never been tempted to throw everything away for a man like I’d watched my mom do time and time again. But with Beau, I was. And that should scare me a lot more than it did.
When I walked into the diner, my palms were a little damp. It wasn’t just Gam I was facing; it was also Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Higgins, and Mrs. Scoggs. Maybe it was silly, but I felt a little intimidated.
“Well, hello there beautiful!” A woman that I vaguely remembered meeting at the wedding greeted me.
Her hair was in an updo and her fingers were tipped with long red acrylic nails.
What was her name? Something with a T and it was like two names put together.
I may have been able to remember it on my own, but before I got the chance, I noticed the nametag on her chest. Tami Lynn. Yep. That was it.
“Hi, Tami Lynn. Nice to see you again.”
“You, too sugar bear. The last time I saw you, you were lockin’ lips with that sweet dumplin’ of a man Beau Briggs.”
Sweet dumplin’ of a man. That was one way to describe him, and I wasn’t mad at it.
“Your granny is waitin’ for ya. Right there in the back.” Tami Lynn pointed a long, red acrylic nail toward a corner booth where my Gam was sitting with her friends.
As I approached the table, the four women all looked up at me with expectancy in their stares.
“Hi!” I waved to the group as Mrs. Porter scooted over to make room for me.
I slid in beside her as the ladies greeted me. There were glasses of iced tea, coffee, and water on the table and only one menu. Realizing they all must have ordered already, I picked it up and scanned it.
As soon as I started reading my options my stomach growled loudly. Beau and I had skipped dinner last night. There had been a midnight snack of peanut butter and jelly, but I was pretty sure we’d worked off those calories within the hour of ingesting it.
“Can I get you started with somethin’? Coffee, tea?” Tami Lynn asked as she approached the table.
“Can I get an orange juice and a pancake platter?”
“Isn’t it a little late for breakfast?” Gam commented.
Not when you’ve been up all night. “It sounds good.”
“How do you want your eggs?” Tami Lynn asked.
“Scrambled.”
“And do you want bacon or sausage?”
“Can I have a side of ham?” I hadn’t indulged in a meal this decadent in…I couldn’t remember when.
As a rule, I stayed away from sugar, red meat, and processed foods. But my appetite was off the charts, and if there was anywhere in the world that I should break my self-imposed dietary restrictions, it was at a place called The Greasy Spoon.
“Comin’ right up.” Tami Lynn winked and grabbed the menu from me.
I could feel all of the ladies’ eyes on me as soon as she walked away.
“So how was yoga?” I asked, making small talk.
“Well, let’s just say I didn’t work up quite the appetite that you seem to have.” Gam’s brow lifted.
I felt my cheeks heat and I wondered if they all knew that I’d spent the night at Beau’s.
“Oh give her a break, Barbara-Jean.” Mrs. Porter defended me as she lifted her coffee cup to sip it. When she set it back down she continued, “Unless you want me to talk about how you worked up appetites with the farmhand when you were sixteen.”
“The farmhand?” I turned to my Gam.
I’d never heard her talk about anyone other than my Grandpa Phil before.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Scoggs whispered conspiratorially. “Your grandmother was quite the tart in her day.”
“Tart?” My eyes cut to Gam.
She did not seem the least bit embarrassed by her friends’ description of her as a “tart.”
If anything, she appeared to be proud of the characterization. “Fernando was my first love.”
Fernando?
“Did Grandpa Phil know that?”
“Not everything is for everybody,” she answered in a way that left no room for argument.
“Amen!” Mrs. Higgins high fived my grandmother.
My phone dinged and I looked down expecting to see a message from Hannah or Gen, who had both been trying to reach me, but I hadn’t got back to them because I’d been busy with…
But it wasn’t from my friend or publicist. It was a text from Beau that had a picture of Dug curled up on the pillow that I’d slept on, his big brown eyes looking up at the camera.
It simply read:
Dug misses you.
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my