Too Good to Be True - Kristan Higgins [7]
“Your father and those idiot battles,” Mom muttered, adjusting Mémé’s collar. Mémé had apparently fallen deeply asleep or died… but no, her bony chest was rising and falling. “Well, I’m not going, of course. I need to focus on my art. You’re coming to the show this week, aren’t you?”
Margaret and I exchanged wary looks and made noncommittal sounds. Mom’s art was a subject best left untouched.
“Grace!” Mémé barked, suddenly springing back to life. “Get out there! Kitty’s going to throw the bouquet! Go! Go!” She turned her wheelchair and began ramming it into my shins, as ruthless as Ramses bearing down on the fleeing Hebrew slaves.
“Mémé! Please! You’re hurting me!” I yanked my legs out of the way, which didn’t stop her.
“Go! You need all the help you can get!”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Leave her alone, Eleanor. Can’t you see she’s suffering enough? Grace, honey, you don’t have to go if it makes you sad. Everyone will understand.”
“I’m fine,” I said loudly, running a hand over my uncontrollable hair, which had burst the bonds of bobby pins. “I’ll go.” Because damn it, if I didn’t, it would be worse. Poor Grace, look at her, she’s just sitting there like a dead possum in the road, can’t even get out of her chair. Besides, Mémé’s chair was starting to leave marks on my dress.
Out onto the dance floor I went, as excited as Anne Boleyn on her way to the gallows. I tried to blend in with the other sheep, standing in the back where I wouldn’t really have a chance of catching the bouquet. “Cat Scratch Fever” came booming over the stereo—so classy—and I couldn’t suppress a snicker.
Then I saw Andrew. Looking right at me, guilty as sin. His date was nowhere in sight. My heart lurched.
I knew he was here, of course. Him coming was my idea. But seeing him, knowing he was with another woman today in their first appearance as a couple, made my hands sweat, my stomach turn to ice. Andrew Carson was, after all, the man I thought I’d marry. The man I came within three weeks of marrying. The man who left me because he fell in love with someone else.
A couple of years ago, at Cousin Kitty’s second wedding, Andrew had come as my date. We’d been together for a while, and when it was bouquet toss time then, I’d gone up more or less happily, pretending to be embarrassed but with the smug contentment of a steady boyfriend. I didn’t catch the bouquet, and when I left the dance floor, Andrew had slung his arm around my shoulder. “I thought you could’ve worked a little harder out there,” he’d said, and I remembered the thrilling rush those words had caused.
Now he was here with his new girlfriend. Natalie of the long, straight, blond hair. Natalie of the legs that went on forever. Natalie the architect.
Natalie, my much adored younger sister, who was understandably lying low at this wedding.
Kitty tossed the bouquet. Her sister, my cousin Anne, caught it as planned and rehearsed, no doubt. Torture time over. But, no. Kitty spied me, picked up her skirts and hustled over. “It will be your turn soon, Grace,” she announced loudly. “You holding up okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s déjà vu all over again, Kitty! Another spring, another one of your weddings.”
“You poor thing.” She gave my arm a firm squeeze, smug sympathy dripping out of her, glanced at my bangs (yes, they’d grown out in the fifteen years that had passed since she’d cut them) and went back to her groom and the three kids from her first two marriages.
THIRTY-THREE MINUTES LATER, I decided I’d been brave long enough. Kitty’s reception was in full swing, and while the music was lively and my feet were itching to get out there and show the crowd what a rumba was supposed to look like, I decided to head for home. If there was a single, good-looking, financially secure, emotionally stable man here, he was hiding under