Page 9 of A Night to Remember
The commotion bringsMeg out of the kitchen. I know I’ve been a jerk at work, but I hope desperately that she’ll comfort rather than chastise me. Ten years my senior, Meg is like the older sister or cool aunt I never had. In high school, a few other waitresses and I worked occasionally for her nascent catering company, and we picked up like no time had passed when I came back to town and found she had bought the diner. Meg exudes a calm, no-nonsense authority, from her blunt bob to her well-cushioned flats. Business degree, successful company, restaurant, husband, kids: her life, like Allison’s, seems to be moving in a straight line. Now more than ever, mine feels like it’s lurched horribly off the rails.
Thankfully she gives me a look of concern. “You all right? Who was that?”
“Gabe Wilson,” I reply, just above a whisper.
“Ah. He must be their youngest. I was just thinking about his family. They always help organize that big Valentine’s Day dance at the country club. That’s where I met Jason, you know.” She smiles at the memory. Jason is her perfect husband, who DJs and runs a graphic design firm when he’s not wrangling their seven- and five-year-old daughters.
“Did you two used to date?” she continues.
“No!” I reply a little too emphatically. She raises her eyebrows. “No. I mean, we were talking a lot for a while, in high school, but we were just friends. Until we weren’t anymore.” I wipe my eyes and try to pull myself back together.
“Oh,” she says, picking up a pitcher of water. “Well, I don’t know what happened between you, but you both have probablychanged a lot since high school. There’s clearly still chemistry there.”
I shake my head, hard.
“I worry about you sometimes, kiddo. I feel like you work too hard.”
Is she in cahoots with Allison, or is there something about me that just reeks of desperation and sadness? Should I cut bangs? Botox my frown lines? Borrow Allison’s glitter eye shadow? I force a more cheerful expression.
“First Allison, now you!Shewas trying to convince me to take up with the local carpenter.”
Meg laughs. “Seeing how Kentwood’s carpenter has about three teeth and lost a finger to a band saw sometime in the 70s, I’d try my luck with Gabe Wilson.”
“No thanks,” I say, more seriously than I mean to.
She scrutinizes me briefly, then shrugs.
“Suit yourself! But I think a little romance would do you good,” she says as she heads off to refill waters.
5
Gabe
“How didGretchen react to the news that you were leaving town?”
My dad has never been one to mince words. He has no patience for small talk unless he’s schmoozing clients or business associates.
“I didn’t tell her,” I confess.
“So you just disappeared? Doesn’t seem very mature, Gabe.” He furrows his bushy brows at me. Natural light shines through the windows overlooking the country club golf course, reflecting off his glasses and thankfully hiding what is surely a disapproving expression in his eyes. This restaurant is his home turf.Kentwoodis his home turf. I’m feeling more and more like an enemy combatant in hostile territory, particularly after my run-in with Kayla.
“We’ve been broken up for ten months, Dad.” I think of the engagement ring that is still in an unopened envelope in mypocket. It’s the only communication I’ve had with her since I moved out of our shared apartment last spring.
“She made a mistake,” he argues. “Anyone can make a mistake. If you had been more attentive?—”
“It’sover, Dad,” I stress, struggling to control my temper. “I can’t change the past.” The frown lines around his mouth deepen, but instead of replying, he simply takes a sip of his scotch. I know he hopes Gretchen and I will get back together. He was simplydelightedwhen we announced our engagement. Not only because Gretchen is pretty and charming, but because, like us, she belongs to one of the richest families in Kentwood. All of us are descendants of the town’s fifteen founders, and over the years our ancestors established the country club, library, hospital, and pretty much everything else Kentwood has to offer. The goal of the Kentwood fifteen has always been to preserve tradition and consolidate power through intermarriage. It’s like some kind of medieval feudal system, except it’s the 21st century.
A little less than a decade ago, my older brother Adam married Lucy Bender, the dermatologists’ daughter, who is now doing her own residency in dermatology and is set to take over her mother and father’s clinic when they retire. Gretchen’s family owns the Ford dealership. Mine runs the bank. Dad was pleased as punch that both his sons had chosen to “marry well”—until, of course, my engagement fell apart.
Before I (almost literally) ran into Kayla, part of me suspected that my ongoing interest (or, okay, mild obsession) was just a manifestation of my unhappiness with Gretchen. I figured that seeing Kayla again would cure me: I’d realize that our connection was just in my imagination, that there was never anything very special about her, and I’d be free. Things didn’t turn out that way at all.
To begin with, she lookedincredible. Some of the softness of adolescence had disappeared from her face, revealing even more of her beautiful bone structure. Her figure was as perfect as ever. And though her reaction to me was deeply upsetting, it was obvious—probably to everyone—that the old current of electricity still runs strong between us. If anything, our spark seemed more charged, more dangerous, even, because we aren’t kids anymore. There are no parents or teachers to stop us from doing whatever we might want to do together.
Not that they wouldn’t try.
I decide, impulsively, to test the waters.
“I think Gretchen’s happy with the man she left me for. I should probably just move on.”