Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
M y head was as muddled as it was achy. Despite the protests of my family, I got in my car and drove across town to Frances Vega’s parents’ house.
My best friend and I had gone different directions after high school.
Frances had chosen a fancy Ivy League college where she could attempt to improve upon her science genius, and I had attended a plain Jane smaller school a few hours away.
Even though Frances and I had taken radically different paths, we had remained close, visiting one another at least twice a year.
“Katie!” Frances opened the door, and I was immediately swallowed into a mighty hug.
“Thank God you’re alive! I’ve missed you!
” She pulled me inside to the kitchen, our old hangout.
Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was a home decorator’s nightmare of two cultures that were supposed to be blended, but looked to be more at war.
Frances’s father was a first generation Mexican-American, and her mother’s family was Chinese.
They were each very proud of their cultures and believed their home should show it, from the food they ate to the art on the wall.
Frances still hated every bit of it and resented the years of cultural tug-of-war.
“So,” I said, taking a glass of tea from Frances. “What’s new? ”
“I’m getting married! I’m getting married! I’m marrying Joey Benson!”
I smiled at my friend’s crazy enthusiasm and bragged appropriately when she shoved her engagement ring in my face. “Frances . . . ” I sat down on a stool at the bar. “You’ve barely dated this guy. What’s the rush?”
“We’ve been together three glorious months. And when it’s right, it’s right. Besides, I’ve known Joey all my life.”
“Yeah, knew him, but not as in friends with him.” Joey was four years older than us and had rarely been around when we’d hung out with Charlie. The couple had connected through Facebook, both of them being “friends” of Charlie. “You probably hadn’t ever spoken to him before he asked you out.”
“I know!” She sipped her own tea. “Isn’t it the coolest story?”
Apparently it was a rhetorical question, as Frances didn’t give me a second to respond.
“We have so much to do. I still have to find a dress, find you a dress, order the flowers, write my vows, get some shoes that look pretty but don’t make me hate the world, and finish finding us an apartment in Massachusetts. It’s so much fun!”
Frances seemed to speak in never-ending exclamation points and sentences whose theme were all “yay!” How could either one of us be old enough to be college graduates, let alone old enough to get married?
Some days I just wanted to be sixteen again—going to high school, no rent payments, no major boy wounds, when every dream was still shiny, polished, and possible.
Sure, we had worries, but nothing like the ones in adulthood.
Nothing like the ones lodged in my brain like a splinter I couldn’t extract.
“You know I’m happy for you, right?” How to approach this? I didn’t want to burst any happy balloons here.
“Of course you are. You’re my best friend. Were you thinking strapless for your dress or is that just a bra nightmare?”
“But have you considered slowing it down? Wait to get married until you get settled at school?” While Joey had chosen the technical route, becoming a mechanic and doing something with some fancy form of auto painting, Frances had already earned her masters and was now on her way to Harvard for a PhD in nuclear physics.
While I played dress-up for a living.
“A Christmas wedding might be fun,” I suggested.
“You sound just like my dad.” Frances had inherited her father’s thick, wavy black hair and her mother’s porcelain skin. Her nerdy glasses did nothing to hide her enviable exotic looks. Joey was getting a total cover model. “We know what we’re doing, and we want to get married now.”
“You’re such a planner, though. You and that scientific brain of yours. You like to pore over every detail. Wouldn’t you feel better if you had time to really plan this ceremony? That way you could make it just how you wanted it instead of whatever’s available last minute.”
“The important elements are available.” Frances smiled. “Joey, his family, my family, and our closest friends.” She pulled me to her for another breath-restricting squeeze. “Thank you so much for coming in all the way from London. It means so much to me.”
“Anything for you.”
“Here, sit.” Frances patted a bar stool covered in the colors of the Mexican flag as she reached for her iPad.
“It’s going to be a small wedding, so you’re my only bridesmaid.
Do you like the navy for your dress or maybe the coral?
Because those are my two colors. Aren’t they so pretty together?
The guys are going to wear gray suits with pink bow ties. . .”
The rest of the details rolled past me like a fog, and I traced my finger across the bubbles meandering down my glass. I had kissed Charlie Benson.
Panic was one crazy lady. She made you do things you didn’t know you wanted to do.
My last moments of life, and I chose to lock lips with Charlie.
And when he’d kissed me again in the hospital, my heart rate had more than spiked the monitor beside me.
He’d kissed me senseless, only stopping when my parents had returned.
As my family had chattered around us, Charlie had given me a slow wink, then disappeared. Disappeared like a hot specter of sexy.
One I had no business getting involved with.
Frances cleared her throat, drawing me back to the present. From behind a pair of hot pink glasses, she studied my face. “Are you okay? How’s your head?”
“I’m, fine. Just a slight headache. Jet lag.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe a little concern for you.”
“Katie, this is the right thing. I have never felt such peace about something in my entire life.”
“Last Tuesday I felt a great peace about a sushi bar. I spent the whole night clutching the toilet and begging for death.”
Frances laughed. “I know what I’m doing. Be happy for me.”
Acting happy for her was one of my jobs as maid-of-honor. I could do this. “I just want the best for you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Is that what happened to you in London? With Ian? Did he hurt you?”
I twisted in my seat, searching for that cookie jar that Mrs. Vega always kept on her counter. “Where’s Pancho Villa?” When you lifted his sombrero, a mountain of chocolate chip cookies would usually be inside.
“First, you’re dodging my question. And second, Mom got rid of him. My parents no longer eat cookies. They keep carrot sticks and Greek yogurt in the fridge.”
Too many changes at once! My leaving the theater. Frances getting married. Mr. and Mrs. Vega going sugar free. My head throbbed with it all.
“So you were telling me about your breakup with Ian.”
I propped my chin into my hand and sighed. I had said very little to my best friend about Ian. “Ian cheated on me, and I broke up with him. That’s pretty much all there is to it. I thought I knew him, but I found out I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry Ian broke your heart. And if I didn’t have a quickie wedding to plan, I’d hop on a plane and punch him in the man parts.”
I’d already done that, but it was nice to hear.
“You’ll find love,” Frances said like an age-old sage who had it all figured out. “And when you do, it will make every old hurt fade away. One day you won’t even think about Ian.”
Funny, I seemed to already have arrived at the point of forgetting Ian. Maybe it was the hard bump to the head. But all I could think about was Charlie.
“When do your parents leave for Haiti?” Frances asked.
“Monday. I miss them already.”
“I wish James could perform my ceremony.”
I bit my lip on further helpful comments. We chatted and planned for another two hours, then I hugged the future Mrs. Benson and walked to my car.
“Thanks for flying in for my wedding, Katie,” Frances said as she stood by my Toyota. “It means a lot to me that you’d come in for a long visit.”
“Oh, I’m not here to visit.” I settled in behind the wheel. “I’m here to stay.”
All the marriage talk had left me more than a little depressed. Frances was getting married, fully stepping into the adult world. And where was I? In some alternate universe, caught between the college years and whatever came next.
My car seemed to have a mind of its own, and before I knew it, I was on Maple Street, pulling into the parking lot of the Valiant Theater.
Between college and church, I had gotten to travel abroad in the last five or six years—France, Ireland, London.
I had seen the Eiffel Tower at sunset, sitting on a blanket with a crusty loaf of bread and a chilled bottle of wine.
I had done mission work in the wet, raw wilds of a Panamanian rain forest. I had stood on a bridge overlooking the Thames, as well as watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
But no place was as lovely to me as the Valiant Theater.
James and Millie had purchased the 1930s remnant, lovingly restoring it ’til it was a reborn architectural masterpiece.
The crown jewel of In Between, the Valiant was the place where I had first given my heart away, finding my soul and purpose on the wooden planks of the stage.
The theater had a history, every inch of it holding a story. My own tale was within these walls .
As I opened the doors, the familiar smell greeted me. Popcorn, wood polish, and a magical scent that slipped from the dressing rooms, swirled around the spotlights, and flew in the air with all the boldness that accompanied hopes, dreams, and what-ifs.
It was easy to believe anything was possible here.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for these old, tired eyes.”
Sam Dayberry, caretaker of the Valiant, and my grandmother’s sainted husband, intercepted me in the lobby, arms outstretched, smile wide.