Kaci’s nose twitched. “Oh, no, it’s a small one tonight.” Her smile was part hesitant, part hopeful. “Really, it’s just me. Sarah’s kids got sick, so her new friend cancelled too. But I got what it takes to be a club all by myself. You get on in here and relax. I’ll go open up a bottle.”
Anna hesitated. She wasn’t good at this. Neil had always made her friends for her. He’d take her to Company Grade Officers Association functions, introduce her to a few guys who’d introduce her to their wives or girlfriends, then they’d invite her over to their houses for candle and basket andkitchen gadget parties. They’d ask her to join the officers’ wives club, which she’d politely decline since they held all their meetings during school or working hours, and Anna would be that wife who showed up at picnics and cookouts and sort of knew people, but didn’t really.
She’d gotten good at only sort of knowing people.
That’s why she’d liked Jules so much. Jules seemed good with the sort of knowing people thing too.
But Kaci didn’t strike her as the halfway type.
“First step’s remembering who you are without him,” Kaci said. “It’s a doozy, but it gets better after that.”
That explained why Anna’s knees didn’t want to move. But her brain and her heart and her soul did, so she picked up her feet and crossed into the cool foyer.
Kaci’s baby cheeks split into a grin. “You up for some peach cobbler, or is chocolate more your speed tonight? Got a big ol’ box of Godiva in here too.”
Godiva. Probably from the BX with the BX discount.
Anna needed to stock up before she turned in her dependent ID and lost base shopping privileges. They weren’t in her budget right now, but a chocolate emergency was a chocolate emergency.
Tonight was bigger than a chocolate emergency.
“Tequila shots?” Kaci said.
“God, yes.”
“You and me, we’re gonna be good friends.”
The living room was furnished in warm browns over a beige porcelain tile floor. Ole Miss memorabilia hung on one side, while Bama souvenirs dominated the other. In between, on the mantel of a fireplace that was probably used only a half-dozen times a year, was a picture of Kaci and her tall, dark, handsome fiancé. Tall, dark, and handsome was in a flight suit.
Good for Kaci, but Anna wasn’teverdoing a military guy again.
She looked away from the picture and found herselfstaring out the back door to twinkling pool lights.
This was what she thought she’d have the rest of her life.
Instead, she had an apartment in a lower tax bracket, and she was standing in the middle of a one-woman party.
Her legs threatened to do their freeze-dried Twinkie impression again.
Kaci trotted in from the semi-open kitchen and handed her a shot glass. “Lime?”
“Ketchup.”
“Ketchup?”
“I’m a lightweight.” Anna’s nose gave a telltale crinkle. Her eyes followed. The lake was building in her sinuses again, her eyelids preparing to be dams. Her voice cracked. “And ketchup makes me think of home.”
“Huh. Well, you named your poison. Sit on down. I’ll bring you the whole bottle.”
“But—” Anna gestured to her clothes. They were half-dry, and her top had developed a few weird wrinkles.
Kaci sprinted to the kitchen, then huffed back with a ketchup bottle. She snagged Anna’s elbow and pulled her into the master bedroom.
The walls were a lovely mocha, the crown molding blinding white beneath a tray ceiling. Clothes and books and fireworks were strewn across the four-poster king-size bed.
Fireworks?
Oh, God. Neil reallyhadstranded her in the South. The deep South, all pretty on the outside, all backwoods on the inside, without the buffer of the base.
