The Fable of Us (20 page)

“Goddammit, Clara Belle.” Ford wiped at the strawberry carnage, blinking at me in disbelief.

“You still weren’t saying anything nice. I thought you would have learned your lesson from the first one, but clearly not.” When Boone tugged against me, I tightened my grip on his hand until it hurt. I wasn’t going to let him take a swing at Ford in the name of “defending my honor.” My honor was just fine, no matter what Ford wanted to spew this morning.

“Yeah, but you’re out of strawberries now.” Ford settled his hands on his hips.

“And I wouldn’t underestimate the power of pineapple.” I pinched a slice of it from Boone’s plate and lifted it. “Especially when the spiny, prickly outside hasn’t been removed.”

Ford didn’t look all that impressed by my pineapple threat, but it looked like he was just about to back away—and hopefully go in search of a change of clothes—when a familiar shriek sounded from a couple tables over. Charlotte had mastered the art of shrieking as a child, and she’d really perfected it in her teens.

As she charged toward Ford, appraising him like he was the center of a crime scene, she didn’t miss what I was clutching. “Nice, Clara Belle. Way to really set the tone of the day. How immature can you be?”

“Only as immature as the things your fiancé was saying,” I snapped back, dropping the pineapple slice when it became clear Ford was done.

Charlotte threw me a nasty look as she grabbed another cloth napkin, dipped it in one of the water glasses circling the table, and went to work rubbing his crotch. “God, Clara Belle, is there anything else you’re planning to sabotage when it comes to my wedding?” She was rubbing so forcefully at Ford’s crotch, his face started to crease with discomfort. “You know, just so I can mentally prepare myself.”

“I’m not trying to sabotage anything,” I said, realizing people were starting to notice what was going on at our table. My mom wasn’t flying over here like sweet tea was in danger of being outlawed, so at least my parents hadn’t noticed. Yet.

Charlotte huffed. “Since when?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Now it felt more like Boone was the one holding me back, keeping me in place beside him.

Charlotte stopped scrubbing at Ford’s crotch long enough to fire a look at me. “Just that you’re one of the most selfish, self-absorbed people I’ve ever met. You figure out some way to throw a fit or make a scene or create a crisis if you aren’t getting someone or everyone’s full attention all of the time.”

That was such a mouthful, it took me a few moments to take in everything she’d just said. It took twice as long to figure out if she was being serious. When I determined, based upon the look on her face, that she was, I felt my blood heat.

“I think who you meant to say that to was yourself,” I said, my voice shaking.

“No, I didn’t.”

My mouth fell open. “When it comes to selfish, you’ve got the market cornered.” When she fired off another huff of disbelief, wetting the napkin again before going to work on Ford’s face, I added, “Huff at me again. It won’t change the fact that you were the sister fucking your sister’s boyfriend for God knows how long behind her back.” I hadn’t meant for my voice to carry that way, but I couldn’t control it. “So huff the hell at that!”

Boone glanced at me, but instead of gaping at me as Charlotte and Ford were, his look was more subtle. More one of him having my back. He gave me a quick wink.

Her rubbing was only making the stains on his shirt worse, so Charlotte threw the napkin on the table. Her shoulders slumped for a moment, like she was giving up, then her eyes dropped to the plate I was still clutching. “I’m done fighting with you for one day, Clara Belle. So why don’t you just gobble up a few more sticky buns and see if you can get that dress another size too small. The seamstress will already have to let it out. Might as well take advantage and have her let it all the way out.” Charlotte rounded her arms out around her pencil-thin frame, making it no secret of what she was getting at.

My appetite was gone. For food and for a fight.

Dropping my plate on the table beside Boone’s, I watched her and Ford whisk away into the house. I wanted to call out to her. I wanted to apologize, if for nothing else, for ruining her morning. But the words wouldn’t form.

I knew people were staring at me. I knew they were bobbing their heads, understanding just why I’d been labeled the black sheep of the family. After convincing myself for all of these years that my family was the enemy, I was starting to wonder if I was just as much their enemy. Was I selfish? Was I self-absorbed?

I’d just launched two pieces of fruit at my sister’s fiancé because he’d been running his mouth—like Ford always had and always would. I’d just announced to whoever hadn’t known that she’d been quote-end-quote “fucking” Ford while we’d still been together. All in all, I’d made a total disaster of what no doubt could have been a perfectly pleasant breakfast.

Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut and accept that people were the way they were and no amount of shouting or fruit-hurling would change that? Why couldn’t I stop fixating on other’s mistakes instead of spending a little more time reflecting on my own?

And why in the hell, after being content to play oblivious to all of those deeply profound questions, was I getting around to asking them while I was smack in the middle of my own personal hell and bribing my ex-boyfriend to pose as my current one—an ex-boyfriend I had clearly not moved on from given the feelings I’d felt stirring the past couple of days?

The weight of my thoughts became too heavy for me to keep standing. Pulling my chair out, I collapsed into it. The sound of a sharp rip rang out right before a rush of cool air cascaded across my back.

“Clara . . .” Boone said quietly over my shoulder. The sound of his button snaps ripping open followed.

“I know, Boone,” I said as I felt his shirt fall into place around me. “I’m falling apart.”

“C
an you breathe now?” Boone asked as we stepped out of the bridal shop later that morning.

I smiled at my cotton sundress. My flowy, breathable sundress. I was free.

Then I tried to exhale.

“I
feel
better now at least,” I said, pausing on the sidewalk and staring at the blue sky. “And I don’t have to worry about my internal organs liquefying from being compressed so tightly. So there’s that.”

Boone shouldered up beside me and looked at the sky with me. “There’s that.”

The people passing us on the sidewalk kept looking up as they passed by, trying to figure out what had enraptured the two of us. Unless they were as moved by the hue of the sky or the wispy clouds as I was, they would wind up disappointed.

After Boone had whisked me away from the disaster known as breakfast, take two, he’d “borrowed” one of my dad’s cars and driven me to the bridal shop. Our faces had been smashed against the glass door ten minutes before they opened, and Boone had rapped on it when they were thirty seconds late opening.

A half hour and a few hundred sighs later, the seamstress had me free of The Thing. It probably would have taken a couple more hours if I hadn’t accidently ripped the back open a good foot and a half. Once she’d unstitched me from the rest of it, she held the pieces of the dress like it was a dead animal and asked me what I wanted to do with it. I told her I’d let her know tomorrow, because today I didn’t trust myself to answer with anything short of
torch it
.

“Should we head back to join the festivities now that we’ve freed you of The Thing’s evil clutches?” Boone asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets while staring at the sky with me.

I stared up for one more moment before lowering my gaze. Everything around me was blurry with a blinding white haze. I tried blinking my vision clear. “Definitely not.” I plucked at the skirt of my dress, wanting to twirl I felt so free. “I think Charlotte would appreciate a day free from me.”

“I don’t care what Charlotte would appreciate,” Boone said.

“Well, I do,” I replied, wandering down the sidewalk with no real destination in mind. “I’m not trying to make a mess of everything related to her wedding . . . but that doesn’t change that I am, so I think I’ll give us both a day off.”

Boone wandered up beside me, matching my unhurried pace. “She was messing with Ford behind your back. She deserves whatever kind of wedding-week disasters you can toss her way. Intentional or not.”

I waved at the drug-store owner sweeping the front stoop as we passed by. He waved back, greeting me by name.

“Charlotte didn’t do what she did to hurt me. She didn’t even do it to spite me.”

Boone huffed his disagreement.

“Charlotte had been head over heels for Ford since long before he and I got together. I’d known it too.” I studied the sidewalk as I continued, feeling like pieces long forgotten or repressed memories were coming back to me. “I didn’t think much about it with her being so much younger than Ford—and that was such a big thing when we were kids—but I knew how much she liked him. I only had to listen to her go on and on about him every night from the time she was ten to the summer she turned fifteen and Ford and I . . . well, you know.”

Boone nodded once, staring at the sidewalk. “I know.”

“She’d liked him for years before I even considered liking him, and I didn’t acknowledge that when Ford and I started dating. It was almost like I shrugged her feelings off as a girlhood crush. It was clearly more than that.”

Boone rolled his head to the side, cracking his neck, but he stayed silent.

“Charlotte couldn’t help who she loved any more than the rest of us. I guess I just chose not to see that until this morning when I watched her scrubbing at Ford’s stained pants like a mad woman.”

Boone’s head turned in my direction. “Nothing like a woman waxing at a guy’s crotch to define the concept of love.”

I lifted my eyes. “That’s not how I meant it. I just meant . . . she
loves
him.”

“Agreeing to disagree with you on that, Clara.”

Boone and I slid to the side when a mom who had three more kids than she had hands for came stomping past us. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock and she already looked ready for bed.

“Sometimes the people we’re supposed to love are the hardest ones to. And sometimes the people we’re not supposed to love are the easiest.” I shrugged and continued through the crosswalk at the end of the block. “That’s something I figured out years ago. I just didn’t think Charlotte had figured that out too.”

Boone came to a stop, reaching for my arm. His face was a mask of confusion. “Was that just you paying your sister a sort of compliment?” His voice matched his expression. “Did you suggest that Charlotte might not be the root of all evil?”

I answered him with a shrug.

“And now I’ve seen and heard everything.” He smirked at me before continuing down the sidewalk.

“It’s amazing how perspective can change when you try looking at a situation from the other person’s shoes. In Charlotte’s case, her size-seven daffodil-suede Milano pumps.”

“Is there a reconciliation on the near horizon?” Boone threw his arm out in front of me when I went to step into the next crosswalk, just to make sure the car that had stopped to wait for us was really stopped and waiting.

“I launched a couple of juicy berries at her fiancé’s face at breakfast in front of a bunch of close friends and family. Right before ripping open the back of the bridesmaid dress I’d been suctioned inside of for close to twenty-four hours.” I winced as I replayed the more stand-out scenes from the morning. “I think
distant
horizon is more likely.”

Boone waved at the car once we’d made it through the crosswalk. “Well, good for you. I might never be convinced that Charlotte isn’t the seed of Satan, but I’m not surprised you see things differently.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’ve always had a way of seeing the best in people. That’s just what makes you so great, Clara Abbott.”

A laugh spilled out of my mouth. “Oh yeah. I’m totally awesome.”

I hadn’t realized we’d reached the edge of the commercial part of the street and were about to head into a residential area until Boone stopped and looked around. I thought we were both realizing where we were for the first time since we’d started walking.

“Do you want to just keep going until we hit Georgia, or did you have something else in mind?” he asked, sounding like he was up for either.

“I want to see the kids’ center you started,” I said, checking his face to gauge his reaction. I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about discussing, let alone seeing, his hard work gone away. “If that’s okay with you.”

His brows pinched together as he studied me. “Why would you want to see that?”

“Because I think I need a reminder that there are still good people doing good things.”

“You mean you need a reminder of what happens when people of questionably good origin attempt to do something good and all of it winds up going belly up?”

I backed up down the sidewalk we’d just ventured down, heading toward the bridal shop where my dad’s old Chrysler was parked. I didn’t know where Boone had opened up his place, but I guessed it wasn’t within walking distance. The area we were in was so upper-class uppity, they would have staged a revolt had anyone suggested someone had applied to open a kids’ center in the area.