to do things I didn’t like to think about when it came to my best friend. You could see it even when he just walked down the street—tourists and locals alike would stop whatever they were doing, their eyes following him as he passed.

Sitting there at the break room table with him, watching that smile that touched every corner of his face, I could definitely see the appeal. Not for the first time in my life, I congratulated myself on being immune to his charms. Then again, when you've known someone as long as I've known Andrew Powell, it's a lot easier to find yourself immune.

“What you brought smells pretty good,” he said, opening his own brown lunch bag. He pulled out a package of chips, a container of yogurt, and a baggie of limp-looking carrots, all specifically designed, I was sure, to look sad and insufficient. Spreading them out on the table in front of him, he gave a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose this will have to do,” he said sadly.

Before I could tell him how ridiculous he was being, his face brightened slightly, and he reached for the bag again. “Oh, that's right,” he said, his voice dripping with false innocence. “I almost forgot.”

Then he pulled from the bag his secret weapon — his failsafe when it came to our daily battles over lunch—two of his grandmother's famous cherry fudge cookies.

“Well, on the bright side, I guess there are more cookies for me. I mean, I was
going
to share them with you, but since you’re so set on this whole
we should be responsible for our own meals
thing—”

The laughter I had been holding in since we sat down at the table finally broke forth. “Fine.” I pushed my glass container towards him. “You can have some of my chicken and potatoes.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you
did
say I should grow up and bring my own lunch. Maybe you have a point. Maybe I should just be satisfied with what little I have so I can learn my lesson and—”

“Andrew, shut up and share my lunch already. Just give me one of those cookies.”

He grinned again, satisfied with himself. “If you
insist
.”

He set to work dividing up the lunch onto both of our plates, not mentioning the fact that I had clearly packed enough for two. The bickering over sharing was just one of our little rituals — and Andrew knew as well as I did that as long as I was packing lunch for myself I would bring some for him as well. Just like I knew that Andrew would always bring me dessert. Whether it was his grandmother's cookies or a treat he picked up on his way into work, there would always be an extra something in his bag for me. It was one of those things we just knew about each other. We had been sharing our lunches since we started working together, more than five years ago. Hell, we had been sharing for longer than that. How many lunches had we spent together in high school, swapping out undesirable items from the brown paper bags packed by our mothers? Lunch had been a part of our history for as long as I could remember. It was our thing.

“So,” he said, leaning across the table towards me. “Is today the day you find out?”

I felt a little rush of excitement at his words, the same way that I felt whenever the topic of my proposed spring tourism campaign came up. I'd been working on this campaign for weeks now. Researching, writing copy, practicing my web development skills. And on Thursday I had finally turned the proposal into my boss for approval. He told me he would have an answer for me after the weekend, which meant today was the day. Finally, after all this work, today I would know if it had paid off.

“It’s going to be fine,” Andrew said encouragingly. I was sure he could read the nerves on my face—he was good at that. “Jones is going to love it. How could he not?”

How could he not?
I could think of a dozen scenarios in which our boss, William Jones, the mayor of Lilac Bay Island, could choose not to go with my proposal. For starters, it was the first time anyone had made any kind of tourism proposal in years. The spring campaign was another one of those things you could count on to never change around here. Every year, without fail, the mayor’s staff—and by staff, we’re talking about me and his seventy-year-old secretary, Millie Briggs, hardly a dream team—would send out the same ads and press releases to the same magazines and travel agents.

It wasn't that our efforts were unsuccessful. Lilac Bay Island remained a very popular tourist destination for travelers all around the Midwest, just as it had been for more than a hundred years. Spring brought the tourists, who stayed through the summer and into autumn, enjoying our forests, miles of Lake Michigan shorefront, our quaint downtown, the fudge shops on Main Street, the idyllic atmosphere. There were no motor vehicles allowed on Lilac Bay, restricting all transportation to boats, foot traffic, and the ubiquitous horses and bicycles. For those of us that stayed on the island year-round, the lack of automobiles could be annoying, to say the least. But there was no doubt that the ban on cars was our main claim to fame. People came to enjoy their vacation time, sometimes their whole summer, here, an escape from the fast-paced life that they lived at home. Lilac Bay was the kind of place that you went to relax, to go hiking, to find antiques, maybe spend some time in nature. Throughout the summer months and into the fall, the hotels and inns of the island were usually well-booked.

Apparently, that was enough for the mayor. In the five years that I had been working for him, he had never shown any interest in the changes or innovations that I proposed. Our website hadn't been updated since probably the year 2000. When I suggested an overhaul, Mayor Jones hemmed and hawed in that way of his, promising me he would think about it, before eventually deciding that we should leave things as they were. “If it isn't broke, don't fix it,” he would always say. About
everything
.

I hated that expression. The idea that we would automatically lose our charm and uniqueness with a little innovation and improvement was baffling to me. What was the point in always staying exactly the same? Why was I the only one in the whole of City Hall that thought we could be something more?

Andrew chuckled softly, the noise snapping me back from the rant taking place in my head.

“What?”

“What? Seriously, Riley? I can tell exactly what you're thinking right now—you know that, right? You have a
terrible
poker face.”

I stabbed a piece of chicken with my fork rather harder than necessary. “And what am I thinking?”

“You’re wondering when the people in this building will wake up and realize that you’re always right.”

“I don’t think I’m always right.”

He tilted his head, just looking at me, clearly not buying my statement.

“Fine,” I muttered, pushing the chicken around on my plate. “I think I’m right
about this
. It's just so frustrating! What's the point in even having a tourism department if they don’t want to increase tourism?”

“People around here tend to like things the way they are,” he said, around a mouthful of potato. “This is new information for you?”

“Of course not. But that doesn't make it any less annoying. I have good ideas, Andrew. It's the reason I was promoted to this office. So what was the point of promoting me if he’s not going to listen to any of those ideas?”

“I think he will," Andrew said encouragingly. “I mean, he has to, right? Look at all the work you did. It would be ridiculous for him to ignore that.”

He had a point. I had put so much effort into this campaign, trying to balance new ideas with a sense of continuity, determined to show him that we could retain our spirit while making changes. It seemed unthinkable to me that anyone could look at the information I had gathered, the statistics and research, and think that it wasn't worth a try. How could any city in the twenty-first century—even a tiny one like ours—think it was acceptable to operate without a strong web presence? There was so much we could be doing that we were simply weren’t.

“Hey.” I looked back at Andrew, whose face was suddenly looking a little concerned. “You shouldn’t be taking this all so personally.”

“Who said I’m taking it personally? I just want this office to join the rest of the world in the twenty-first century. Is that too much to ask?”

“You mean you just want to
win
,” Andrew said, a smirk flirting with the corner of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t say it really has anything to do with
winning
—”

Andrew laughed. “You’re gonna try that one on me?”

“What? I’m just—”

“What did you say earlier? That’s right—
I know you better than just about anyone
.”

I frowned. It was kind of uncanny how well he could mimic my voice.

“Come on, Riley. You're the most competitive person I know. You might just be the most competitive person on this island. You really want me to believe that this is all about the good of the island’s economy? That it has
nothing
to do with winning?"

I scowled at him and reached out for his plate, pulling it towards me across the table. “If you’re going to insult me, maybe I won’t be so eager to share my lunch with you next time.”

“Eager? You call that eager?” Andrew grabbed the plate and pulled it back towards him. “Anyhow, I'm not insulting you. It's
good
you’re competitive. It's your thing.” He opened his eyes a bit wider. “Just because you look at everyone around you as competition just waiting to be crushed beneath your far-superior heels—”

“I do not.”

He just watched me, refusing to validate my argument with a response.

Okay—so maybe I was a tad bit competitive. Maybe it was because of my history as an athlete, or maybe it had started way before that, but if there was one thing that I really loved, it was the thrill of winning. A race, a pickup game of basketball, a card game, an assignment at work—it really didn't matter. If there was competition, I was in.