Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,79
was, “What if it isn’t as good as we think?”
“If what isn’t?”
He sat down on the bottom step and patted beside him.
“Our life together,” I said, sitting down, our hips touching. “What if it was all fun and games when we were kids, but now, as adults, it’s just drudgery like everything else? I can’t bear to ever be like that with you. You’re the one I’ve always carried in my heart, that great love I held on to and compared to everyone else.” I looked down at my polished toe peeking out of my sandal. “If that’s gone, Frank, I don’t think I can bear it.”
He put his arm around me and pulled me in close to him, pushing my head against his strong chest. “We’ve spent the last two decades dreaming about our love. Let’s spend all the rest of them living it.” He looked down at me. “Okay?”
It was the perfect thing to say. It was the exact thing that all those nights I lay awake in bed alone or beside yet another wrong guy I had hoped and prayed to God that I would hear out of those very lips, lips I hadn’t laid eyes on in so long that their memory was fading. Lips I couldn’t quite see, but, if I closed my eyes, I could feel them on mine, just the same as it had always been. I felt that race in my heart and that ache in my stomach, the warning bell that told me to run. Could I be this happy? If I was this happy and it ended, would I ever be able to go back to living like normal again?
I don’t know what gave me the strength. But I nodded. “Okay.”
He kissed me long and hard, and I felt in that moment that everything in my life that had been tough—losing my mom, all them foster homes, losing Frank, losing my baby—this moment was where all that got made up for. I might have been a forty-year-old princess. But I was going to have one hell of a happily ever after.
CHAPTER 14
gray: corporate takeover
As I adjusted the collar buttons on Andrew’s shirt, which he had paired with freshly pressed khaki shorts, I realized I was pretty sure that I’d never seen him in an oxford. It was sweet that he was dressing up for me to take him out in public for the first time.
“So why is this thing in the middle of the day?” he asked.
“I don’t have the faintest idea,” I said. “I am happy to say that I didn’t have one thing to do with planning this soiree.”
“It’s because it’s a fund-raiser,” Marcy said. “And, theoretically, people drink less during the day and then the charity doesn’t spend as much money on booze.”
“Theoretically,” Andrew said in a tone that implied they hadn’t met us yet. We all laughed.
“Hello,” I said. “Three for Howard.”
The lady sitting at the table, wearing glasses with a chain to keep them around her neck, said, “I see Howard for two.”
Andrew put his arm around me. “That would be her idiot ex-husband.”
He kissed me on the cheek, and Marcy added, “And his trampy new fiancée.”
The woman looked shocked underneath her half-glasses and sort of stuttered, “Um… yes… I see Howard for three right here. Sorry I missed it before.”
Andrew took my hand, and we walked into the party, surveying the scene.
“Oh, man,” Marcy said. “These people just keep getting older.”
Andrew snickered behind his hand.
“Y’all need to behave, okay? I brought you both out in public under the condition of good behavior. You can shotgun beers at the Beach Pub later as a reward if you can keep it together now.”
In his haughtiest voice, Andrew said, “Well, my love, in that case, I shall go rustle us up some chardonnay. Not too oaky. No, not on a day as warm as this.”
Marcy and I giggled. As I watched Andrew walk away, I could feel eyes on me. I turned and did a double take.
He was tall, dark, and age-appropriate. He was handsome, but not ruggedly like Andrew. There was something that made him imperfectly attractive, like maybe his nose was a little bit too big for his face. He didn’t have to say a word for every person in that room to know that he was powerful. He was in charge. He was a man.
“Oh my gosh,” Marcy whispered to me. “Who is that guy?”