Page 102 of Save the Date
“Never mind.” Brooke took a bite of her salad and looked around the big, dome-ceilinged dining room, her eyes lingering on the men taking up a table at the far end of the room.
“Pete? Was that his name? An old friend?” Cara asked.
“Hmm?” Brooke’s face flushed. “Yeah. Pete Haynes. We uh, I guess we sort of had a thing, the summer before I left for college. But then I went away, to University of Virginia, and he was already a sophomore at Georgia. You know how that goes.”
“And this was the first time you’ve seen him since then?”
Brooke stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork. “Um. Not really.” She looked away, then down at her plate, then leaned forward across the table. “My parents totally don’t know anything about this. Okay? In fact, none of my friends know it.”
Cara waited.
“Summer after I graduated from UVA, my dad got me this big-deal internship with our congressman. In Washington.” Brooke rolled her eyes. “What a blowhard that guy was. Typical, right? Anyway, Pete was living there too that summer, he’d graduated with a degree in marine biology, and he’d gotten a desk job working for some government agency. Something to do with endangered species? And we kind of, you know. Got together.”
“Dated?” Cara laughed. “Brooke, you’re almost thirty. Why does that have to be a secret from your parents? Or your friends?”
Brooke’s face colored. “Because at the time, Harris and I were unofficially engaged.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s like that.” She smiled sadly. “Technically, I was sleeping with two guys. Which isnotwho I am. In August, Pete had a job offer, with the Park Service, out in Montana. His dream job. And he wanted me to go with him.” Brooke fiddled with a strand of her hair.
“But you said no.”
“I was supposed to start law school at Emory. Harris was already there, starting on his MBA. He’d rented a house for us. And right around then, that’s when the shit hit the fan with my parents. My dad moved out, and moved in with Patricia. My mom was a mess.…”
“Bad timing,” Cara said sympathetically.
“The worst.” Brooke stared down at her half-eaten salad. She picked up a cellophane-wrapped package of saltines and crumbled it between her fingertips.
“It’s probably a good thing Mom couldn’t come today.” Brooke looked around the dining room, its dark paneling and leatherette booths, at the domed blue-painted ceiling with twinkling lights. “This was their place. Hers and dad’s. Back in the seventies, when they were dating, it was kind of a big deal to come to dinner here.”
“Really?” To Cara, Johnny Harris was just a barbecue restaurant. She liked their barbecue sauce, but it was hard for her to imagine the place as a hot nightspot.
“Yeah. They’d get all dressed up. I remember we used to have a photo album, with a picture of them sitting at one of those booths over there.” Brooke pointed to the opposite end of the room. “You can’t really tell from here, but there were curtains you could draw, for privacy, and you could push a little button to summon your waiter. The buttons are still there. Anyway, if you can believe it, Dad had this bushy hair, and big ol’ sideburns and a kind of handlebar mustache. He looked like a porn star! And Mom’s hair was really long and straight, and she wore dangly earrings. And she’s sitting right beside Dad, with his arm around her shoulders and he’s totally looking right down her cleavage!”
Brooke got a sudden fit of giggles, which were over nearly as soon as they’d begun. “After they split up, I thought Mom probably burned all those old pictures. But the last time I was home, I was in her bedroom, and she’d told me I could borrow her pearls, for this stupid engagement party, and I found that picture in the bottom of her jewelry box.”
“You think your mom’s still not over him?”
“Not really. She tries to put on a good show around me, but I think she’s still really sad. And hurt.”
“Does she date?”
“My mom? No. I wish she would though.”
Brooke’s gaze had returned to the table where Pete Haynes was sitting.
“How about you?” Cara asked. “And your friend Pete? After your breakup, he was okay?”
“Yeah.…” Brooke’s voice trailed off. “Pete—he knew how my parents were. Well, my dad, anyway. Snobby, right? Pete wasn’t from the wrong side of the tracks, not at all, but he went to public high school, that kind of thing.”
“Did Pete know about you and Harris?”
Brooke’s eyes widened. “Oh God, no. That summer, it was just such an odd thing for me. It was like the first time I realized I was an adult, and I didn’t have to be under my dad’s thumb for the rest of my life.”
“A summer of rebellion,” Cara said. “I get that. My dad was career military. He still expects everybody to stand at attention and salute.”
“Rebellion. Exactly. But at some point, even a rebel has to figure out what to do with their life. And for me, law school and Emory made sense. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer. And Harris made sense. He’s sweet and loyal and smart.”
