Page 25 of Never Enough

ten

Gracie

The crowd erupts, and Henry pulls back just enough to break the kiss, but not enough to break contact. His forehead rests against mine for a half-second before he grins, drops his hand from my face, and turns us both back toward the crowd like he didn't just short-circuit every synapse in my brain in front of two hundred people.

My lips are tingling. Actually tingling. Like I've been stung by something sweet and venomous, and my body can't decide if it wants to run away or lean back in for more.

I press my fingers to my mouth before I can stop myself, then immediately drop my hand because I'm not a teenager in a movie and I refuse to be the woman standing under string lights touching her lips after a kiss like she's never been kissed before.

Except I'm not sure I have been. Not like that. Not with the entire sky pressing down and the fiddle playing something slow and achy in the background and one of Henry's hands cupping my cheek and the other warm and possessive at my waist like he's done this a thousand times and plans to do it a thousand more.

It was supposed to be for show. Wasn’t it?

Someone needs to inform my circulatory system, because it didn't get the memo.

Henry steers us back toward our table with the easy confidence of a man who just declared something enormous in front of everyone he's ever known and apparently feels great about it. Meanwhile, I'm navigating the crowd on legs that have the structural integrity of overproofed dough. People are clapping us on the shoulders. Someone squeezes my arm. A woman I vaguely recognize from the post office tells me she just knew it and she told Brenda, and Brenda owes her twenty dollars.

There's a twenty-dollar bet? About me? About us?

I mean its not like I haven’t heard it before. People have said for years that Henry and I would be so great together. It’s part of what made teenage me declare my undying love to him.

Caroline catches my eye from across the table as we sit back down. She gives me a look that practically screams I told you so. Damien hands Henry a beer and shakes his hand like Henry just scored a winning touchdown. Cora Black leans toward me with the warm smile of someone who's genuinely happy for a person she barely knows, which is such a kind thing that it makes my chest ache with guilt.

Because they're all so happy. Every single face I see—genuinely, radiantly happy for us. And I'm sitting here with a borrowed ring on my finger and a kiss I can still taste and a marriage that's built on a clerical error and a lie I'm telling to protect my cousin.

I reach for my water glass and take a long drink, letting the cold cut through the heat still prickling across my skin.

“You okay?” Henry murmurs, leaning close. His breath brushes my temple.

“Peachy,” I say.

“You're doing great.”

“I know I am. Stop checking on me. It's suspicious.”

His low chuckle vibrates against my shoulder. “Yes, ma'am.”

Then I feel a hand on my arm. Gentle. Deliberate. The kind of touch that asks permission even as it makes contact.

I turn and find Rebecca Blankenship standing behind me.

Henry's mother is the kind of woman who walks into a room and makes it warmer. Not louder—warmer. She's got the same blue eyes as Henry, though hers are softer, bracketed by laugh lines she earned from raising five children and from being married to a man who thinks telling a joke at every family dinner is a constitutional right. Her silver-streaked auburn hair is swept up tonight, and she's wearing a blue dress that would put a field of bluebonnets to shame. She looks beautiful. She always looks beautiful. Poised and put together in a way I’ll never be.

She also looks like she's about to cry, and if Rebecca Blankenship cries, I am going to lose it entirely, and all the composure I've been clinging to will disintegrate like wet sugar.

“Gracie.” She says my name, in that way only a mother can, loaded with warmth and the particular tenderness of a woman who watched you grow up in her kitchen. Who once bandaged your knee when you fell off the tire swing in her backyard. And who gathered you in a tight embrace the night she found you sobbing after her oldest son broke your heart. As far as I know, she never knew why I was crying that night, but she hugged me and fed me ice cream and told me life wouldn’t always be so sad.

I stand up. It's instinct. You don't stay seated when Rebecca Blankenship comes to you with tears in her eyes.

“Mrs. Blanken⁠—”

“Oh, stop that.” She pulls me into her arms before I can finish.

She smells like gardenias and the lavender sachets she keeps in her linen closet, and something about the familiarity of it—the sheer mom-ness of it—cracks something in my chest that I've been holding tight since this all began. I miss my own mother with a ferocity that nearly makes my knees buckle, but I refuse to break down at this party.

Even before my own mom passed, Rebecca has been my second mother. Her arms around me feel like safety and approval and home in a way that makes my eyes sting.

“I am so happy,” she whispers against my hair. She pulls back, holding me at arm's length so she can look at my face. Her eyes are glassy and her smile is so bright, I’m fairly sure it could power a small city. “I am so happy, sweetheart.”