Betsy Amant - Return to Love

Gracie shouldn’t be jealous. She had no claim on Carter anymore—never did, if she were totally honest. Still, his attention to Tawny did unsettling things to her insides.

She focused on pouring a Dr. Pepper for Haley and handed the young girl an extra napkin. “You’ve got pizza sauce on your chin.”

“Thanks.” Haley swiped at her face and picked up her soda with a grin. “That would’ve impressed the boys, huh?”

“Hey, the way they eat pizza, I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“I think Jeremy’s on his sixth piece.”

“Seventh.” They exchanged smiles.

“I’m gonna go dare him to eat eight.” Haley tipped her cup at Gracie. “See ya.”

Gracie screwed the lid back on the two-liter bottle and watched Haley flounce up to Jeremy, a high school junior who had to be at least six-five. He was the star football player. Haley was a JV cheerleader—it was the stereotypical match. They denied their feelings, but their eyes gave it away. That, and the way Jeremy blushed when Haley took the chair next to him.

Had Gracie ever been that young? It felt like eons ago instead of seven or eight years when she and Carter were in the same position—the preacher’s son and the good girl who never missed a service, best friends with secret crushes. Or rather, what turned out to be a one-way crush—hers. Carter had made that explicitly clear.

Gracie shoved the bottle of soda in line with the others and looked away from Haley’s charming giggle. Hopefully their story would turn out better than hers and Carter’s.

“Earth to Gracie.” Lori snagged one of the discarded pizza boxes and began to fold the cardboard corners. “Where are you? Mars or Pluto?”

Gracie glanced at Carter, then away. “More like Memory Lane.” She took a second box and followed Lori’s cue, folding the corners together to start a trash pile.

“Is it a closed tour or can I come along?” Lori grinned.

“I don’t know if you’d want to. It’s not pretty.”

“Most pasts aren’t.”

Gracie blew a piece of hair out of her eyes. “I was hoping the kids in this youth group have an easier time of it than I did.” In more ways than one. Gracie could relate to many of their broken homes. She had grown up without a father. Thankfully her mother had supported her both financially and emotionally, unlike many of these teenagers’ current circumstances. If it hadn’t been for Reverend Alexander, she’d have had no fatherly influence at all.

Lori shrugged. “They might. They might not. Everyone faces their own issues with friendships and relationships growing up.” She stacked the neatly folded boxes on top of each other. “Then there are those of us who wait until we’re in our twenties to get burned.”

“That wasn’t your fault.” No one deserved the treatment Lori’s ex dished out. Anger boiled in Gracie’s stomach at the thought of someone cheating on her best friend. “Jason wasn’t the right guy.”

“Maybe Carter wasn’t, either.”

Gracie’s hands stilled on the containers. She’d never thought of it that way, only considered herself a victim of her best friend’s betrayal. What if Lori was right, and everything that happened between her and Carter was for a reason? Maybe they weren’t supposed to ever be more than what they were.

She shook her head. Too much to process for now. “I need to go talk to Andy about that fund-raising idea.”

“I’ll finish up here.” Lori opened a box to check its contents and her eyes lit up. “Ohhh, look—a stray slice of pepperoni.”

“I don’t know how you stay so thin.”

“It’s all the energy I exert getting excited about food.” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down before shoving half the pizza in her mouth.

Gracie walked around the edge of the counter and snatched a pepperoni off the other end of the slice in Lori’s hands. “Wish me luck.”

“You’re lucky I’m not fighting you for that pepperoni.”

“Your support is overwhelming.”

“I’m just kidding.” Lori swallowed her mouthful of food. “Andy will be glad to help, you’ll see. Go for it.”

Gracie wiped her hands on her back pockets and looked toward the pastor, who was throwing a Frisbee with a couple of youth and laughing as it sailed over their heads. Hopefully Andy would see the cause of the gala as worthy as she did, and would be willing to let the youth group help her out—she couldn’t pay them but she could offer them an amazing backstage tour of the aquarium. Of course it still didn’t solve her problem about not having a band, but one issue at a time. If the teenagers would pitch in with advertising and raising funds for the short-changed budget, she might be able to make this work after all.

Tawny breezed up to the counter, bumping into Gracie’s shoulder, and grabbed a two-liter of Diet Coke. “Did you see the way Carter looked at me earlier?” Her words gushed faster than the liquid pouring into her plastic cup. “I so have a chance with him.”

Lori coughed and mumbled something unintelligible around her pizza.

Gracie swallowed the words tightening the back of her throat and forced a smile. “Oh, really?” Maybe if she didn’t look Tawny in the eye, the gorgeous brunette wouldn’t notice how her heart had fallen like a deadweight in her stomach. It was no surprise. Tawny represented a slightly more mature and filled-out version of the girls in high school Carter had never been able to resist.

The memories churned faster than her stomach. Gracie pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off the details playing in vivid Technicolor of the night Carter broke her heart. A flash of green from her cashmere sweater, the neon lights from the disco ball hanging from the ceiling of the quarterback’s basement, stacks of blue cups and pink punch and gold class rings. Watching Carter—her date to his senior party—press a varsity cheerleader into the corner of the wall with a kiss. She’d approached him, hurt covered in anger’s thin disguise, until another girl’s catty voice stopped her midpursuit.

“You know you’re not his real date, right?”

The lights from the disco ball seemed to spin faster as Carter turned away from the cheerleader and caught Gracie’s eye across the room. He mouthed her name and she stared, not wanting to hear the rest of the girl’s explanation but unable to move.

The tipsy blonde continued, her words slurred but unforgettable. “He made a bet you wouldn’t come with him. Not Ms. Goody-Goody Church Girl.” She snorted and beer splashed from the edge of her glass. “Guess you’re not very different from us after all, huh?”

The impact of the girl’s words hit Gracie about the same time as the football player stumbling into her side. She caught her balance on the staircase banister and tried to ignore the lewd gaze he raked over her. “Whoa, I should have bet Carter more than a hundred bucks. You’re worth at least one fifty.” He leered. “Think he’ll mind sharing?”

He reached for her, but Gracie shoved away and pounded up the stairs, the taunts and catcalls of the party ringing in her ears as she made her escape—Carter’s laugh echoing the loudest of all.

“It’s just a matter of time until he asks me out.” Tawny’s voice jerked Gracie from her unwanted instant replay of the past. “Hey, you all right? You look a little red.”

Gracie blinked and realized her hands were clenched into fists. She drew a deep breath, willing the emotion to ease from her throat and avoided Lori’s look of concern. She straightened her shoulders. “Never better.”

She had a job to do—get Andy on board for the aquarium gala. The past would have to stay behind her.

And so would Carter Alexander.

Carter leaned against the wall under the basketball hoop and swallowed his last bite of cheese pizza. At a table in front of him, three high school boys wearing backward baseball caps and T-shirts laughed as they tried to see who could sink a napkin in a cup of soda first. Beside them, two older kids with multiple tattoos lining their arms finished off their dinner while discussing the youth group’s limited options of dating material.