Page 58 of The Time It Takes
It’s a hard thing to forget and though she’s right about that, she’s wrong about one thing.
I shake my head, closing my eyes. “No. Ben and I, we were home to each other. You were the one who kept wrecking it.”
It’s quiet for so long that I nearly fall asleep. I open my eyes, only to find her no longer standing there. Instead, my phone dings on the coffee table. I bring it to my face, only to see a text from my mother.
Dinner with the Graysons at 6.
I groan and consider smothering myself with one of the decorative pillows.
YOU SMELL LIKE LOVE.
Ten years ago
Oliver’sparentsinvitedmeover for dinner since Ben had said he'd be working late that night. I was planning on ordering takeout, but Colleen’s cooking was too delicious to pass up.
We’d spent most of the night talking. From discussing our favorite films to surfing to graduation to prom—which I wasn’t exactly planning on attending. I went last year and had the worst experience of my life. I retold the story again for what felt like the hundredth time, for Beau’s sake. He found my indignity hilarious.
I’d been dancing with my date, Charles Lancaster, who had asked me to go with him. He was a senior at the time, but he was quiet and didn’t have many friends. I tried to be a good person and it left me stumbling in my heels and into the punch table.
“I’d like to see you try walking five miles home with a broken heel, Mr. Grayson,” I said into my glass of water before taking a sip.
Everyone laughed at my misery. I looked over at Oliver who was watching me with amusement, and I hit him lightly with my foot under the table just to watch him mock injury.
I would have asked Oliver for a ride home that night, but he was too busy making out with some girl he’d been seeing on and off. It might have also had something to do with the fact that he called me Damsel—in that moment I’ll admit I felt like one.
I was the laugh of the school for two whole weeks until a teacher got fired for being drunk during school hours.
“It took me days to get my hair to stop smelling like punch,” I added, causing Beau to laugh again. He loved that part.
His laugh broke off into a coughing fit and Colleen sobered immediately, leaning over to rub a soothing hand over his arm.
“Are you alright?” she asked him softly.
He nodded at her with a smile that said, “Drop it.”
I looked over at Oliver and found him watching his father warily. Colleen quickly adjusted her demeanor back into a state of ease, fixing her gaze back on me.
“Well, dear, I don’t think you should let one bad experience deter you from going again this year.”
I wanted to ask if something was wrong, but I wasn’t blind to Colleen’s urge to change the subject. I lifted an eyebrow at her. “It’s not just that it was a complete…” I trailed off, searching for the right word.
“Catastrophe?” Oliver added for me. I stuck my tongue out at him and he winked humorously.
Focusing back on Colleen, I shrugged. “What he said, but also, it’s not as fun as they make it seem in the movies.” My face scrunched in distaste.
She waved a hand in the air like I’d spoken nonsense. “It all depends on who you go with.”
“That’s true,” Beau said confidently, looking at his wife with a warm expression. “I went to every prom with you, and they were all magical, my love.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but I could tell she loved every word he said. They were high school sweethearts, which made them some of the luckiest people in the world to have found love so soon in life and figured out how to keep it. They met when Colleen’s parents moved here after her father was relocated to the military base. From the stories they tell, they were attached at the hip from the moment he talked her into tutoring him in math. It was a ruse of course—sneaky man.
“You’re too sweet to me,” she murmured, blushing slightly. I always noticed that. Even after years of marriage, he still made her blush.
He lifted her hand from the table and planted a kiss on the inside of her wrist. “My treasure,” he whispered against her skin. “Light of my life.”
As I watched them in awe, I couldn’t stop the feeling of something sinking inside my chest for what they had—what Oliver had. Did he know how lucky he was?
Oliver cleared his throat and squeezed my thigh under the table, grabbing my attention.
