Be Mine, Sweetheart (Something Borrowed)

by Codi Gary

  “Chris and I are just fine where we are, but Mom, you really need to realize that I’m an adult. I don’t need you to buy my plane ticket or hotel room.”

  “I know, baby, but I wanted to be sure that you wouldn’t get sucked into some kind of work emergency.”

  Did her parents actually think she would put work before them? “Never. You guys are celebrating a huge milestone and I wouldn’t miss it for anything. But for your fiftieth, please don’t spring a skydiving trip over the jungle on me, okay?”

  “You got it, baby! I’ll email you all your travel itinerary, and don’t worry. I know you’re a genius when it comes to weddings, but the hotel has assured me that both the photographer and planner come highly recommended.”

  “Is this going to be a full-on ceremony or…”

  “Oh, I need to run, honey, but yes, you’re going to be my maid of honor. Veronica promised to pick up your dress next week so if there are any last-minute alterations, we can get those done.”

  “Well, I love you.”

  “I love you too, honey! Talk soon.”

  Kelly hung up the phone and pressed the intercom. “Send Veronica in to see me when she gets back.”

  “Yes, Ms. Barrow.”

  Kelly clicked off and groaned, resting her head on her desk. When had her life become an awful romantic comedy? Sure, her love life was in shambles, but at least her parents got to renew their vows and have another romantic trip, while she had yet to have one.

  God, she shouldn’t be like that. Her parents still loved each other after all this time. They deserved to celebrate forty years.

  Someone knocked at her door, destroying her mild pity party.

  “What?”

  Rylie poked her head in. “Bad time?”

  “Yes, but if you’ve brought something sinful with you, I will forget all about it.”

  Rylie pushed the door open and held up a plastic container. “Your wish is my command.”

  Rylie set it on her desk and popped the lid off, revealing an assortment of mini cupcakes. They all had brightly colored frosting swirled on top, and Kelly’s mouth watered.

  “What are these for?”

  “I thought I’d do this for tastings from now on. This way, we waste less cake and it isn’t so messy for some of the more…high-maintenance brides.”

  “I like it. Speaking of high maintenance, my mother called me a few minutes ago.”

  “Yeah? What’s happening?”

  Kelly pulled the wrapping off her cupcake, a chocolate concoction with red frosting. “My parents are celebrating their fortieth anniversary in Hawaii by renewing their vows.”

  “Oh, how romantic!”

  Kelly made a face. “Yeah, except they didn’t tell me. She just went behind my back and arranged everything with Veronica. Told her to keep my schedule open. As though I didn’t handle wedding arrangements professionally and couldn’t help her.”

  “Maybe she wanted to do it her way and was afraid you’d take over?”

  “I don’t take over! Do I?”

  Rylie watched her thoughtfully, as if gauging her response. “Well, sometimes you get very…assertive with your opinion. But in a good way.”

  “How can that be taken in a good way?”

  “All right, forget I said that. Perhaps she went behind your back because she knows you’re very busy and that can sometimes make you distracted. Maybe she just wanted to make your life easier?”

  “Maybe. She’s organized for Chris’s parents to come…and Chris.”

  “And is this good?”

  Kelly sighed loudly. “It would be…except I told Chris I loved him last night.”

  “Oh wow. I was wondering why you called me so late for a ride. Why didn’t you tell me? What did he say?”

  “He said, “I know.”

  Rylie’s dark eyes narrowed. “Um, no he didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but it’s kind of our thing. It’s the Princess Leia and Han Solo bit. So, I don’t think he thought I was serious, but still it was painful to just lay there next to him.”

  “I can imagine. I’m sorry, Kelly.”

  Kelly took a bite of her cupcake, sighing over the sweet frosting and light, fluffy cake. “It’s okay. I was just laughing because here I am, months away from being thirty-two, and I feel like I’m only twenty in dating years. I’m years behind everyone else. Plus, Chris and I keep having misunderstandings and I am just so tired of trying to figure out what the heck is happening between us.”

  Rylie shrugged. “I always thought Chris was really smart, but now, I’m convinced he might be a dumbass.”

  Kelly didn’t really think Chris was purposefully being obtuse. She was pretty sure after their talk last night there was deeper stuff going on.

  “I think it could just be that we aren’t in the same head space. Cassidy broke up with him less than a month ago and I know he said it wasn’t working, but maybe he’s still hung up on her. That would make sense. Meanwhile, my feelings for him have been growing stronger every year, with no one else except him in my life. No men, I mean.”

  “I get it. I always had a feeling there was more between you and Chris, but I thought you two were just keeping it on the down low,” Rylie said. “Still, I think Chris is right there with you. I’ve seen the way he watches you. Maybe he’s just scared?”

  “Last night, he told me he was afraid I couldn’t love anyone else as much as I loved Ray.”

  “Is that true?” Rylie asked.

  “No.” How could she explain it without trivializing the seven and a half years she’d been with her first love? “I loved Ray with my whole heart, and would have married him, built a life with him. He took a part of me with him when he died, and he was hard to get over. But what I feel for Chris is…more mature? It’s had time to grow and now, I want him to just realize that I made room for him a long time ago without realizing it. That there is no competition.”

  Rylie drummed floral print-painted fingernails on Kelly’s desk, her eyebrow quirked. “So maybe you should have stayed last night and explained that this morning, instead of running off?”

  “Okay, I don’t need you to be a smartass.”

  “Sorry, but every time Dustin and I have had issues, it’s because one of us wasn’t being honest and open about how we were feeling. I truly believe that everyone’s lives would be better if we just talked to each other instead of being so scared.”

  The scene from A Few Good Men flashed through Kelly’s mind as Jack Nicholson screamed, “You can’t handle the truth!”

  Still, Rylie was right. Everything that had gone wrong with Chris and her had happened because they couldn’t put what they were feeling into words.

  “I’m trying to follow your advice, but it is hard.”

  “Everything worth having is hard to get. If it were easy, the results wouldn’t be as rewarding.”

  Kelly laughed. “Okay, did everyone in my life take a class in how to make inspirational quotes?”

  “Nope. I just spend way too much time reading Facebook memes.”

  Chapter 27

  On Friday afternoon, Chris stood over Ray’s grave, reading his headstone for the hundredth time.

  Raymond Charleston Jackson

  Beloved Son. Brave Soldier. Honorable Friend.

  Chris’s eyes pricked with tears as he squatted down and put his hand on the top of the headstone, just like he used to do to Ray’s shoulder. The sun beat down on him, alerting him that the ungodly hot weather of summer was fast approaching. Yet the green lawn of the graveyard would never turn yellow like the rest of the plant life in Sweetheart. In fact, the ground squished under his feet, and water droplets clung to the blades of grass around him.

  He had no idea why he’d come here today. It was crazy and sentimental. Except that he’d just needed to talk to his best friend and
this was as close as he could get to Ray.

  “Hey, man. I know it’s been a while since I’ve been here. Although, I’m kind of convinced that it is really you visiting me in my dreams. If I’m right, give me a sign.” He stood back up, looking around for a cool breeze or some imaginary being to punch him in the shoulder, but nothing happened. Still, he kept talking. “Anyway, if you really have been looking down on me, and those dreams weren’t all in my head, then you know that Kelly and I have feelings for each other. And I want to apologize. This is something that happened. Neither of us planned it, but I’m struggling with everything. I don’t know why I’m so nervous about being with her, but I am. All I keep thinking about is that if we don’t work out, things won’t be the same. Then I realize it’s already too late; we’ve already reached the point of no return.”

  Chris wiped at his eyes when his vision blurred, and he realized he was crying, that tears were falling down over his cheeks. “Damn Ray, I really miss you. There was never anyone like you. I’m making friends though, trying not to be such an antisocial loser. But…none of them have our history. No matter how cool they are, they can never be you.”

  The snap of a twig behind him startled him and he turned to find Ray’s mother, Grace, watching him with a small smile. Her long black braids were pulled up away from her face, strands of gray highlighted in them now. She wore a loose, floral dress that ended just above her ankles, and gladiator sandals encased her feet. She was holding a flower in a pot, her dark eyes sad.

  “I’m sorry, Chris. I didn’t want to intrude.”

  He tried to erase the evidence of his emotional meltdown with his sleeve. “Mrs. Jackson, not at all. I was just checking in with him. Making sure he knew he was missed.”

  She stepped up beside to him and set the plant down next to Ray’s headstone. Then, she straightened up and pulled Chris in for a tight hug, her head barely coming to his shoulder.

  “My boy was lucky to have such a good friend.”

  Chris hugged her back. He’d spent so many dinners and birthdays with her family, and she had always treated him like a second son. “I was lucky too, ma’am.”

  When she pulled away, her cheeks were wet. “How’s Kelly? I haven’t seen her since Mother’s Day.”

  Chris was surprised. He’d had no idea Kelly still visited Mrs. Jackson, and it made him feel all the worse for not making an effort to check on her and her husband more. “She’s good. Busy with Something Borrowed, as usual.”

  “Oh, yes. Max and I are so proud of her for everything she’d accomplished. Ray would be proud of her too.” Mrs. Jackson seemed to hesitate, then asked, “Is she seeing anyone?”

  “Um…yeah, she is.”

  Although she smiled, Grace’s eyes held a deep sadness that caused an ache in Chris’s chest. “I am so glad. I mean, I was always grateful for the devotion she showed my son, even after he was gone, but Ray adored her. He’d want her to be happy.” Grace met his gaze searchingly. “Is she?”

  “Happy?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Chris nodded. “She’s getting there, I think.”

  “Good.” She patted his arm, and shot him a teasing grin. “What about you? Still seeing that doctor?”

  “No, I…well she broke up with me.”

  Grace clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Oh, I am sorry. You’ll know when you meet the right girl. She will bring out all the good things in you and you’ll do the same for her. Just be sure when you find her that you never let her go.”

  Chris’s mind strayed to Kelly and his dream of Ray.

  “Mrs. Jackson, I’m…I’m the one seeing Kelly.”

  A shadow passed over her face briefly, but it was swiftly gone, replaced by a tender smile. She squeezed his arm, a supportive gesture he was sure was meant to assure him she was fine with it. “I was wondering when that was going to happen.”

  “You knew that Kelly and I were going to get together?” He was a little surprised by that, considering it had taken them so long to realize it themselves.

  “Not before Ray died, but after…it was obvious, at least to me. You took care of Kelly when we lost Ray. We all had our own grief, and supported each other, but you absorbed hers into your own. You were her strength when she needed it and I knew then that eventually, Kelly would realize what an amazing thing it is to find love twice in a lifetime. Like I did.”

  Chris stared at her. “I didn’t know you were with anyone but Mr. J.” Her husband had been a P.E. coach at the middle school and everyone had called him that.

  “It was before I married. I was a sophomore in high school and he was a senior. I was mad for that boy, let me tell you. But he joined the army. He was supposed to get leave to come to my high school graduation, but instead, his best friend came by to let me know that he had been killed in a car accident on his way home to me.”

  Chris was enthralled and wondered if Ray had ever heard this story before. “Oh, man. I am so sorry. Wasn’t Mr. J in the army too?”

  She smiled softly. “Yes. He was my sweetheart’s best friend. Neither of us planned it. He sent me letters, at first telling me stories about him and my David. Soon, it became more. Our hopes and dreams. Then, one night, he showed up on my doorstep with his duffel bag and his discharge papers. He told me that he wanted to tell me in person that he was in love with me. A year later, we were married, and then nine months after we had Ray.”

  “Wow. Did Ray know?” he asked.

  “No, I never told him that story. He knows David was his dad’s best friend, but he didn’t know that my love for David was how we met. Life sometimes has tragic ways of bringing two people together and making something beautiful.”

  Chris was blown away by her understanding, and blurted out, “I…I haven’t been able to tell her…that I love her, I mean.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I don’t know. I keep dreaming of Ray for some reason and he keeps telling me to man up or let her go.”

  She laughed, wiping at her wet eyes. “That sounds like something he’d say.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know, I guess I thought maybe visiting him would give me clarity? I know that sounds stupid.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I come here to talk to him as well, usually on Sundays. Today I was headed to the market and it was almost as though he was asking me to come.” She stepped closer to the headstone, running her hand over the top as though she was stroking her son’s cheek. “I always feel he’s with me, but there is something about here…I sense him.”

  Chris thought about how moments before Grace had arrived, he’d asked Ray for a sign he was listening. Maybe sending his mom had been his way of letting Chris know he was here.

  “As to why you can’t tell Kelly how you feel, I don’t have an answer for why, not that you asked. I will tell you that if you can’t give her what she needs, then you should let her go.”

  Her advice echoed Ray’s from his dream.

  “What do you think she needs?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Chris nodded and leaned over to kiss her brown cheek. “Thanks, Mrs. Jackson. It was good to see you.”

  “You too, Chris. Don’t be a stranger.”

  “I won’t.”

  Chris walked back to his truck and paused on the driver’s side, watching Grace over the hood of his truck. She knelt beside her son’s grave, her head bent. Whether it was grief or prayer, Chris couldn’t tell, but he stared as a surprising summer breeze swung her long hair to the side, and ruffled her sunshine-yellow dress.

  Chris climbed inside his truck and left the cemetery. He took a turn down Main and headed to the Pocket Full of Posies Flower Shop in the heart of Sweetheart. When he walked through the door, he heard a man and a woman arguing in the back, their voices so loud they were echoing.

  “Get out of my shop, Charlie Kent
, before I castrate you with whatever’s handy!”

  That was Kenzie Olsen. She’d been two years ahead of him in school and had always been loud.

  “All I said was that your roses were overpriced!” That had to be Charlie Kent, Dustin’s older brother. The two of them had been lovers once upon a time, but apparently, they were mortal enemies now.

  There was a loud bang and the shattering sound of broken glass.

  Charlie came running through the hallway behind the counter, coming to a halt when he saw Chris.

  “Hey, Chris. Didn’t hear you come in. Fair warning, she’s in a bit of a mood—”

  “I am going to kill you, Charlie!” Kenzie yelled, coming up behind him with a vase in her hand.

  “Good to see you, Chris.” Charlie sped up to the door and turned to Kenzie with a grin. “See you later, Kenz.”

  He ducked out of the door before she could throw the other vase, which she set down on the counter with a deep exhale.

  Kenzie pushed some blond tendrils that had escaped her bandana out of her red face. “That man drives me crazy.”

  “I can see that,” Chris deadpanned.

  “Sorry about the drama. What can I get you?”

  Chris pointed to an assorted arrangement of bright Gerbera daisies in a mix of orange, yellow, and pink in the case behind her. “I want those.”

  Kenzie smiled. “Excellent. Do you want a card?”

  “No, I’ll be delivering these personally.”

  Kenzie pulled the arrangement out of the case and set them in front of him with a wink. When she handed him the price tag, he knew why. Yowza. He was in the wrong business.

  “You want to make a comment about my flower prices too?” she teased.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, handing her his credit card.

  As he was walking out, his phone rang. It was his mother, whom he adored, but balancing the vase and his phone proved tricky. He couldn’t answer for at least four rings, barely managing to hit talk before it went to voicemail.