“Close, just a few notches less severe in the shock-and-awe department. Yesterday’s look was three years ago’s tamer version.”
When we made it to the steps leading down into the yard, Boone and I stopped and surveyed the scene before us. Neither of us seemed in a hurry to throw ourselves to the sharks. We’d played the chum role long enough yesterday, and the whole apex of predators trailing us with bloodlust in their eyes had gotten old.
Boone sighed before looking at me in a way that suggested he was saying, You first.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him along, taking that first step down together.
“So you’re hoping to rid the world of its need for oil?” Boone’s voice was a bit louder than necessary, no doubt because he wanted every one of the oil-rich breakfasters to hear.
“I just want to save the polar bears. That’s all.” I waved at Avalee, who was camped out in a chair with a pair of dark glasses propped on her nose and an expression that indicated she was regretting certain aspects of last night.
She managed a wave back, but it was a short one before she grabbed her glass of ice water and lifted it to her temple. When I took a look at the rest of the half dozen tables dotted around my parents’ backyard, it looked like a good portion of the breakfasters were in the same shape as Avalee. I was glad I’d stuck with Sprite and grenadine.
“Enough about mine, I want to know about your business,” I said as we headed for the tables laid out with most of my favorite breakfast foods, starting with sticky buns and ending with a chocolate fountain. “I’m clearly the underachiever between the two of us when you consider I set out to save the polar bears while your goal was to save the children of the world.”
Boone handed me a plate when we made it to the start of the buffet. From a couple of tables back, I spotted my parents from the corners of my eyes. They looked like they were in the middle of one of those spoken-under-their-breaths, frozen-expression type of arguments. Probably having something to do with Boone and me.
“Yeah, but unlike mine, your business is still in business and doing so well you’re expanding. Mine barely managed to stay in business for two years, and during those years, there was never a month where it did well bottom-line wise.” Boone waved me in front of him to go first.
“Why a kids’ center?” I asked as I went straight for the trays of pastries. I’d eaten more than my fair share of cage-free poached eggs with arugula for breakfast back in California. “I mean, I know you’re a good guy and all and want to do your part to save the world without anyone knowing you give a damn about it”—I shot him a knowing look as I slid a sticky bun onto his plate, then one onto mine—“but I could have seen you opening at least fifty different kinds of businesses before I would have guessed a kids’ center.”
Boone paused in the middle of the buffet line, staring at the fruit salad with a look that redefined pensive. “When you grow up seeing what happens to kids like my sister, and what could have happened to me, all because we drew the short straw in life and wound up with a negligent mom and a TBD dad, you see things a bit differently. I guess I wanted a place where the Wren Cavanaughs of the world could find refuge. Even if it was only for a few hours at a time.” He stopped staring at the fruit salad and turned to me, an entire ocean of emotion churning on his face. “You know?”
I moved closer to him and pressed a hand into his chest. I hadn’t meant to touch him and I hadn’t meant to touch him right where his heart resided, but I had. It had been an instinctive reaction.
“I know,” I replied with a small smile, curling my fingers into his chest. I should have dropped my hand and walked away. I couldn’t do either.
Boone was doing a better job of playing things off than I was, but I could tell he was rattled by the way he couldn’t seem to look me in the eyes. “Just look at us. A couple of entrepreneurs. Who would believe it?” He scooped a heap of fruit salad onto his plate, which made it even more apparent just how ruffled he was. Boone had never been a fruit fan—something about it being too sweet for his tastes. “At least who would have believed it from me? I was unofficially voted least likely to succeed back in high school.”
I laughed as we wound down the tables, eyeing the tray of petit fours at the end, when someone came up behind us.
“It wasn’t unofficial. We actually held a vote.” Ford’s Kennedy smile was painted in place this morning. The rest of him from the neck down looked just as polished.
I counted to three in my head, reminding myself Ford and I had made some progress last night in the moving-on department. He was going to be my brother-in-law in a few days, and it would be nice to start out on the right foot. “Well, I guess you and your band of merry men were wrong about Boone, because look at him now.” I waved the silver petit four tongs at Boone, peaking an eyebrow. “A business owner.”
Ford meandered closer, clutching an empty plate. Clearly he hadn’t jumped in line for the food. “His business went out of business. Therefore I’d say his ‘unofficial’ title is pretty damn poetic.”
“Ford,” I snapped, my grip tightening around the tongs like it was his neck.
“It’s okay, Clara. He isn’t dishing out anything I haven’t been dished before,” Boone said before turning toward Ford. “In fact, I kind of missed all that attention you gave me back in high school. I was starting to wonder if you’d moved past your fascination with me, but clearly”—he circled his finger at Ford’s face, which was pinched together into folds of contempt—“you haven’t.”
Boone turned his back on Ford and let me pile a few petit fours on his plate. If fruit was too sweet for him, he would probably hate those, but he didn’t say no. When Ford ambled up behind us again, with an expression that told me he was only getting started, I couldn’t steer Boone away to one of the empty tables on the perimeter fast enough.
“People ever find it strange a single grown man was running a non-profit kids’ center?” Ford said, matching our pace as Boone and I moved away from the food tables.
I held the back of Boone’s arm, steering him toward an empty table. I felt it stiffen, and just when I thought he was going to break to a stop and take a swing in Ford’s direction, he kept moving.
“What are you implying?” Boone said stiffly, dropping his plate on the table when we paused behind a couple of empty chairs.
Ford came around the other side of the table, just smart enough to realize that at this point in his goading-Boone-Cavanaugh agenda, he wanted something big and solid between him and Boone. “Nothing,” he said with a lazy shrug. “Just that with the way your sister’s let every cock in town take a dip and you prefer to spend your days playing with minors . . . something had to have gone down in that trailer of your mama’s.”
A gasp rushed out of me while beside me, Boone became a statue. One that could just as easily have been at peace on the inside as he could have been about to explode.
Going with the theme of this visit home so far—unthinking—I snatched an extra ripe strawberry from Boone’s plate and hurled it across the table.
It landed square in the center of Ford’s forehead. I’d been aiming for his mouth, but his forehead worked. Especially when the juice from it dripped down the sides of his nose, and when the strawberry fell, it managed to leave a few blobs of red behind on his sky-blue polo.
“What the hell was that for, Clara Belle?” Ford grabbed a white linen napkin from the table and rubbed at his crotch, where the strawberry had last touched before falling to the grass.
“Solid throw.” Boone nudged me, his voice as even as his expression, despite what Ford had just said. “Nice aim.”
“Why thank you,” I replied, trying not to laugh as Ford’s scrubbing efforts only smeared the strawberry juice, making even more of a stain.
“Just because you’re running around with an animal doesn’t mean you have to start behaving like one, Clara Belle.” Ford wiped his forehead with the napkin, streaking strawberry juice across his eyebrows more than actuall
y removing it.
“And if you don’t have anything nice to say, then brace yourself for flying fruit.” I crossed my arms. I felt the seam across my back pulling, so close to ripping open I could practically feel cool air trickling in.
Ford threw the napkin on the table and shook his head at me.
“You better stop shaking your head like that at her, or I will remove it from the rest of your body.” Boone didn’t blink as he stared down Ford.
“Oh, give it a rest, Cavanaugh.” Ford snorted, but his head stopped shaking. “You got the girl in the end. Clearly.” He made it a point to look between us a few times, not trying to disguise his disgust. “But it wasn’t because you beat me. It was because I bowed out. I decided to stop wasting my time chasing one sister and moved on to a different one. One who’s a little more discerning. One who didn’t spread her legs for any piece of trash that came her way.”
Before Boone could make it a step in Ford’s direction, another strawberry splattered across Ford’s face, exploding on his cheek and splashing juice all the way up his temple and down his neck. Boone froze in the middle of his journey around the table, giving me a chance to grab his hand and pull him back toward me.
“Goddammit, Clara Belle.” Ford wiped at the strawberry carnage, blinking at me in disbelief.
“You still weren’t saying anything nice. I thought you would have learned your lesson from the first one, but clearly not.” When Boone tugged against me, I tightened my grip on his hand until it hurt. I wasn’t going to let him take a swing at Ford in the name of “defending my honor.” My honor was just fine, no matter what Ford wanted to spew this morning.
“Yeah, but you’re out of strawberries now.” Ford settled his hands on his hips.
“And I wouldn’t underestimate the power of pineapple.” I pinched a slice of it from Boone’s plate and lifted it. “Especially when the spiny, prickly outside hasn’t been removed.”
Ford didn’t look all that impressed by my pineapple threat, but it looked like he was just about to back away—and hopefully go in search of a change of clothes—when a familiar shriek sounded from a couple tables over. Charlotte had mastered the art of shrieking as a child, and she’d really perfected it in her teens.
As she charged toward Ford, appraising him like he was the center of a crime scene, she didn’t miss what I was clutching. “Nice, Clara Belle. Way to really set the tone of the day. How immature can you be?”
“Only as immature as the things your fiancé was saying,” I snapped back, dropping the pineapple slice when it became clear Ford was done.
Charlotte threw me a nasty look as she grabbed another cloth napkin, dipped it in one of the water glasses circling the table, and went to work rubbing his crotch. “God, Clara Belle, is there anything else you’re planning to sabotage when it comes to my wedding?” She was rubbing so forcefully at Ford’s crotch, his face started to crease with discomfort. “You know, just so I can mentally prepare myself.”
“I’m not trying to sabotage anything,” I said, realizing people were starting to notice what was going on at our table. My mom wasn’t flying over here like sweet tea was in danger of being outlawed, so at least my parents hadn’t noticed. Yet.
Charlotte huffed. “Since when?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Now it felt more like Boone was the one holding me back, keeping me in place beside him.
Charlotte stopped scrubbing at Ford’s crotch long enough to fire a look at me. “Just that you’re one of the most selfish, self-absorbed people I’ve ever met. You figure out some way to throw a fit or make a scene or create a crisis if you aren’t getting someone or everyone’s full attention all of the time.”
That was such a mouthful, it took me a few moments to take in everything she’d just said. It took twice as long to figure out if she was being serious. When I determined, based upon the look on her face, that she was, I felt my blood heat.
“I think who you meant to say that to was yourself,” I said, my voice shaking.
“No, I didn’t.”
My mouth fell open. “When it comes to selfish, you’ve got the market cornered.” When she fired off another huff of disbelief, wetting the napkin again before going to work on Ford’s face, I added, “Huff at me again. It won’t change the fact that you were the sister fucking your sister’s boyfriend for God knows how long behind her back.” I hadn’t meant for my voice to carry that way, but I couldn’t control it. “So huff the hell at that!”
Boone glanced at me, but instead of gaping at me as Charlotte and Ford were, his look was more subtle. More one of him having my back. He gave me a quick wink.
Her rubbing was only making the stains on his shirt worse, so Charlotte threw the napkin on the table. Her shoulders slumped for a moment, like she was giving up, then her eyes dropped to the plate I was still clutching. “I’m done fighting with you for one day, Clara Belle. So why don’t you just gobble up a few more sticky buns and see if you can get that dress another size too small. The seamstress will already have to let it out. Might as well take advantage and have her let it all the way out.” Charlotte rounded her arms out around her pencil-thin frame, making it no secret of what she was getting at.
My appetite was gone. For food and for a fight.
Dropping my plate on the table beside Boone’s, I watched her and Ford whisk away into the house. I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to apologize, if for nothing else, for ruining her morning. But the words wouldn’t form.
I knew people were staring at me. I knew they were bobbing their heads, understanding just why I’d been labeled the black sheep of the family. After convincing myself for all of these years that my family was the enemy, I was starting to wonder if I was just as much their enemy. Was I selfish? Was I self-absorbed?
I’d just launched two pieces of fruit at my sister’s fiancé because he’d been running his mouth—like Ford always had and always would. I’d just announced to whoever hadn’t known that she’d been quote-end-quote “fucking” Ford while we’d still been together. All in all, I’d made a total disaster of what no doubt could have been a perfectly pleasant breakfast.
Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut and accept that people were the way they were and no amount of shouting or fruit-hurling would change that? Why couldn’t I stop fixating on other’s mistakes instead of spending a little more time reflecting on my own?
And why in the hell, after being content to play oblivious to all of those deeply profound questions, was I getting around to asking them while I was smack in the middle of my own personal hell and bribing my ex-boyfriend to pose as my current one—an ex-boyfriend I had clearly not moved on from given the feelings I’d felt stirring the past couple of days?
The weight of my thoughts became too heavy for me to keep standing. Pulling my chair out, I collapsed into it. The sound of a sharp rip rang out right before a rush of cool air cascaded across my back.
“Clara . . .” Boone said quietly over my shoulder. The sound of his button snaps ripping open followed.
“I know, Boone,” I said as I felt his shirt fall into place around me. “I’m falling apart.”
“Can you breathe now?” Boone asked as we stepped out of the bridal shop later that morning.
I smiled at my cotton sundress. My flowy, breathable sundress. I was free.
Then I tried to exhale.
“I feel better now at least,” I said, pausing on the sidewalk and staring at the blue sky. “And I don’t have to worry about my internal organs liquefying from being compressed so tightly. So there’s that.”
Boone shouldered up beside me and looked at the sky with me. “There’s that.”
The people passing us on the sidewalk kept looking up as they passed by, trying to figure out what had enraptured the two of us. Unless they were as moved by the hue of the sky or the wispy clouds as I was, they would wind up disappointed.
After Boone had whisked me away from the disaster known as breakfast, take two,
he’d “borrowed” one of my dad’s cars and driven me to the bridal shop. Our faces had been smashed against the glass door ten minutes before they opened, and Boone had rapped on it when they were thirty seconds late opening.
A half hour and a few hundred sighs later, the seamstress had me free of The Thing. It probably would have taken a couple more hours if I hadn’t accidently ripped the back open a good foot and a half. Once she’d unstitched me from the rest of it, she held the pieces of the dress like it was a dead animal and asked me what I wanted to do with it. I told her I’d let her know tomorrow, because today I didn’t trust myself to answer with anything short of torch it.
“Should we head back to join the festivities now that we’ve freed you of The Thing’s evil clutches?” Boone asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets while staring at the sky with me.
I stared up for one more moment before lowering my gaze. Everything around me was blurry with a blinding white haze. I tried blinking my vision clear. “Definitely not.” I plucked at the skirt of my dress, wanting to twirl I felt so free. “I think Charlotte would appreciate a day free from me.”
“I don’t care what Charlotte would appreciate,” Boone said.
“Well, I do,” I replied, wandering down the sidewalk with no real destination in mind. “I’m not trying to make a mess of everything related to her wedding . . . but that doesn’t change that I am, so I think I’ll give us both a day off.”
Boone wandered up beside me, matching my unhurried pace. “She was messing with Ford behind your back. She deserves whatever kind of wedding-week disasters you can toss her way. Intentional or not.”
I waved at the drug-store owner sweeping the front stoop as we passed by. He waved back, greeting me by name.
“Charlotte didn’t do what she did to hurt me. She didn’t even do it to spite me.”
Boone huffed his disagreement.
“Charlotte had been head over heels for Ford since long before he and I got together. I’d known it too.” I studied the sidewalk as I continued, feeling like pieces long forgotten or repressed memories were coming back to me. “I didn’t think much about it with her being so much younger than Ford—and that was such a big thing when we were kids—but I knew how much she liked him. I only had to listen to her go on and on about him every night from the time she was ten to the summer she turned fifteen and Ford and I . . . well, you know.”