Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [142]
I ungracefully hurled my bags into the overhead and slumped into the orange vinyl seat. I reached into my pocket for my package of tissues, but only found cardboard covered in the plastic Kleenex wrapper. I resigned myself to sniffling for the trip back to New Jersey. I was sleeve-wiping tears and mucus from my face when my neighbor put The Five People . . . down on her lap.
“Are you a student?” she asked in a familiar New Yawk accent. I nodded and tried to remember which bag carried my iPod. She then asked me what school I attended. I inhaled as deeply as I could before answering.
“Oh!” she bubbled. “Great school.”
I was extremely disappointed in her. She wasn't what I expected. Before I could plug myself into iPod isolation, she asked another question.
“So,” she sang. “What year are you?”
“Actually, I just graduated,” I said.
“You did? In December?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Her eyes widened with this revelation. “So that's why you're so teary-eyed.” She unconsciously ran her thumb along the pages she had yet to read. I hunched up my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug.
“Don't be sad,” she said, gently but firmly enough not to go ignored. “The people who really matter, you'll see them again.”
I looked past her profile and out the window. I needed to leave. I was tired of staring at the same concrete.
the twenty-first
Perhaps inspired by Hope's infectious spirit of adventure, I'm making a more concerted effort to bust my ruts, one rut at a time. And so, when Bridget called to say she had some big news, I suggested that we meet not at my house, or hers, or Helga's Diner, but Cool Beanery, a tiny, homey coffee and tea shop in downtown Pineville that I've never patronized because I've got an aversion to suburban java joints that try too hard to be hip and Manhattanlike. And you know, I'll be damned if they didn't serve up a bracingly nutty cup of black coffee. It will be a more than adequate hangout when I'm in town (which I'm sure will be more often than I'd like to admit).
Anyway, the dramatic change in setting was appropriate. Bridget broke her dazzling news before she even sat down or shrugged off her coat, one of those heinous quilted numbers that look more like a sleeping bag than an article of clothing. But not even the ugly coat could dim her glow.
“Percy and I are getting married!” she squealed, stripping off her left-hand glove and shoving a diamond solitaire up my nostril.
And then I initiated what must have been the most girlie-girl display of my life, complete with hop-hugging, cheer-clapping, and teeth-shattering shrieks of joy.
“Not until June 2007,” Bridget giggled, answering my unasked question. “After we both graduate. Can you believe it?”
“I can!” I gushed right back. “But I can't! It's so weird!”
“I know!” she bubbled, still bopping up and down. “I know!”
And then she told me the whole story. How Percy bought tickets for a local high school performance of Our Town. It was a very deliberate choice, as they had been cast in that same play when she was a junior and he was a sophomore in high school, and it was during rehearsals for said production that they had started their “showmance.” When Bridget wasn't looking, he slipped a piece of paper in the playbill, like those often inserted when the understudy is playing the lead role for the evening. Only on this paper, Percy had printed Bridget's headshot, underneath which was typed: And tonight, and for the rest of her life, the role of Mrs. Percy Floyd will be played by Bridget Milhokovich.
And when she read it she was, like, “Huh?” until Percy knelt down in the aisle and presented her with a velvet ring box containing the Floyd family engagement ring, passed down from none other than Grandma Floyd herself for the occasion.
It was a great story. And I could imagine Bridget telling it again and again. For generations and generations to come.
“Look, I know it's, like, eighteen months away, and you're not, like, into marriage and everything but, like . . .”
“What?”
“I