When we got back to the house, it occurred to me that I hadn’t opened the dress Chase had bought for me. I felt the hot prick of panic all over my body. What if, after all that I had gone through to get here, the dress he had chosen was completely inappropriate or, worse, didn’t fit? I could hardly pull my prom dress out of the cupboard and wear that.
The day I packed for college had been one of the happiest of my life. I had seen it as my fresh start and my ticket out. And it had been. My friend, Marissa, and I had gone together. We were so excited. A pang of guilt swept over me. When I’d vowed not to come back here, she’d been collateral damage.
I remember packing my bag with the clothes I had, my yearbook, and a few treasures from my room. My mother had been crying downstairs.
“Everyone leaves me,” she’d said.
“Mom, I can’t stay here and work in the ice-cream parlor my whole life.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not even doing this,” I’d said before storming upstairs to get my bags.
Marissa’s parents were driving us. My own mother was too caught up in her own drama to even take me to college. Jacob had left for his school the day before. Ours had been an emotional farewell of entirely different kind than the one I was going to have with my mom. Ours had been full of promises and young love. Looking back, I can see how naïve I was, but, in the moment, it had all felt so real.
I’d dragged my bags down the stairs to be met by my weeping mother.
“I’ll be all alone.”
“You’ll be fine, Mom.” I wasn’t the least bit sure either of us believed that.
“I don’t want you to go, but I am proud of you Lucy. I know I haven’t been the best mother out there, but you’re a good kid. You’re a credit to yourself.”
It was maybe the nicest thing she’d said to me in years.
Then Marissa came bounding up the stairs, and the moment was lost.
“If you’re leaving me, get it over with then…” Then my mom walked off, and there I was—again—still running, still feeling below par and trying to make sense of my place in this town, this house.
The box for the dress was from a boutique I didn’t recognize. Judging by the large white packaging, it was upscale and the price of the dress was exorbitant. I took off the lid and parted the cloud of soft white tissue. Inside was a simple red halter neck dress made of a buttery jersey material.
I held it up and it was perfect. It fell too tight above the knee, and the fabric seemed almost to float it was so light.
It was perfect. So perfect I started to cry. Why couldn’t this be real? Why was the best person I’d met, the only person who had ever done anything like this for me, going to be gone in a matter of days? Couldn’t it last?
There was a knock on the door. My mother came in.
“Are you okay?”
I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. I’d learned long ago not to let my mother see me cry. “Yep, I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“I will be, when I get through this and back to my real life.”
“Lucy, this… me… the town… we are part of your real life.”
“No, Mom, not really. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“I want to.” She sat next to me on the bed and nudged me with her shoulder. “I really do.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. It might be too hard. A girl can only bounce back so often.”
“Makes sense.” There was a long pause. She didn’t say anything more about that and neither did I. “That’s a gorgeous dress. You’re going to be the most beautiful woman there.”
“Maybe. It is certainly the most beautiful dress I’ve ever owned.”
“I’m sorry about that; that I didn’t take better care of you. I don’t even remember you going to prom.”
“You weren’t here, Mom. You’d had a date.”
She shook her head. “I really am sorry. I know I did stuff, and I don’t even remember half of it. Not that that is any excuse.”
“Lucky you.” Unlucky me because, being here brought it all back and then some.” Sometimes I wish I could forget most of it.”
“Yeah.” She paused seemingly to stop herself from saying anything else. “I like Chase. He’s a good guy.”
“Maybe too good I think.”
“Is there such a thing?” “If you can’t keep them, then yes.”
“Why can’t you keep him?” she asked.
“Some things are not meant to be. You know that better than anyone, surely.”
“And some things are.” She stood to go. “We need to talk about all this stuff—the past, the future—when you’re ready.”
“Not now,” I said.
Now I needed to steel myself to face other parts of my past.
Chapter 15
Nothing—and I mean not a damn thing—had changed about the high school auditorium. I was pretty sure if I looked backstage, there would still be my name carved in a heart saying Lucy and Jacob 4-ever.
“I’m feeling like a time traveler,” I said to Chase, holding his hand extra tight.
“Then let’s prepare for take-off. Patty is incoming. I repeat, Patty is incoming,” he said, his hand resting in the small of my back. “Just remember you are the most beautiful woman in the room.”
I looked up at him and the look he gave me was pure lust. He looked so and some in his black suit it made it hard for a moment for me to focus on why we were there.
I would have thought Patty would have had something better to do than hunt me down at the first opportunity and ruin my moment with Chase, but apparently not. I took a moment to size her up. She was wearing a tight black dress that showed a little too much thigh. She was trying very, very hard to look like she still had it going on, in an eighteen-year-old hot-girl way, not in an I-–had-two-kids way. She was flanked by Marissa Masters and Tori Stephonovik, two more members of the gang we’d been back in the day. Tori had always been Patty’s sycophant and Marissa and I had been off doing our thing. I felt another pang of guilt that I hadn’t stayed in touch with her. I’d burned a lot of bridges.
“Lucy, I simply had to bring the girls over so they could meet Chase. We were all so thrilled to hear you’d finally met someone!”
Right. Air-kisses and fake hugs rained down on me. Except for Marissa, whose squeeze felt real.
“So how did you two meet?” Tori asked. She was eyeing Chase like he was a burger and she hadn’t eaten in years. I happened to know she was married to a local guy who taught at the middle school.
“Mutual friends,” Chase said. “My Yale roommate married one of Lucy’s best friends. It was love at first sight. Well, not for Lucy, but for me.”
“Really? That’s so romantic,” sighed Marissa. Marissa was the sweetest of the bunch amongst my old school friends.
“So, Marissa, what do you do?” Chase asked.
A blush crept up her face. I remembered she’d always been like that when boys talked to her. Poor thing clearly hadn’t out grown it. “I’m the town librarian.”
“That’s so great Marissa. You always wanted that job,” I knew I was gushing.
“I know. Remember Mrs. Davis? When she retired to Florida, I got her job.”
“Marissa is still single,” Patty said interrupting and changing the subject from her work to her relationship states. As if that meant having her dream job as the town librarian had less value…
What a cow. I was embarrassed for Marissa, but maybe even more so for Patty.
“I can’t believe that,” Chase said. “The men in this place must be blind. Or maybe there are no good men in this place. You’ll have to come visit us. Boston won’t know what hits it when a sexy librarian like you comes to town. You know lots of men have a thing for librarians.”
The blush didn’t vanish one bit and Marissa was completely speechless, but chalk up one for Chase for making her feel better.
“Well we need to go check on the catering,” Patty
said, turning on her heel and expecting them to follow.
“I’m going to stay here a minute and talk to Lucy. I’ll catch up in a bit,” Marissa said.
Patty’s face fell, but she kept going.
“I’m so happy to see you.” Marissa squeezed my hands. “I mean, I know why you haven’t been back. I feel so bad. I should have made more of an effort to keep in touch, though.”
“Me, too. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll let you girls catch up. I’ll go find the drinks.”
We both watched Chase cross the auditorium and hit the bar.
“Ohmygod, he is so cute, Lucy.”
“He is.” I didn’t want to lie to Marissa any more than was necessary.
“Patty totally thought you wouldn’t show, or he wouldn’t, so I’m so glad you proved her wrong. “
“Yes well I guess Patty isn’t always right is she? Enough about me tell me about you? I’ve missed so much.”
Marissa launched into the abridged version of the last eight years of her life. It involved going to college—which I was there for—and working at the library and living at home with her elderly folks because they needed looking after and all her siblings were married.
“This reunion has proved to me that I need to get out on my own, though. I’m looking at what other people have achieved and it’s time,” she said.
“You’ve got your dream job. That’s more than a lot of people can say. And you’re doing a really lovely thing for your folks.”
I was looking at Chase chatting to the Kandinsky brothers, both of whom I had worked with on the school newspaper and yearbook committee. Whatever Chase was saying to them, they were completely engrossed.
“Those Kandinsky boys scrub up well,” I said to Marissa.
“Yeah, Mike runs the paper and Todd is a graphic designer. He runs a small firm from here in town. Both single.”
Apparently everyone’s status was up for comment.
“They’re cute.” I hadn’t really been aware of their cute factor back in the day. I’d started dating Jacob at fifteen and had had eyes only for him.
“Yeah, but not my type. Nor am I their type.” Given that they were identical twins, she could make a blanket statement like that. “Pity.”
Still I wasn’t sure I was buying it. There was more to the story than she was telling me.
“So what is your type?”
“That’s the problem, I don’t really know,” she said, but the way she was eyeing Mike I thought maybe she knew exactly.
“Yep, that is a problem. We’ll have to figure it out. Let’s go see if we can spot anyone who is.”
The reunion was a whole lot more fun than I expected. Then again, everything I did with Chase was a lot of fun. He was great company and he made life seem easier. For a while, I forgot about Patty and Jacob and the fact I’d invented a fake boyfriend in the first place, and just enjoyed the evening and caught up with a lot of people I’d spent my childhood with.
Chase had been right. There were plenty of people who had been eager to see me and had wondered what happened to me. Decent people who I had cut from my life so I wouldn’t have to deal with my broken heart.
But then the dancing started and Jacob asked me to dance.
“For old times’ sake.” He looked at me with those big blue eyes and what could I do?
I looked at Chase whose face clouded briefly but then he said, “You kids have fun.”
We were sitting a table with Marissa, the Kandinsky brothers, Laura Tillman and her husband Dane, the local vet.
It was a slow song, one I didn’t recognize. Certainly not one of significance for Jacob and me. It felt strange to have his arms around me again. It was familiar though his waist had thickened, and I’d grown used to looking up into Chase’s eyes rather than straight in to Jacob’s.
“Having fun?” he asked.
“I am. It’s nice to catch up with everyone. It’s weird how many people have stayed or come back to town Ranger’s Hollow”
“Not everyone was in such a rush to escape.”
“Not everyone had a good reason to,” I replied, pointedly.
“I wanted to apologize.” His feet almost came to a complete full stop.
“For marrying Patty? I don’t think she’d be too thrilled to hear that.”
He shook his head. “No, for, well… not handling it better.”
“Would that be the bit where you forgot to break up with me, the bit where you chose to date my good friend, or the bit where you let me find out by making out on Main Street when you knew I’d see?”
His feet did stop. We weren’t dancing anymore. “Well, when you put it like that…”
“How else would you put it, Jacob?” Was he looking to apologize or for a get-out-of-jail-free card?
His feet started moving again. “I guess not so bluntly. Anyway, I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said, because the truth was, my being hurt wasn’t the issue. “You humiliated me. You embarrassed me, and you embarrassed yourself as well, but mainly you acted as if I meant nothing to you. Nothing, period.”
“I… I didn’t—”
“Yeah, you did.”
The song ended and another late nineties hit began His eyes searched mine. “I guess… I’m sorry. I was young and stupid.”
“And gutless.” I sighed. “It doesn’t matter. You wanted to stay in this town, marry a girl who was socially acceptable, and make your mother happy. And you did that. Actually, you did me a huge favor because you set me free. I didn’t have to stay here and feel second best. I got to go out into the world and show everyone I’m worthy.”
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I didn’t have to turn to know it was Chase. Even if Jacob’s expression hadn’t have given it away, I would have known. “May I cut in?”
Jacob slunk away. I hoped we were done, but done-for-now would do.
“So, do we have closure?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a small-minded jerk. You dodged a bullet.”
“Yep, and I just told him that.”
“That’s my girl. And that proves why this marriage is going to be so great. We’re so in sync.” He smiled down at me.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, and here’s another example of that synchronicity, I really want to kiss you and you really want me to.”
“I do?”
He nodded and leaned down to give me as racy and heart-stopping a kiss as was appropriate at a school reunion. He was right; I did want him to do that. I was really going to miss that when we got back to Boston and he wasn’t my fake fiancé anymore. We danced to a couple of songs and then drifted back to the table. I didn’t know where Jacob had gone, but I could feel Patty’s gaze on me, and I had a feeling we were in for discussion I really didn’t feel like having.
When she came over and pulled up a chair at the table, I was as ready as I ever would be to face down the demon.
“So when is the wedding, you two?” she asked.
“We haven’t set a date yet,” I said. “It depends on work for both of us. We’ve got a lot going on.”
The expression on her face said she wasn’t buying it.
“However, we do know where we’re getting married.” Chase interjected.
Oh really? And where did he think this wedding was going to take place?
“My place in Marblehead. It’s on the water so we’ll have the ceremony outside. Obviously, it needs to be a summer wedding for that to work.”
The way he said my place, it sounded like we were have a modest backyard affair. And I knew he knew it.
“Jacob and I had a big wedding up at the Prior Estate. Do you remember it, Lucy?”
She knew damn well I did. But now that I thought about it, Chase’s house was bigger than the Prior Estate. Wouldn’t she just love to know that?
And wouldn’t I love to tell her…
“We want to do it at home because it’s mor
e personal and we have a history there.” Chase interlaced his fingers with mine right there on the table for everyone to see. “Don’t we, honey?”
“We sure do.” I wish someone would get me a drink so I could guzzle it down and make Patty disappear but I wasn’t letting Chase go for anything.
“Plus you can keep the costs down and keep it small.” Patty wasn’t letting it go.
Too bad she didn’t know who Chase was or she would have shut her trap. She didn’t know he could buy and sell this whole town. No, she thought he was a small time journalist, and to her, I was still a nobody. I had a feeling Chase was about to adjust her thinking.
Instead, he took a different approach. “How about we dance, Patty?”
“Um… sure.” She didn’t understand it was a metaphorical as well as an actual dance, but I figured she would soon enough. That was another great thing about Chase: he wasn’t going to make her feel bad in public, but he was going to make it very clear that neither of us was marrying down.
Mike Kowalski leaned over. “Not worried about her stealing this one?”
“Ohmygod, you’re such a jerk!” Marissa gave him a slap on the arm.
I had to laugh. Chase wasn’t actually my boyfriend, but if he was, there was nothing Patty or anyone else could do to steal him.
“Not so much, Mike, but thanks for bringing that up. I feel so much better.”
“Hey, it’s the elephant in the room. Someone might as well say something to break the ice.”
“That tact, right there; that’s why you’re single,” Marissa was clearly annoyed with him, her dark eyes narrowed as she spoke. “What’s your excuse?” he asked.
“High standards.” She sniffed and turned away.
There was definitely some chemistry between those two.
“So does that mean you’ll consider dancing with me? If I’m up to those standards of yours, that is?”
“Well, since you asked nicely…” She let him lead her to the dance floor.
I watched Patty’s face as the reality that I was engaged to one of Massachusetts’ most eligible bachelors registered. It didn’t give me the satisfaction I’d hoped it would.
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