Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,43
window, saying nothing. He waved as he pulled out of the driveway, and I realized that I wanted to see him again. I really, really did. And now I wasn’t sure he would even call me.
Diana walked over to me on the driveway and said quietly, “Look, Gray, are you positive about this guesthouse thing? Because if you’ve changed your mind…”
I hadn’t been sure about it at all. In fact, I’d been the opposite of sure. But if I knew Sharon Marcus, Bill’s wife, I knew that she had had this woman thoroughly vetted and background-checked. If my friends trusted Diana, I figured I could too. “I hate being all alone here, Diana,” I said, then was shocked that I had opened up to her like that. I amended, “Then when Wagner gets home, if I need you to babysit him…”
“Or Andrew?”
We both laughed.
“You like him, don’t you?” she asked.
I shrugged, but the butterflies in my stomach told me I did. I linked my arm with Diana’s, and I could tell she was relieved by the way her muscles relaxed. I thought about the story she had told me about growing up in foster care. I wondered how many nights she hadn’t known where she would lay her head. It nauseated me. And it made me really sure that my drunken, overgenerous offer had been the right one.
Late that night, Trey had gone to Raleigh for some meetings with clients, Marcy was on a date she had written off as boring before she’d even met him, Diana was in the guesthouse, and Andrew hadn’t called or texted. No Wagner, no Greg, no friends, no distractions. Just me, alone at the end of the day, facing the reality that this was my life now.
I sat down at my vanity, studying my face. Had those lines on my forehead been there before? Hadn’t my eyes been brighter? My skin suppler? Was this what divorce looked like on me?
Divorce.
I thought of my mom, of how her marriage was the biggest point of pride in her life, of how hard I had worked to hide the dissolution of mine during her last days. I felt a tear run down my cheek, but I brushed it away angrily. Whenever I had a quiet moment, I would almost always slide back into thoughts about how horrible the past year had been.
I opened the jewelry box on my vanity and slipped on my diamond eternity band and my three-stone engagement ring. I stared down at my hand, remembering the moments I had received each ring, how ecstatic I had been, how content. I never would have imagined that it wouldn’t work out forever, that Greg and I weren’t destined for happily ever after.
I closed the lid to my jewelry box and pulled my sheets back. As I climbed in, the weight of the covers—and the rings—felt comforting and familiar. I closed my eyes and pretended that Greg was softly snoring beside me.
And I told myself that someday, somehow, I would learn to be happy again—whether a man was beside me in that bed or not.
diana: gold
When Gray confirmed that she wanted me living in her guesthouse, I almost couldn’t believe it. My own Pinterest-worthy space on one of the most expensive streets in town, with plush bed linens and those real nice inside shutters on all the windows. It even had its own kitchen.
Plus, even though I gave Gray a hard time about what a disaster she was, she hardly had any laundry, and she didn’t make that much of a mess. If she didn’t work all the time, I wasn’t sure she’d need me at all.
This morning I’d been over there and made her that green juice she liked and made her bed and folded the rest of Trey’s wash, so it would be clean when he got back from Raleigh. By eight thirty, Gray had shooed me out the door and told me to get unpacked. “Just let me know if you need anything,” she’d said.
I couldn’t imagine needing anything besides what she’d already given me.
Before I left, I happened to glance down at Gray’s left hand. I looked away quickly. She blushed. “Oh, um…”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. It’s your ring. You should wear it if you want to.” Even still, she took it off and put it back in her jewelry box. And I had the feeling that our girl Gray wasn’t as “fine” as she led everyone to believe.