When Girlfriends Find Love Read online

  Table of Contents

  When Girlfriends Find Love

  Also By Savannah Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  A Q&A with Author Savannah Page

  About the Author

  When Girlfriends

  Find Love

  a novel by

  Savannah Page

  Also by Savannah Page

  When Girlfriends Let Go

  When Girlfriends Take Chances

  When Girlfriends Chase Dreams

  When Girlfriends Make Choices

  When Girlfriends Step Up

  When Girlfriends Break Hearts

  When Girlfriends Collection, Books 1-3

  Bumped to Berlin

  When Girlfriends Find Love

  Copyright © 2014, Savannah Page

  ISBN-13: 978-1499242294

  ISBN-10: 1499242298

  Cover Design by Pearls and Pages

  All rights reserved.

  License Notes

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, incidents, and places portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be used, reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, or stored in any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Information about the author and her upcoming books can be found online at www.savannahpage.com

  For my beta readers, my cheerleaders, my girlfriends, Anne, Erin, and Ginger.

  Thank you for your help with this collection. Not just as beta readers, not just as cheerleaders, but as inspiration for what true friendship among women is all about.

  “Friendship is an automatic action. Friendship is innocent, unconscious, outgoing, pure, deep-feeling, with depth. So therefore no one can explain why one person is a friend to another. […] Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” —Muhammad Ali

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to my dear family and friends for your support. Writing this collection has been an adventure, and I’m so grateful you’ve been here, cheering, encouraging, and loving me, throughout the entire process.

  Thank you to Ginger, a born beta reader and fantastic friend, for your thoughts, tips, and French expertise with this novel. Merci beaucoup.

  Many sincere thanks to my editor, Liam Carnahan, for your help throughout the When Girlfriends ride. It’s been a fantastic experience.

  Thank you to my readers and fans for your support. It means so very, very much to me.

  And the biggest thanks of them all to my husband, whose love and support never cease to amaze me. You’re a fabulous husband, my best friend, and a fine book cover artist. Ich liebe dich, Christian.

  Prologue

  Where there’s a will, there’s a way, so the lovely little adage goes.

  And when you’re obsessive-compulsive, insisting all Is be dotted, all Ts be crossed, that will gets to be rather all-consuming, that way a do-or-die kind of zone. This adage serves brilliantly as the control-aholic’s personal motto. I know this because I, Sophie Wharton, am one of those obsessive-compulsive, control-aholic kind of women. This adage is my personal motto. I believe that when I’m focused, organized, determined, work hard, and stay in control, I can power through just about anything.

  All right, sometimes the obstacles can be a bit daunting, but nevertheless if you don’t move forward you’re only going to fall behind. Even if I stumble about (and I do, oh dear heavens I do), I eventually gather my nerve, I draw out a game plan (color-coded, naturally), and I find a way to push past and press on! I like calling the shots, pulling the strings, taking the reigns, what have you. Where there’s a will, there’s a way…and when I’m in charge I can make sure things are headed in the right way.

  Well…that’s the intention, anyhow.

  Sometimes my determination and need for control might be interpreted as obstinacy, maybe even imprudence, especially when life likes to turn down a road I did not intend. Rather than having headstrong persistence, it’s foolish chasing of something that I should just let be. But that line can be blurry. Really blurry.

  When do you decide to push on and take control? And when do you realize that no matter how much you tug and yank, your stubborn side screaming and protesting, this one’s just not up to you? Life’s heading down that unintended road whether you like it or not. Figuring out that blurry line has been a lifelong battle of mine.

  I like to think that as the years pass by and the experiences mount, I’m getting a better handle of learning when to take control and when to let go. Sometimes there are hurdles to overcome, sometimes detours are made. I can accept that.

  But when it comes to one particular hurdle, however, I can neither take control nor concede defeat. I feel like I’m at an impasse. The devastating thing is that this one hurdle is theoretically so simple it’s really quite humiliating someone as determined as I can’t nail it down. People all over the globe can find it. It can be found at any time, anywhere, by anyone—even by the most unlikely of suspects. It’s been happening for centuries, in all languages, spanning continents. There’s no need for extensive scientific studies to make it happen, nor does someone have to be a Nobel Prize winner or Olympian to be eligible to participate. It’s fairly standard stuff, so surely my request isn’t akin to moving mountains!

  It’s called love. Heard of it? Yeah, well, my experience with it is absolutely, positively, full-on-ashamedly pitiful. Taking control of my love life—finding a real and true and lasting love—is the most difficult, the most frustrating, and the most impossible thing I’ve, well, ye
t to do.

  True love is a big, scary, voodoo phrase that packs a bigger punch than taking an essay-style college exam about the historical importance of the Battle of Waterloo (which I spent much too much time studying for my junior year at the University of Washington, all for a mere five percentage points). True love is more challenging than any Parsva Bakasana side crane yoga pose (which I can manage only one out of five times, despite my constant practice). True love is definitely more difficult than any Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte with the smoothest of Chantilly crème (which I finally perfected after approximately two dozen belly-aching but nevertheless scrumptious attempts).

  True love seems to be the kind of thing that no matter how persistent or how obstinate you are, it will only come when it’s good and ready. No amount of alphabetizing or color-coding is going to help you out. You have no control whatsoever. At least, that’s how it is in my experience as a twenty-eight-year-old and still-single woman with an embarrassing romantic track record.

  I mean, it’s not like I’m not up to the challenge. I love a good challenge! I thrive on the opportunity to prove that I can do something others think I can’t, and to even prove to myself that I can do something I didn’t think possible.

  For example, I own my own business. My quaint café, The Cup and the Cake, has been a challenge (a rewarding one)—the type of endeavor so many have tried and failed. I’m a year-and-a-half in and doing really well. If I can do that, surely I can find true love, right?

  Or take Claire! If I can deal with having had my best friend, my sister, my ultimate partner in crime, Claire Whitley, suddenly pick up and move from Seattle to Spokane (yes, I’m still a bit sore over it), I can find true love, can’t I?

  The thing is, it’s not like I haven’t been in love before. I have. But was it the real, over-the-moon, everlasting, forever and ever, true kind of love? I think that answer’s obvious judging by the single bath towel on the rack, the ease at which I control the TV remote, the inches-thick stack of Cooking-for-One cookbooks on my shelves… I could go on forever.

  My experience of being in love may not have been in the everlasting realm, but it was still love. And having had it before, I like to think those experiences serve as proof that it is possible that I can find love, yet again. Maybe I can even snatch up that over-the-moon, true style of love. Hey, a girl can dream.

  Just as I begin to feel all optimistic about the idea of meeting my true match, I’m reminded that while I’ve been in love before, those experiences were failed loves. If all I’ve ever had are failed loves, what makes me think I’ll figure it out next time around?

  But don’t assume those failed loves could have been saved or even, by the grace of God or some higher power, morphed into something salvageable.

  See, the thing with those past relationships is that there was never truly anything worth having or keeping. Nothing ever came to a lasting and palpable kind of love. They all kind of fizzled in some way, shape, or form. Every relationship I’ve ever had eventually met its expiry date and, undeniably and unavoidably, cast a bit of a pallor on the next one. Pity the fool who comes after the preceding fool.

  Take my first love in high school, Joe. Or was it Jake? Jason? Whatever. It doesn’t matter. In high school, and especially freshman year, everything’s new and slightly intimidating, yet also exhilarating. For many girls this is the year they encounter their first hard-core-crush-gone-first-relationship, even first love. That two- or three-month-long “relationship” with Jim was exciting, nerve-racking, even a twinge forbidden. It’s that first time where you, blushing a deep crimson, tell your parents that you want them to take you to the movie theater and not accompany you, and not because you’re meeting with your best girlfriends, planning to get drunk on root beer and high on bags of treats from the Candy Factory (items that will eventually become contraband when you hit sophomore year and learn that your metabolism is no longer what it was in junior high). You want who you now refer to as your “annoying ‘rents” to drop you off at the theater as discreetly as possible (a.k.a. three blocks away). You’re going on a date, and pulling up in a mini van with Mom behind the wheel does not have “date” written all over it. (“Disaster” or “embarrassment,” yes.) Then you dash off to your date, still flushing crimson and your nerves gone all haywire, and you spend a thrilling ninety minutes cuddling with your new beaux as you watch whatever PG-13 movie’s been getting a lot of hype at school, sharing a sweet and forbidden-feeling kiss at all the romantic (or boring) scenes.

  That first “relationship,” and I guess you could call “first love,” is both frightening and beautiful in all its newness. You imagine you’ll make the Homecoming court, you’ll go to college together, and then you’ll get married soon after graduation; you’re so lucky to have found your better half so soon in life! You even see the future children, the puppy, the ideal life resplendent in all its picture-perfectness.

  You’ll have your dream job, make so much money you and your dream man don’t really need your dream jobs, but Ken and Barbie have to do something, right? You’ll never have any of those spats about finances or boring discussions about the front yard hedges or how carrots better complement the stew than snow peas, like your parents do. Life will be perfect, and you’ll think yourself so lucky that you didn’t end up like one of “those other girls” in high school who never lucked out in finding, falling in love with, and marrying their High School Sweetheart.

  Of course, as with most all first loves, that cheerful glow begins to dim. It starts when Joe or Jack or Jimmy blows off your romantic roller blade date to play the latest Nintendo game with his buddies. Then he decides that Becky from Geometry, who plays the guitar—“How awesome is that?!”—has a few cool points you obviously lack. Before you know it, Jake’s choosing to skip out on the spring dance because he doesn’t want to pay the fifteen dollars to go (instead, you find out through a friend of a friend of a friend that he’s saving to go to Magic Mountain in the summer…and, naturally, you’re not invited).

  When all that happens, eventually the relationship dies and you’re left with that kind of tainting of the male species that, unfortunately, carries over to the next relationship, and the next, and the next. You get the picture. And it escalates, too, kind of towering up, one pleat over another, like the never-ending thin flakes of a croissant (but not nearly as appealing).

  The memories of and lessons learned from your time with Joe are carried with you as you date the second baseman sophomore year in high school, then on to the nerd with a golden heart and killer smile who sits in the back of English Lit class, daydreaming about the two of you as Catherine and Heathcliff. The failures there and hard-learned lessons then all pack themselves up nicely in a piece of luggage, and you eventually find yourself lugging that ever-increasing baggage with you from one Billy, Bob, Joe, Jack, and Jake to the next as you enter college.

  It’s this very large baggage—all of these “once burned, twice learned” moments—that really only make it more difficult to find true love. How will you ever be able to see all of the charming qualities of Man G when Men A through F have taught you that some of those charming qualities are false, disguised, or just not enough?

  I’ve tried not checking the baggage at all—boarding the Flight of Love, if you will, with nothing but a carry-on. But that never works for the long haul. You can forgive and move on, but forget? Never. That baggage always finds a way to creep on board.

  You can do the opposite and say “all aboard!” to that baggage, ready to put it out there and take a chance on another love. You just better hope and pray that Man G has none of the discouraging qualities of Men A through F, otherwise that weighty baggage is going to get a bit weightier.

  But even in my best efforts to actively seek love and find new relationships, choosing to bring aboard the inhibiting, heavy baggage, I still find myself nowhere closer to a true and meaningful love. No matter which approach I take, true love just is not on the café’s menu. “A lemon mer
ingue cupcake with a double shot dry capp, please, but hold the cutesy foam heart, thank you very much.”

  When all else fails, a girl might enter into a relationship with no care for the past and perhaps no expectations for the future. Been there, done that. She can kind of, sort of, well, definitely find herself in a situation that, while fun at first, eventually turns out to be yet another piece of rotten baggage. It’s the farthest thing from true love, in fact—it’s called, The Fling.

  Like I said, I’ve been in love, I’ve been in relationships—some more serious than others, some just those fun and temporary flings. True love’s another story. It’s a story that’s yet to be told for me. Although, I do try to keep my chin up that it will turn around at some point. After all, I do love a good challenge, and I haven’t tossed in the towel quite yet on that part of life. Every woman’s got to have her love story, whether conventional or something out of left field.

  One of my good friends, Emily Saunders, is always telling me to be open-minded, that sometimes an opportunity can be there, but for whatever reason you can’t quite see it. She says sometimes I just might have to set aside my excuses, even when I’m convinced a certain guy just won’t work out.

  “You can’t taste the cupcakes if the shop’s always closed,” my friend Jackie Kittredge more colorfully tells me. To which I quickly reply, “If the shop’s closed at least nothing will get stolen…or ruined…or maybe tasted and spat out.” I mean, the shop can be closed and a determined cupcake-lover could still barge through all barriers and declare his undying love for me—erm, cupcakes—right? That’s not too fantastical, now is it?

  I suppose that’d be an unconventional love story—one coming out of left field. I’m the woman who isn’t even a candidate for a conventional love story, so putting my hopes in that kind of an imaginative basket? Please! I’m the one who splits her time between the dugout and striking out.