Hey, Andy and Grace want us to ride over to the American for dinner tomorrow night
Smiling, she held the message down to like it, then pressed again to change the thumbs up to a heart because she did love it, the ordinary life they carved out together. The American was wonderful, and she liked Andy and Grace. And she really, really loved the man who wanted to be her husband.
A girl couldn’t ask for a better night — or a better life.
“When are you meeting up with Megan?” Lorraine lifted her own bag.
“After work one day next week.” Her butt and thighs aching from the workout, Holly headed for the door. She grasped the handle and tugged. “What days work for you—”
The changing room door swung inward, the edge almost taking out her nose as the woman headed in stumbled forward. Holly jumped back, a startled laugh bursting from her throat even as embarrassed heat flashed over her cheeks.
“Lord, I am so sorry.” She reached to steady the newcomer, the blonde muttering a curse and leaning down for her dropped bag. “This entrance is a menace—”
The words died in her throat, her gaze locked with a familiar pair of disdainful blue eyes. Holly blinked, staring at the one woman she’d hoped never to see again.
“Why am I not surprised?” Allison’s eyes narrowed, a smirk curling her lips. She remained thin and trim, blonde hair in a bouncy ponytail, the highlighted shade a little too bright. Her makeup, a little too heavy about her eyes and with the highlighter, was flawless. “Grace and finesse never were your thing, hmm, Holly?”
True, but Allison had never been an example of kindness and compassion, either. Holly bit back the comment – they weren’t in high school anymore and she refused to be petty.
She straightened her shoulders, aware Lorraine might not bite back any comment she had. And Lorraine always had a comment. Unsmiling, she held the door wider. “Lots of people have a hard time with this door their first time here. Goodnight.”
Lorraine waited until they were in the short hallway to smack Holly’s arm, hard enough to sting. “Goodnight? You actually told that . . . that . . .womangoodnight?”
A faint smile pulled at Holly’s mouth. She never wanted to see Allison again, but the other woman’s mother still lived here. They ran across one another every so often. She set her bag down long enough to tug her hoodie over her head. “What do you want me to do? Cuss her out for being at the gym? Mona would kill me.”
“Maybe not speak to her at all. What did they call it back in the day? Give her the cut.” Lorraine shook her head. Her entire body quivered with indignation as she zipped her own jacket, in her signature shade of royal purple. “The heifer.”
Holly made a noise in her throat, half amusement, half agreement. She lowered her voice as they made their way to the exit, waving at a few lingering classmates along the way. “How did we tolerate her for two years?”
“I don’t know.” Lorraine huffed a longsuffering sigh and shoved the door open. A cool breeze wrapped about them, ruffling the crepe myrtles lining the sidewalk, lit up with twinkle lights for the holidays. Lorraine lifted a hand in an expansive gesture. “Because we loved Lamar and he loved her.”
“Ugh.” A cold shudder worked its way over Holly’s body. “Do we have to say that like it’s true?”
“It is true.” Lorraine fixed her with a look. “You don’t think that mess with her and Colt hurting him so bad was all about Colt, do you?”
The shudder landed in her belly in an icy lump. If Allison was the last person she wanted to see, then Colt being with her was the last thing she wanted to think about. That event had always been cerebral for her – Tick showing up at a party, finding them together, ending his relationship with Allison, turning his back on Colt. She’d ached for them, but in Holly’s head, the fallout had been about Tick and Colt.
She hadn’t had to really consider how the event involved Colt and Allison.
Now, she knew what his kiss and his touch felt like, what his body felt like next to hers, inside hers. Knowing he’d been with Tyler, with other women before her? She’d accepted that because, well, they were adults, and while Mona expected her to wait for marriage, that didn’t happen often. She’d been withother men, he’d been with other women, and their pasts were simply part of who they were.
Normally, she appreciated his experience because she understood the value of a man who knew what he was doing in bed.
But he’d been with Allison, and even nine years on, the idea defined stomach-turning. It didn’t make sense, either. He’d tolerated Allison as well, guarding Jada from her poison, trying to talk Tick out of the relationship on more than one occasion . . . so how did his winding up in bed with Allison make sense?
A frown twisted her brows into a tight vee, skin pulling. He’d been drunk. Could the alcohol do that, override his dislike?
Because surely that dislike hadn’t been a cover for something else.
She wasn’t letting this under her skin. With a sigh of her own, she met Lorraine’s knowing gaze. “I really cannot stand her, even now.”
Maybe more so now. And maybe that dislike made her petty, but she didn’t care.
Lorraine harrumphed, high in her nose. “That makes two of us.”
With a hug and plans for Lorraine to join her for her first dress fitting, they parted ways at their cars. Holly waited for Lorraine to back out first, the Escalade blocking her view of the street. The heater warming, Holly ran a fingertip around the edge of her phone, unwanted images flicking through her head like one of those old film strips, jumpy and out of focus, disconnected.
She cleared her mind as ruthlessly as Grandma picked weeds out of her garden plot. She did not want to imagine Colt’s hands on Allison, touching her the way he touched Holly.Wanting to connect with him in the now, rather than in the murky past, she launched their text thread.
