Dress Me in Wildflowers (6 page)

A delectable-looking piece of strawberry-covered cheesecake appeared in front of Farrin, and she dived into it like it was a swimming pool in the middle of Death Valley. Her waistline be damned. She could Pilates it away later, but at this moment she needed sugar and lots of it to help calm the aftereffects of the speech. What was wrong with her? The speech was over.

“Are you okay?”

Farrin looked up to see Tammie staring at her with a concerned expression on her face.

“I’m fine.” She placed her fork on the saucer next to the half-eaten cheesecake. She wanted the rest of it, but she felt as if everyone in the room was watching her, thinking that at any moment the cheesecake would make her blow up like a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She took a deep breath. “Just tired and . . . relieved the speech is over. I guess I was a little nervous.”

“Why would you be nervous?” asked Keely. “If you’re famous now, you’ve probably talked in front of lots of people.”

“Not really. Most of my work is done one on one or on the phone.”

Keely lost interest and went back to her own cheesecake, but what Farrin had already eaten felt lodged halfway down her throat. Tammie eyed her, evidently searching for the lie in Farrin’s words. But there wasn’t one. She had been nervous. What she was experiencing now must be a bit like post-traumatic stress. She needed to get out of the room for a few minutes, away from the music and the din of conversation and the clinking of forks on saucers.

“Excuse me.” Without explanation, she headed for the restroom, not the one immediately off the gym but one down the hall so she could have a few minutes alone, time to collect herself and reapply the cool exterior she’d practiced so often in the past month in preparation for this little venture.

Her heels clicked on the tile as she walked down the hallway. Strange how everything looked so much smaller. The lockers, the desks inside the rooms, the length of the corridor itself. She wasn’t any taller than when she’d graduated, so the case of the incredible shrinking school baffled her. She was still trying to figure it out when she entered the restroom.

If she hadn’t been so distracted, she would have noticed it was already occupied and backed out without her presence being detected. Too late. A woman with white blond hair leaned over the sink. She held her hair back and alternated splashing water on her face with hanging onto the side of the sink for support.

Good Lord, was there something wrong with the chicken? Was this unfortunate soul the first one to come down with food poisoning? You heard about those things at gatherings all the time.

Part of Farrin wanted to turn around and leave, to seek the privacy she needed to alleviate her own swirling head and flushed cheeks. But something about the way the woman was supporting herself made Farrin worry. If the woman passed out in the restroom, no one might find her until Monday morning when classes resumed.

“Are you okay?”

The woman jerked and lost her balance. She nearly fell but was able to grasp the edge of the sink in time to steady herself. The look of surprise on the woman’s face registered in Farrin’s brain seconds before her identity.

Janie Carlisle. If Farrin had never seen Janie again, it would have been too soon. She turned and walked out the door.

****

Farrin made it about half a dozen steps down the hall before the sound of a crash halted her. For a moment, scenes from high school whizzed through her overtaxed brain. Janie’s snide remarks about how Farrin had to drive an old car with a broken windshield because she couldn’t afford a new one. Superior looks when Janie and her friends caught Farrin “school shopping” at the church clothes closet. Prom.

The voices, the music and the memory of the balloon-and-streamer-filled gym assaulted her, snapping her back to April 1988. She heard the exact attacking tone of Tammie’s question to Janie.

“Care to share what’s so funny?”

Janie Carlisle, flanked by the other two-thirds of the Terrible Trio, snickered. “Farrin’s dress.”

Farrin looked down, afraid she’d torn or marred the red satin gown her mother had bought her. “There’s nothing wrong with my dress.”

“Except that it used to be mine. Your mom must have been shopping at the Goodwill again.”

Not even sixteen years of distance could mask the mortification she’d felt or the desperate need to run away. She had run away then, and she’d almost done it again. She refused to let memories of Janie Carlisle make her backslide into the person she used to be. She was bigger than that. This time, she was in control.

Farrin sighed so deeply, it felt as if she’d expelled all the breath from her body. And then she turned around and walked back toward the restroom. Janie looked genuinely ill, and Farrin hoped someone would help her if she found herself in a similar situation — even if she was a bitch. She placed the palm of her hand against the bathroom door, resentment surging through her. Why, of all the people at this reunion tonight, had she crossed paths with Janie and found herself in a situation where she was the most logical person to help out her former classmate?

When she stepped back inside the room, Janie was sitting against the wall, the tall metal trashcan tipped over. She looked utterly and totally spent and evidently hadn’t even made the effort to pick herself up. Was she drunk?

Janie looked up, but her eyes didn’t hold the same huge look of surprise of a few moments before.

“Are you okay?”

Janie lifted herself from the floor. A wave of embarrassment flashed across her pale face. “Yeah. Got a bit dizzy and slipped.” Her words came out breathless, as if she needed every ounce of oxygen within her to push them past her lips.

If Janie had been anyone else, Farrin would have helped her from the floor. As it was, she stood still and watched as Janie grabbed onto the side of the sink and steadied herself. Janie looked like she could heave what was left of her dinner at any moment, not something Farrin wanted to witness. She’d no doubt toss her own cookies and felt swirly at the thought.

“Have you been drinking?” Farrin asked.

Janie looked over at her, a light-headed expression on her face. “No. I’ve just . . . been sick today. I shouldn’t have come.”

That would have certainly made Farrin’s evening better. Ironic that they should meet up again so close to the gym, where Janie had stung her like the queen bee she’d been. Well, Janie didn’t look like the queen of much now.

”Well, if you’re okay, I’ll get back to dinner.” Farrin turned and headed for the door a second time.

“Actually, could I ask you a favor?”

Farrin suppressed the urge to yell “No” at the top of her lungs. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What?” The word cut the air with its frosty, hateful edge. So much for being detached and devoid of emotion.

“I need to go home, but I’m not sure I can make it to my car.”

“Who did you come with? I’ll go get him.” And let whoever that unfortunate soul was deal with the situation.

“I came by myself.”

Farrin thought it strange that Janie had come alone and that she didn’t look embarrassed by the fact. Of course, she could be too busy being sick.

“Brittany or Amber then?”

“No.” The urgency in the word caught Farrin off guard and winded Janie so much that she sucked in air.

So, all was not well within the Terrible Trio. A flush of pure pleasure made Farrin smile.

Without a word, she stepped next to Janie. Best to get this over with. The quicker she got Janie to her car, the sooner she didn’t have to look at her anymore.

Janie either understood her need to avoid conversation or was too weak to speak because she simply held onto Farrin’s shoulder to brace herself as they exited and headed out the side door rather than parade back through the gym.

The trek across the parking lot took an eternity. “Which car is yours?”

Janie looked up, squeezed Farrin’s shoulder harder as if her head was swimming for a moment, then pointed at a little Subaru wagon. If Farrin had picked a car out of the parking lot to be Janie’s, this would have been the last one. A wagon. But it’d been fifteen years. Janie likely had kids. Another illustration of diverging paths.

She couldn’t imagine having kids or a wagon. It’d been so long since she’d had a car that it had felt strange to drive the one from the airport. At least it was a recent model. Janie’s looked like it had some miles on it. It appeared well taken care of, but it hadn’t rolled off the assembly line yesterday.

“Are you sure?” Farrin asked.

Janie uttered a barely discernable laugh. “I’m pretty sick, but I still know my own car.”

Farrin froze. Even Janie’s weak half laugh made Farrin’s skin crawl. It brought back too many bad memories. And she didn’t see any humor in the situation, not in Janie being sick, not in fate placing her as the one who had to help Janie out in her moment of need. Maybe she’d earn cosmic brownie points for this.

Janie removed her hand from Farrin’s shoulder when they reached her car. She fumbled in her purse before pulling out a set of keys. Her hand shook as she guided the key into the lock while she placed her other hand atop her car to steady herself. She didn’t ask for further help, but Farrin didn’t turn and hurry away as the teenager inside her urged her to do. The adult held her ground.

Even in the faint light cast by the security bulbs, Farrin saw a sheen of perspiration around the edges of Janie’s face. Janie opened the car door and sank into the driver’s seat. Farrin had never seen such a look of utter relief.

“I should have stayed home,” Janie said.

“Yeah, you should have.” Why had she felt it necessary to come share her germs with everyone?

Because she was selfish. Some things never changed, no matter how much time passed.

Maybe the reunion was important to Janie. After all, for some people, high school was the pinnacle of their life and they couldn’t get past that, wanted to revisit it as often as possible.

How incredibly sad, or pathetic, as the case might be.

“Thanks for your help,” Janie said. “I’m sorry I took you away from the party.”

For most people, Farrin would likely have said it was no trouble. She didn’t want to consider that her years in the cutthroat fashion world had sucked all the humanity out of her. But tonight it was going to look like it because she couldn’t utter a word of assurance. She simply stepped out of the way of the car door, turned and walked back toward the glow of the gym.

While not in her top form, she was reasonably calm by the time she re-entered the gym to find the dishes had been cleared away, the music had re-started and several couples had migrated to the dance floor. Even though they’d graduated in the 1990s, the DJ was evidently fond of ‘80s tunes. Now, he had Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” going.

She needed something to drink. She headed for the bar at the edge of the room, only remembering it wasn’t a true “bar” when she stepped into line. Dry county. Didn’t the local officials know people needed a glass of wine or a good stiff drink every once in a while? She’d have to settle for a Coke and hope the extra sugar on top of the cheesecake, the slice of Tammie’s cake and the dipped cone didn’t make her bounce off the walls.

She listened to the lyrics of the song and almost laughed. She wondered what Jon Bon Jovi, Ritchie Sambora and the rest of the band’s members thought when they looked back at their outfits and super hairsprayed hair. Well, it had set them on the road to long-term success. She could admire that.

The irony of the song slapped her in the face when the man in front of her turned with his drink. Drew Murphy.

Could this night possibly get any worse? What had she done to deserve having the most painful night of her life replayed for her in vivid detail? Yes, she worked people hard, probably snapped sharp comments more than she realized. But were those things so awful that history had to taunt her with this gym, Janie Carlisle and Drew Murphy all in the same night? If she hadn’t ridden with Tammie and Kurt, she would calmly order and sip her drink until the glass was empty, say goodbye to Tammie and simply drive away.

And this time, she would never come back.

“Farrin,” Drew said in a surprised tone, as if he hadn’t known she was there. Considering she’d given the keynote, it’d have been a bit difficult to miss that fact.

Though how had she managed to miss him, even taller and more handsome than he’d been at eighteen? Despite the dim lighting in the gym, she knew the exact color of his dark coffee eyes. While he’d had short-cropped hair during his days as a wide receiver on the Oak Valley Bears football team, he now wore it longer. Not long as in Bon Jovi hair. No, his hairstyle spoke of freedom, a gust of wind, ease. She liked it, she liked it a lot.

Too bad he was a horse’s ass.

She broke eye contact and moved to take the spot at the drink stand he’d vacated. “Hello.” She glanced toward the bartender. “Coke please, with a twist of lemon.”

“I’m sorry I missed your speech. I hear it was good.”

So he hadn’t been there earlier. She wasn’t losing her mind after all.

“I hope so.”