Free for the Wedding Read online

  “Why would we want do that?” Val asked. Who needed to look like a college freshman when the most attractive guy in the world already like them?

  Heather laughed as she uncapped a mascara bottle and brushed it through her lashes. “Don’t you know that cool guys dig older girls? If we looked about nineteen, we’d have boys clamoring to go out with us.”

  Here was a good lead-in for the task of delivering Jason’s message. Val didn't reach for it yet.

  “If you could date any of the boys that we know," she asked, "–any at all. Who would you pick?”

  She waited. Her fingers touched the corner of the note, prepared to pull it out in a dramatic moment when she heard the answer. Envisioning Heather's open smile, Jason basking in its glow at the lunch table.

  “Probably Chad Wilkins,” said Heather, without missing a beat.

  The boy she named was the quarterback for the football team. A favorite among most of the girls in their class for his strong build and wavy hair

  “Although Dominic Cooper is pretty dreamy too,” she added, thoughtfully. “He’s trying out for basketball next year, and I bet he gets it, he’s so tall.”

  “I guess I thought you liked someone else,” said Val, dropping a hint. “You know, one of the boys in our own group of friends. Like Jason.” Her fingers played with the cover on her book, flipping it open and closed as she talked. "I mean, he's perfect for you."

  "Jason?” Heather paused mid-swipe. "You mean our Jason, right?"

  "Right," said Val. "I mean, he's totally perfect you. And you're really into him, too."

  Heather's warm smile did not appear, however; a slight frown gathered between her eyes as she considered these words. “Well, I…I guess he’s kind of nice," she said. "I mean, he isn't ugly or anything. But he's kind of...immature. In a 'cute dork' sort of way. But he’s not really my type.”

  "What do you mean?" asked Val. In this moment, she didn't feel the elation she expected, only hurt for the remarks directed at Jason. "You said he was cute before–"

  "He is," Heather answered. "It's just, I don't think he's, like, that attractive. I like guys who are older, totally mature. Jason's more like the kind of guy you like."

  Val's heart skipped a beat with this remark. "But if he liked you," she persisted. "You would go out with him. I mean, he's cute enough."

  Heather rolled her eyes. "Jason's a friend. I couldn't go out with him. Not with that goofy smile and those stupid acid wash jeans and sunglasses, I mean." She stuck her tongue out, pretending to wretch.

  "If he asked me out, I would, like, flip or something," she said. "It would totally crush him. I'll bet he would never speak to us again." Screwing the lid back on the mascara, she tossed it into the pile of makeup.

  Us? The implications of a broken-hearted Jason–of a broken-hearted friendship between her two closest school friends–hadn't dawned on her until this moment. If Heather crushed Jason, his seat at the lunch table would be empty, his interest in studying with them would be gone.

  She was Heather's best friend. There was no way he would ever look at her again with Heather out of the picture. No way he would ever have feelings for the best friend of a girl who broke his heart.

  Which meant he would stop thinking about her altogether. Either way this ended, there would never be any chance for her to be the one he picked as his true love.

  "Why?" asked Heather, interrupting Val's train of thought.

  Val blushed. "No reason," she answered. "I just thought you guys liked each other. That's all."

  Heather turned towards the mirror again. "I'm skipping school tomorrow, too," she said. "My Aunt Miriam is taking me to the stylist at her salon for my birthday, so I'll need your chemistry notes."

  She pulled her hair up in a messy ponytail bun as she spoke, studying her reflection with interest. "Do you think Chad would like me if I looked like a model?"

  That evening at dinner, Val was too numb to eat. Her world seemed to have frozen a mere moment away from the awful reality of Jason returning to his cool friends and herself alone and unnoticed again beside Heather at the lunch table.

  She had only thought it was painful to picture the two of them holding hands while she sat forlornly to the side. This was worse, way worse. No friendship with Jason, no more study hours, no more CDs. She wasn't the kind of girl who would ever get invited into his world without Heather to help her sneak across its borders.

  But Heather was going to break Jason's heart. Now the three of them couldn't even be friends anymore.

  Or could they?

  Her math and history homework was forgotten. Upstairs on her bed, she was too busy flipping to a blank page in her notebook, finding a pen like the pink glitter ones Heather always carried in her bag and sometimes left on Val's desk.

  What should she write? What would Heather write–surely not the flippant words about acid wash jeans. He needed to hear something heartfelt, something that would make him realize how important he was to them–to Heather–even without a heart connection.

  The only words that came to her were mixed with her feelings for him. She knew what to say, what she wanted to say. She would just have to make it sound like Heather was the one pouring her heart out to keep him from being hurt. Her pen flew across the page in a rough imitation of Heather’s cursive, no hearts or smiley faces.

  “Dear, Jason,” it began, “I’m so honored you gave me a special place in your heart. But I just don’t know if it's the right time. The kind of feelings you’ve described are so amazing, but I'm not ready…”

  *****

  And so she lied to him–at least, she lied about Heather's feelings, because Val meant those words deep within herself which were now immortalized on this piece of paper. She made herself look into Jason's face, as she delivered the reply note the next day, while Heather was somewhere in another part of town getting her hair restyled for her birthday.

  It was a gentle reply compared to the real one she had probably saved him from ever hearing. Her lines begged Jason to be patient because “someday” their love might "blossom" into everything he dreamed. When I'm ready, when the time is right, you'll know how I feel, she wrote.

  Apparently, it had come–just thirteen years later, all thanks to a silly and desperate move designed to keep the boy of her dreams from severing a friendship with two girls who thought he was cute.

  What had she been thinking?

  With a sigh, she folded the long-ago love letter and laid it on her bedside table, beside the freshly arrived wedding invitation from Virginia. The names of her two friends were printed in sweeping gold cursive.

  Inside, a brochure touting the details of the wedding site: a luxurious modern inn built to resemble the Antebellum style, with tennis courts and an ornamental pond on its impressive grounds. A handwritten reminder at the bottom urged Val to arrive early for “reunion” activities with former classmates.

  Remember–I’m counting on you! was the personal plea from Heather, a smiley face squiggled to the side in imitation of Val's own habits.

  “How can I get out of this?”

  Val paced her bedroom floor, already clad in pajamas at eight o’clock on a Friday night. Her dark hair a tangled mass as she ran her fingers through it, feeling torn between sparing herself utter humiliation and supporting two people who shaped the most pivotal moments of her youth.

  But what kind of support could she really offer? After all, if Jason had carried a torch for Heather based on that stupid note, then, technically, she was to blame. His school-age crush might even surpass her own secret feelings if it was the reason he couldn't take his eyes off Heather at the reunion, practically talking her into becoming a couple in a matter of weeks.

  Whoa. Her hand flew to her mouth, as if the shock of realization might prompt her to gasp aloud. Is that really why they’re getting married ? Because of something I wrote–something I felt all those years ago?

  Her lie had done this, perhaps. Her desperation to keep Jason from
breaking off their friendship was the whole reason he waited for Heather all these years. In a flash, she recalled Jason’s words about it being “true love” and seeming “destined ” that he and Heather finally connected.

  Obsessed. That was definitely the way Heather described her fiancée’s feelings for their romance a la the school-age love note. The whole notion seemed to annoy Heather a little, judging from her behavior at their coffee meeting. After all, it wasn't really her love story–it was Val and Jason's.

  Val sank down on the bed, pulling her knees beneath her chin. Her gaze fell on the note and wedding invitation, side by side on the inn table. The two items created a funny contrast between past and present, while somehow confirming that time hadn’t altered as much about her life as she once assumed.

  As she gazed at them, something stirred inside her. An obligation as well as longing to correct a mistake if, in fact, a mistake had been made. To pack her bags and make a beeline for the hotel in Virginia, if nothing else, so she could look Jason in the eye and know for certain what was in his heart. Her best friend Heather or the words in the note his mother had accidentally tossed.

  More than one person’s happiness was at stake with this engagement. If fate truly played a role in all this, then perhaps it was not Heather who was supposed to wind up re-meeting the boy who penned those lovelorn words.

  But perhaps she, Valarie McCray, had missed her date with destiny at the high school reunion.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “At this time, passengers are asked to store their overhead luggage and choose a seat. Attendants will be with you shortly as the train prepares to disembark…”

  The voice streaming over the train’s PA system gently updated passengers on scheduling information. A no-frills station in downtown Dover, it offered a commute to Baltimore, Maryland, where budget-conscious Val planned to change trains for the last leg of the wedding journey.

  Almost a hundred and twenty dollars in travel expenses earmarked from her savings account so far. Plus there would be expenses for the hotel, whatever that might cost. She could only imagine what a few nights at a luxurious Southern resort would do to her bank account– thank heavens she had never taken a vacation, much less taken up an expensive hobby in her spare time.

  She had chosen to travel coach, along with thirty or so other passengers that Saturday morning, exactly one week before the wedding date. Feeling nervous but determined as she took a seat by the window facing the station’s platform. Her fingers smoothed her yellow skirt's pleats, its color far cheerier than she felt as this moment.

  Was she making a mistake? The same question that plagued her all last night, as she wondered if her imagination was simply getting the best of her over all these coincidences. The past was probably best left buried and her age-old crush on dreamy and gentle Jason Cotter with it.

  Of course, it hadn't been her idea to bring it up again. It seemed to be fate's idea to have her friends phoning her out of the blue with their love story, reviving the note's origins in a way that even the loyalist friend couldn't ignore forever.

  Just be there for your friends–whatever the case, she told herself, drawing a calm breath. Whatever is meant to be will be. All you want to do is be sure that the two of them are in love and not being pulled into something by Jason's fixation on some promised destiny in that note...

  Her seatmate was a teenage girl too absorbed in her mP3 player to notice Val’s fidgeting. Behind them, a frazzled-looking mom struggled with her toddler, while an elderly woman pulled knitting supplies from a canvas bag one row ahead.

  Val rested one hand on the window sill, as the other lightly tapped against her brown and pink toga bag. For luck, or perhaps for courage, she slipped her fingers inside to brush the folded-up note.

  Would Jason ever believe that she had been the one to answer it? If she told him the truth, she wondered, what would he think or feel after all these years?

  She shook her head as if banishing the possibility of hurting him or betraying Heather with the truth. Now wasn’t the time for those kind of speculations. Forcing a deep breath, she summoned the ‘think positive to be positive’ mantra from her college PR classes.

  Her gaze roamed the aisle, searching for a distraction from her past and its current intrusion in her present-day life. Finding one in the appearance of a last-minute passenger, a knapsack slung across his shoulder.

  Mid-twenties or a little older, but somewhere close to her own age, she guessed. His dark, slightly spiked hair giving him a clean cut appearance that bordered on the boyish.

  Sunglasses were propped on his head; his long sleeved shirt and business blazer open to reveal a graphic tee beneath, with the famous crosswalk image from the Beatle’s Abbey Road album.

  Preppy, she thought, assessing the expensive but casual ware. As well as noticing his pair of low-top Converse shoes, the brand she remembered all the trendy kids preferring in college.

  Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, his a rich brown flecked with an emotion almost as frazzled and worried as her own in this brief exchange. A fraction of second later, he was busy trying to pull a bulky portfolio from the knapsack, leaving Val to study the elderly couple filing past her to the seats in the back.

  Smiling train attendants greeted the passengers and staged a safety equipment demonstration. Val noticed the young man with the Abbey Road shirt was busy sorting through a thick file of papers. He had propped a tablet PC on the seat’s fold-out tray, his gaze shifting between the two tasks.

  “We’ll be serving refreshments fifteen minutes into our journey,” an attendant informed the passengers, before disappearing through a connecting door to the next compartment.

  Val’s seatmate bobbed and weaved in place, presumably to the beat that echoed faintly from her pair of earbuds. Maybe Val should have brought a new one to pass the time. Her own music player, a cheap knockoff from a no-name company, had expired three weeks after she purchased it.

  After what seemed ages, the time of departure arrived. The familiar whine of motion somehow reminding her of the chug, chug in old western movies. Val leaned her head back, her eyes fluttering closed as she envisioned a smooth journey ahead.

  It was a short-lived fantasy, however. The train lurched, swayed, then came to a grinding halt. Its passengers were pitched forwards slightly, Val’s fingers touching the seat in front of her.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” came a tranquil voice over the speaker system “we apologize for the sudden stop in our journey. Our conductor has received information that requires an immediate cancellation of this afternoon’s train to Baltimore.”

  A gasp of dismay escaped Val’s lips with this announcement. A reaction promptly echoed by several other passengers, as the voice on the speaker continued, “Passengers should remain seated until an attendant instructs you to disembark...”

  Twisting round, Val glanced back at the scenery, then craned towards the window glass beside her as if the source of their trouble might be visible. But only the rooftops and billboards of city businesses dotted the horizon.

  The Beatles’ fan seemed to struggle with his tablet, a frantic beep issuing from the mini computer. Several rows ahead, a man in a business suit waved his cell phone and shouted towards another passenger. “It’s a collision at the intersection–some kind of pile-up–"

  “No injuries?” asked someone else. A nearby passenger was logging onto the Twitter feed for a local news station.

  “Nobody killed. Just a van overturned on the tracks. There’s carts and food trays scattered all over the place. Two–no, three cars hit–”

  Val’s confidence crumbled beneath this setback. This had been the only train from Dover that even came close to her destination. Her next option lay in Wilmington, over forty-five minutes away–which meant a taxi fee and the cost of an unreserved train ticket.

  There was a flurry of activity to disembark as passengers retrieved overhead luggage and shoved electronics into protective cases. The elderly w
oman re-packed her knitting supplies as the toddler’s mother collected a stuffed animal from the floor.

  “Does anyone know if there’s a car rental place nearby?” Val heard someone ask. Perhaps the young guy, his voice somewhat frantic and harassed.

  “One block,” another passenger answered.

  Car rental. An idea flickered in Val’s mind, as if someone pulled a light bulb chain. Of course, it was obvious. She would just rent a car; five or six hours of driving and she would be there.

  Relief surged through her, a feeling quickly displaced by urgency, as she found herself pushed along the aisle by fellow travelers. On the platform, people shoving against each other to collect their belongings.

  “Sorry,” the guy in the graphic tee apologized, his shoulder brushing hers as he retrieved a heavy-looking duffel bag.

  The passengers from business and first class were even more desperate than the ones who rode coach. Val fought her way to her wheeled suitcase, barely dislodging it before someone toppled the rest while moving a large Pullman case.

  People hurried past her on the sidewalk, many of them talking on cell phones and consulting electronic maps. Her own high heeled feet struggled to keep the pace as she traversed the short distance to the rental service. Its sign becoming visible as she turned the corner that connected onto Main Street.

  She shouldered her bag higher, her pace self-consciously picking up as she found herself caught in a crowd pushing towards the car rental agency's doors.

  *****

  Val had never run a marathon–organized one, yes–but never actually participated. But in the midst of battling her way to the rental desk, she received an unexpected boost in her competitive streak. As if compelled by the need to prove her mission was as urgent as the people elbowing her out of the way.