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“Thank you.” I was so done with this conversation.
Unfortunately, Morgan wasn’t going to let me go without another slight. “I know him better than anyone, and believe me when I say, he might have some romantic notion about being with the girl next door, but it doesn’t align with his goals. You don’t fit into his plans.”
I refrained from grabbing my gut. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had hit me where it hurt. That she had flooded me with insecurity. “Plans change.” I turned on a dime and hightailed it away from the liars. Yet, I couldn’t deny she’d hit a nerve. Perhaps she did know him better than I did. They had been lovers. Intimate in ways Brooks and I never had been.
Colette and Lorelai rushed me.
“We saw you with the hag,” Colette growled.
“Sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner, darlin’,” Lorelai drawled. “We were having a minicrisis. The caterer forgot to set out the pigs in a blanket. No Texas buffet table can be complete without them.”
“Thank you for rectifying the situation.” I was struggling to hold back my tears.
Colette wrapped an arm around me. “What’s wrong?’
I took some deep breaths in and out to stave off the tears. No way was I letting Morgan ruin the bang-up makeup job June had done on me. “Morgan,” I hissed her name, “shoved a knife in my heart, is all. No big deal.”
“Please tell me you don’t believe anything coming out of her flapper.” Lorelai narrowed her eyes at the prima donna parading her date around like he was a show dog now that more people were showing up. It was almost as if she had become the unofficial greeter.
I shrugged. “Unfortunately, she didn’t say anything I hadn’t already thought about. Brooks and I are very different.”
Colette squeezed me tight. “Honey, that’s where the beauty of most relationships comes from.”
“I suppose. Yet I wonder how I’ll know for sure that Brooks feels about me the way I’ve always felt about him. Or is that even a possibility?”
Lorelai opened her mouth to say something when the music suddenly ceased. My first thought was that there was a technical difficulty and a fire I would need to put out. Then I heard a heavenly voice that changed everything.Chapter Twenty-Eight“I apologize for interrupting.”
We all whipped our heads toward the stage. There Brooks stood, tall and maybe a little nervous, looking fine in a designer suit, holding on to the mic. My heart started to violently beat out of control. Lorelai and Colette each grabbed one of my hands.
“I know I’m not part of the program, so I promise not to take too much of your time tonight,” Brooks pledged. “However, I do need to thank Grace Cartwright for stepping in and taking over my responsibility in regard to the reunion. She’s done an amazing job, as you can all see. I think she deserves a round of applause.”
People looked my way and clapped, making me blush. Yet I stayed fixed on the man who owned my soul.
Brooks stepped toward the edge of the stage and looked out, searching for me. When he zeroed in on me, standing toward the back behind the tables that surrounded the dance floor, he flashed me a crooked grin.
I squeezed my friends’ hands, not sure what he was up to but thrilled all the same.
“Hello, Grace,” he crooned. “I see you now.” That was full of double meaning.
My stomach fluttered.
“I’m giving you fair warning that what I’m going to say next may embarrass you, but I promise that it comes from my heart and I have the best of intentions.”
I bit my lip, nervous.
Brooks took a deep breath in and out before beginning. “Grace, twenty years ago, I stood you up on a night very much like this. Looking back, it was one the biggest mistakes I ever made, but not the worst one. Failing to recognize the way you loved me, loved everyone around you, was my biggest failure. I know if we asked everyone here tonight, they would be able to tell of a time Gracie Cartwright touched their lives for good.”
Several people murmured their agreement and nodded their heads. It made my cheeks burn. This wasn’t supposed to be the Gracie Cartwright tribute night. Though I was so touched by Brooks’s words.
“Not only,” Brooks continued, “did Grace help me get elected as student body president, but she cheered me on in anything I decided to do. She cheered us all on. She was the first person to sit by the new kid or the lonely kid. And though she suffered the tragic loss of her mother during high school, she always managed to smile through her tears.”
He was making me smile through my tears now. His momma’s makeup job was toast. Thankfully, she’d used waterproof mascara.
