Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
TESSA
It had been three days since Bryce dropped his love bomb on me in the middle of Fresh Foods, and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
Hardly a second passed where I wasn’t thinking back to those words or the look on his face when he said them.
I felt like I was coming apart at the seams, and the only thing holding me together was burying myself in work.
However, that only took part of my day, and I was sadly lacking on other ways to fill my time.
So when Rory called and invited me to meet her at Evergreen Diner for lunch, I’d quickly jumped on the offer.
Anything to keep myself busy and my mind preoccupied.
When I stepped through the doors into the bustling diner I was hit with a wave of uncertainty.
I hadn’t seen her since the day she showed me around town, and even though she’d been cool that whole time, making sure not to mention Bryce or ask questions, there was a part of me that was still nervous.
“Tessa, hey. Over here.” I followed the sound of Rory’s voice and found her sitting at an extra-long booth by the window. And she wasn’t alone. “Thanks so much for coming. I want you to meet some of my friends.”
I stood awkwardly as she introduced me to a gorgeous blonde named Gypsy, a stunning and very pregnant redhead named Nona, and an adorable doe-eyed woman with highlighted light brown hair named Eden.
“Um, hi,” I murmured, waving like an idiot. “Nice to meet you.”
“Take a seat, hon. We won’t bite. Promise.” Gypsy gave me a friendly wink and scooted down, making room for me to sit in the booth beside her, across from the other three women. I slid in, my spine straight as an arrow as the three new faces studied me with open curiosity.
The unnerving silence that enveloped us was broken by Gypsy.
“All right, it’s obvious you’re uncomfortable around us, so how about we just get it all out in the open.
Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Yes, we all know and like Bryce, but we heard the story.
Hell, the whole town’s heard it by now, and even though he’s our friend, we’re all in agreement that what he did is seriously messed up. ”
I looked to the woman with wide, slightly panicked eyes. “Uh . . .”
“But I’ll be honest,” she continued, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t super curious about what went down between you two.”
“Gypsy,” Eden snapped in warning. “She just sat down. You’re gonna scare her off.”
She looked across the table at her friend, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “What? I’m just stating the facts.”
Those big doe eyes narrowed into a glare that didn’t hold much power. “No, you’re being a nosey pain in the ass.”
Nona’s hand rose in the air a few inches. “Um, just to say, I’m a little curious too.” After that confession, she looked over to me and smiled politely. “But I swear, I’m not gonna ask. Don’t worry.”
I couldn’t help it, Gypsy was just so blunt and Nona so innocent, that I couldn’t keep from laughing.
“I will say, I get it,” Eden chimed back in as my laughter tapered off into giggles. “You’re so pretty. I can totally picture you guys together.”
“Oh my God,” Nona breathed, placing her hands on her rounded belly and leaning closer to Eden. “Can you imagine how adorable their babies would be?”
“Yes!” she returned on a high-pitched squeak as my heart flexed, pounding against my ribcage.
I used to imagine that too, a little girl with my long hair and his eyes. Or a little boy with—Knock it off, Tessa!
“All right,” Rory chided, cutting everyone off like she sensed my sudden discomfort. “I invited Tessa so she could meet you guys, not so you could make it awkward for her.”
“It’s fine,” I said, doing my best to shake off the last dregs of nervousness. “I get it.”
“Not to mention, you’re this gorgeous thing that just so happens to be married to one of the hottest guys in town,” Gypsy added. “That only adds to the mystery.”
“There’s nothing mysterious about me, I promise. I’m just new to town, that’s all. I spent plenty of time being the new girl growing up, so I know the curiosity comes with that. The shine will eventually wear off.”
I saw the flash of sympathy in Rory’s eyes and quickly looked away.
“Did your family move you around a lot?” Eden asked.
There was something in her tone that sounded genuine, and I knew deep down she wasn’t trying to be nosey.
She just wanted to get to know me. Glancing back to Rory, I knew my eyes held the question, but I voiced it anyway. “You didn’t tell them?”
“Wasn’t my story to tell. Small towns like to gossip, but I figured that was something you should be in charge of telling in your own time.”
I gave her a small, appreciative grin just as Gypsy asked, “Tell us what? What story? You can’t drop a breadcrumb like that, then leave us hanging.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, turning my attention to the table at large. “I don’t try to keep it a secret or anything, but I grew up in the system. My parents died when I was ten, and I spent the next eight years in foster care. That’s what Rory was talking about.”
I expected the standard reaction that always came with that announcement. The pitying looks, the apologies, the oh, you poor thing tone of voice that set my teeth on edge. But I didn’t get any of that.
Instead, shocking me to my very core, Gypsy hooked her arm around my shoulder in a sideways hug, and announced, “Looks like you’re gonna fit right in with us.”
My eyebrows lifted so high they nearly touched my hairline. “Huh?”
She went on to explain. “Well, my folks weren’t good for much more than popping out babies. None of which they actually wanted to raise. I’m the oldest of six, and I raised them all myself, even before the worthless wastes of space took off for good.”
My eyes went wide, but before I could wrap my head around what I’d just heard, Eden spoke up.
“My folks could compete with Gypsy’s for Worst Parents of the Year.
And I had an older brother who got off on tormenting me before I finally got out.
And I don’t mean in the way a big brother typically torments you.
I mean, stealing from me and giving my naked picture to the guys on the football team for some extra cash. ”
“I didn’t have crappy parents, but I married a man who turned out to be the world’s biggest piece of shit,” Nona said. “He’s in prison now for selling drugs. But that was only after the asshole he was in business with took my kids to use as leverage to get the money my ex had lost.”
“You’re kidding?” I breathed.
She shook her head. “Wish I was. He was caught trying to flee town.”
“And as you know, Cord was a foster kid too,” Rory added.
My lips parted, to say what I didn’t know, but before I could get a word out, another woman hit the booth with the force of a hurricane.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry! I know I’m late, but I swear to God, working with those men is like being surrounded by toddlers on a regular basis!
” Sage, the woman I’d met at Alpha Omega a few weeks back, collapsed into the booth right beside me with a beleaguered sigh. “So what did I miss?”
“Tessa just told us about growing up in foster care, so we were telling her about our shitty parents and loser exes to make her feel included,” Gypsy informed her.
“Ooh! Me next,” she chirped, shifting on the bench to face me. “So, my she-beast of a mom got my sweet, perfect dad locked up for attempted murder. But we only recently found out it was her behind the whole thing, and only after he got out of prison.”
My jaw fell open so wide it nearly hit the table. “You’re kidding?”
“Nope. And this was after I caught her banging my now-ex-husband in our bed.” She shivered dramatically. “That’s an image no amount of bleach will ever scrub from a person’s brain. Believe me.”
“See?” Nona said with a bright smile on her face. “You’re in good company, doll. We were all dealt shitty hands in some way, but we managed to find each other, and we’re all better for it.”
All my life, I’d been the odd man out, the sad girl with no family. Other kids behaved as if being an orphan was some kind of disease you could contract by standing too close, so after a while, I stopped trying.
The fewer friends I had, the less likely it was I’d have to share the sob story of my life.
But these women had just shared pasts as bad as my own, and they hadn’t blinked.
They’d each been damaged, but they’d found each other.
They were bonded. Like Nona said, they were better off for it, and here they were, doing their best to include me.
I had to battle the flood of emotion coursing through me. “So, what you’re saying is, you have to have a sob story to be part of this group.”
Sage replied, “And since you fit the bill, you’re in. Welcome to the club.”
“Okay, so now that we’ve done the heavy, how about we talk about the fun stuff,” Eden said, clapping her hands excitedly. “Like the Halloween Festival.”
I turned to her and lifted my brows. “Halloween Festival?”
“It’s so much fun,” Nona chirped. “They have carnival rides and games, tents set up for food, live music, and last year there was a really cool hay maze.”
Gypsy spoke next. “Everyone attends, even people from the other towns around Hope Valley. And everyone goes all out, dressing up in costumes.”
“The money made goes to different charities,” Rory told me. “That’s one of the reasons I asked you to lunch. What do you think of having an attraction set up for Hope House?”
“We should definitely do that,” I cried. “A lot of those games are for little kids, so what if we did something the teenagers would like, like a haunted house or something?”
Rory leaned forward, her eyes dancing. “That’s a great idea!”
Reaching into my bag, I pulled out the little notebook I carried everywhere with me and started jotting things down as I spoke at a rapid pace. “We can ask some of the kids at the home if they want to be part of it. I think the older ones will like the idea of scaring the crap out of people.”
“Oh, this is great!” Sage exclaimed. “I wanna be part of it. I bet I could be an awesome zombie psych ward nurse or something.”
My mind was spinning in a million different directions, and as I spoke, the women voiced their own ideas.
I barely took the time to order and consume my food as I jotted down plans for our haunted house. My excitement was too overwhelming to concentrate on much else.
“There’s an old barn on the property where they set everything up,” Rory spoke, her enthusiasm just as palpable as mine. “I’m sure if we ask around, we’d be able to find people to help us convert the place. If you have time later this week, we can go check it out.”
“I’d love that.”
By the time lunch wrapped up, I was surprised to find that I actually felt like part of this group of incredible women.
They were funny and sweet, they openly cared about each other, and they treated me as if they’d known me forever.
I now had five new contacts in my phone with talks of girls’ nights and dinners to be had in the very near future.
I left the diner a short while later—after receiving hugs from each of them—feeling for the first time in my life that I was actually part of something big. All I’d ever wanted was to belong, to be part of a community, and I felt like I was finally starting to build to that.
Things may not have turned out as picture perfect as I’d expected when I first moved to this town, but I couldn’t shake the sense that Hope Valley was where I belonged.
So right then and there, I made a decision.
I was going to let go of the past. I was going to dig myself out of the pain and heartbreak I’d allowed to pull me down like quicksand all these years.
I was developing friendships, I had a job I loved, and I was becoming part of a community.
So I was finally, finally going to start looking forward, because for the first time in a really long time, the path ahead of me was looking bright.