Easy Reunion
Tracey Jerald
Contents
Easy Reunion
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
The Boudreaux Universe
About the Author
Also By Tracey Jerald
Acknowledgments
Easy Reunion
A Boudreaux Universe Novel
By Tracey Jerald
EASY REUNION
A Boudreaux Universe Novel
Copyright © 2020 by Tracey Jerald
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Editor: One Love Editing (http://oneloveediting.com)
Proof Edits: Holly Malgeri (https://www.facebook.com/HollysRedHotReviews/)
Cover Design: Amy Queau – QDesign (https://www.qcoverdesign.com)
Prologue
Prologue – Kelsey
I’m so cold.
Even as the nurse lays another heated blanket over me to stop my shivering, I can’t seem to get warm.
It’s not nerves; it’s an unusual fear that what I’m about to subject myself to isn’t going to change a thing—that no matter what, I’ll always be what they taunted me with all through school.
Gross. Disgusting. Fat.
King Kong.
It may be a whisper only through my mind, but it’s like someone shouted it in the pre-op room. I’m more grateful than ever for the anti-nausea medicine that’s pumping through my system as my stomach roils. Tears well up in my eyes as I recall the last person to call me that. I’d just had my high school diploma placed in my hand. I was so eager to be done with Forsyth Academy, I never expected the attack.
Not from him.
Never from him.
He’d always protected me as much as he could from the bullies who thought nothing of shoving me to my knees, making me eat something, anything, before they’d let me stand again. There was the time I caught him out of the corner of my eye slapping someone’s hand away before they could slip another note into my bag commenting on my weight.
I began to think he looked inside and saw me. Maybe he didn’t care for me the way I did him, but Rierson Perrault was my first love. It wasn’t because his smile made my stomach clench or the way his dark hair would fall across his forehead when it was drying. It was because he had something everyone else at that school didn’t have.
A heart.
Then I made a fatal mistake, and it showed me there’s no mercy for someone like me, only different levels of hell to endure. God, why was I so stupid to leave my bag with my journal in it after I was cornered in the library that day by the cheerleaders?
It wasn’t long before posters of King Kong holding a miniaturized Rierson were photoshopped around campus. Sections of my handwriting blown up and slapped in every bathroom stall.
And the cafeteria? I groan aloud, drawing the attention of a nurse.
“Are you all right, Miss Kennedy? It won’t be long now.” She reaches over and pats my hand kindly.
“I’m fine,” I murmur.
No, it won’t be long until every wish I’ve ever made comes true. By working at a job I never wanted to for years, I’ve managed to save up enough money for what’s about to happen. Soon the past will be erased. And maybe, just maybe one day, the pain inside will heal as well as I’m told the incisions will.
There’s a flurry of movement as one of the physician’s assistants comes in. Rick, a handsome man in blue scrubs, leans over me. “Are you ready, Kelsey?” He’s been kind over the few years I’ve known him.
I know he’s trying to reassure me, but I can barely nod. I’m too overwhelmed to speak.
“Then let’s get you to the surgical suite.” Whistling a tune, he walks alongside as my bed is wheeled down the corridor. “Dr. Toli is getting scrubbed in. While we’re en route, can you tell me your full name, date of birth, and what we’re doing today.”
I manage to rattle off the first two. When it comes to the third, I flush hard. “A vertical gastric bypass with a full panniculectomy.” I wait for the attractive assistant to make some cutting remark, but all he does is smile.
“Excellent. Are you excited? Nervous?”
I chew on my lip before I answer, “Anxious to get started.”
By this point, we’ve reached the OR suite. Rick lowers the bedside rail and helps me to sit up. The anxiety medicine they pumped into my IV earlier makes me a bit woozy. “Kelsey, do you remember what they said you’d have to do at this point in your pre-op appointment?”
I nod. I weigh so much, the doctors and nurses can’t lift me onto the table to begin my procedure. “Yes.” I start to swing my legs over the side.
“Take it easy,” he warns. Soon, I’m standing next to the surgical table where, for the next nine hours, I’m going to trust Dr. Toli and his team to change my life.
“Okay, Kelsey. Are you ready to climb up? You can wait to take off your gown until you’re up there if you’re more comfortable.”
I shake my head. With a determination I didn’t realize I had, I reach behind me. It takes a quick flick of my wrist to undo the bow holding the enormous surgical gown. It pools near my feet. Rick kicks it out of the way so no one trips on the tent of material.
Naked, with folds of fat falling over one another, I stand proudly for the room to see. This is the last time I’ll be like this—exposed, ready to be brutalized either by strength or words. When none come, I use the specialized step stool to climb onto the surgical table.
After getting me settled center on the narrow space, the anesthesiologist comes behind my head. I blink up at him hazily due to the drugs. “Kelsey, I’m going to put this mask on your face. When I do, I want you to tell me about the first thing you’re going to buy when you’re out of surgery.”
“Wait!” Everyone seems to pause in their frantic activity to listen. “Will you promise me something?” I feel
tears I haven’t shed in years well in my eyes.
Dabbing at them with a tissue, he asks, “If I can.”
“Will you make me beautiful?” I choke out.
He shakes his head. “We don’t have to, because you already are. All we’re doing is enhancing what’s already there.” That’s sweet of him to say. I find myself relaxing. “Now, are you ready?”
I nod. The mask makes a hissing noise as it approaches my face.
“What’s the first thing you want to treat yourself to?” he reminds me to answer.
“Shoes,” I mumble, as lethargy settles over me. “Really expensive, super-sexy shoes. The kind I can’t fit…”
And as the medicine knocks me out, I know I’ll fit into a pair of store-bought shoes. Even if it’s to silently cheer in the face at every person who hurt me after I take on the world and conquer it.
Because from this moment on, there’s no looking back at the past.
Chapter 1
Kelsey – Present Day
Savannah, Georgia. I feel the familiar churn begin in my stomach that used to happen every time I’d drive to school each day. The idea of facing my classmates after all these years causes my stomach to drop almost as severely as the last altitude bump did.
Jesus, what the hell am I thinking?
I don’t have a single person in the two hundred people I graduated with fifteen years ago I would consider an acquaintance, let alone a friend. My family doesn’t even live here anymore; I have no need to be here. So why am I? To prove I am beyond their taunts, the mental and sometimes physical pain I suffered for four years while I buried my head and pretended to not exist in the cruel, often vicious halls of Forsyth Academy?
The reality is this weekend is nothing more than my chance to finally walk in bolstered by my success, not weighted down by the world as I once knew it.
Through my headphones, I hear the stewardess announce, “Please stow your laptops and other portable storage devices.” Quickly saving the chapter of the newest book I’ve been writing, I slip my Mac into my oversized purse. I snag my phone, making a few notes on the next section of the plot before I toss that aside as well and just stare blankly out at the ground quickly approaching below.
Savannah, the oldest city in Georgia, the birthplace of the Girl Scouts, and the cause of every fear I have to this day when it comes to self-perception.
* * *
“You’re checked in okay?” Nana worries over the phone from her home in North Florida. Ever since I left Georgia the morning after high school graduation, I’ve never been back. My grandparents, who raised me when my parents were killed in an accident in my early teens, never questioned why. They would fly out to see me, or I’d visit them in their retirement community for a visit.
Lord knows that place could keep me well stocked in characters to write about for the next decade.
Smiling, I lean back against the arm of the couch in the suite of the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa I’m relaxing in. “Yes, Nana. I’m fine. I’m going to work out, do some writing, answer some emails from my agent. Then tomorrow, I’m treating myself to a day of pampering at the spa.”
“Good,” she says forcefully, surprising me. “I want you to look stunning the night of that stupid party.”
I snort. “Doubt that’s possible.”
“Do we need to have this talk again, Kelsey? Just because the people at that horrid place hurt you doesn’t mean they define you.”
“I know.” And intellectually, I do. But the scars I wear are both mental as well as physical. And they lacerate my heart and soul.
Nana continues to grumble. “I don’t even know why you’re bothering to give them your time.”
“Ask Angel. Something about walking in with my head high and using a good pair of heels to trample over them as I regain my pride.” My best friend since college has convinced me to do more than a few things that have led me outside my comfort zone over the years. The most recent of which was to sell my small home in the quaint town of Collyer, Connecticut, and move to New Orleans, Louisiana, so I could be closer to her before she gives birth to my niece.
On the day the movers were packing up my boxes, I called her and said, “I must love you if I’m willing to learn to live with having alpaca hair the minute humidity touches it.”
Angel’s response was, “I’m putting some special hair product onto the vanity in the guest bath. You won’t care after the first week anyway. You know you’ve secretly been lusting to move near me for years.”
After which she hung up on me laughing when I asked, “Does your husband know you have these delusions? Maybe he should do something about it before your child comes.”
Angel’s my best friend for more than one reason, the least of which is because she’s never let me get away with any shit from the time she met me in college to now. Which is why I’m even in Savannah.
When I first received the Evite to the reunion, I was going to ignore it like I had when I got it in years five and ten. A conversation with Angel convinced me otherwise. “Walk in there proud of who you are, and tell them all to go to hell, Kels,” she argued. “You rose above what they did to you, even what happened at graduation. Get unstuck from the loop of whatever it is they have you trapped in so you can move on with your life.”
“I’d hardly call my life stuck in a loop,” I drawled, thinking of the crazy whirlwind—especially the last ten years.
“Don’t you want to have the chance to put those feelings all behind you?”
Chewing on a piece of celery, I swallowed and answered, “I thought I had.”
“For the most part, you have. Except one thing,” she reminded me gently, just as I was about to take another bite.
Since I knew how damn dangerous it was to try to eat the stringy food on a good day, I threw it on the plate. “You mean Rierson,” I said flatly.
She nodded before walking around the island to lay her hand on my arm. “There’s still so much hurt inside you, Kels.”
I shook off her arm. “I’m fine.”
Angel snorted. “About this—about him—you’re more fragile than NOLA fans seeing our beloved quarterback take a hit on the field. Honey.” Angel took both my hands in hers. “What was done to the girl in you is just wrong. You know this.”
Breathing hard, I nodded.
“But I’ve read your books, Kelsey. You are so angry at the others. But you’re still hurt by him. Don’t you want the opportunity to look him in the eye and purge that out?”
“Even though I disagree that I’m ‘trapped’ in anything”—I use her own word—“I do feel like shoving everything I am down the throats of the people who made my life hell for years.”
“That’s my girl.” Giving me a swift hug, she moved away, and before I thought twice about it, I accepted. That was months ago, and until this week when I began to pack, I didn’t think twice about it.
Now that I’m standing here, I’m not so sure. I have no idea how to handle the swirl of emotions I’ve never settled in my soul for him. Because there was both the care that Rierson Perrault showed me for almost a year versus the viciousness he demonstrated at the end—that’s what I can’t seem to forget…
I’m snapped back when Nana declares, “Well, as much as we love Angel, your pop-pop and I don’t like it.”
A flood of warmth rushes over me. After everything I dealt with at Forsyth—so close on the heels of the death of my parents—my grandparents became everything to me. They’ve supported every personal and business decision I ever made wholeheartedly. When I was looking to cover my surgical scar, I did so with a chain of shockingly pink gerbera daisies, Nana’s favorite flower. Despite everything that’s happened to me, Nana never lost her belief that everything would turn out all right in my life. She never had any doubt in me, despite the ones I still have in myself.
Shaking my head, I shove to my feet and walk over to the window to study the muddy green waters of the Savannah River. “What are you and
Pop-pop doing today?” I ask to distract her.
“Oh, we’ve got ping-pong tonight, darlin’. I tell you, that man is going to throw out a hip diving for a little white ball, I swear.” I grin, thinking of my eighty-one-year-old grandfather.
“It could be worse, Nana.”
“How’s that?”
“He could be trying to play golf again,” I remind her.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Her heartfelt statement makes me laugh. “Remember what Dr. Royster said the last time?”
“I’m not quite certain if it’s possible to recreate the torture chamber from The Princess Bride, Nana.” I’m wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.
“You know she’ll try, gosh darn it! If he messes up his back and hip like that again, she’ll figure out a way, honey,” she declares firmly.
“I’m sure she will,” I console her.
She hesitates before asking, “Are you going to be all right there?” I hear a note of concern for me being here in her voice. I know she and Pop-pop would have been on an airplane to support me in an instant, but I needed to confront my past on my own, armed with only the skills and strength that I learned over the last fifteen years.
Since the day I drove away with tears blinding me.
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