The Promise of Amazing (24 page)

“I’ve got something to do later, want to get some homework done first,” I answered, glaring at Luke. “Let me walk you out.”

“Don’t be a stranger, Luke,” Pop said, grabbing Tiff’s coat and carrying it to the closet while I walked Luke back outside.

“Something to do later or
someone
?” he asked, once we were outside. I closed the door behind me.

“Why are you hassling me if you don’t care about the Allegra thing anymore?”

“’Cause I think you should come hang out. It’s not the same without you, Grayson. But you’re not really the same, are you? I think you’re too punch-drunk from steady poontang. How is she, by the way? Quiet in the sack too?”

My fists clenched. Being physical with Wren was so new and . . . private. It took all my self-control not to deck him.

“
Hmm
, not sharing. You are in love. You’ll get bored with her, you know,” he warned. “And then you’ll come looking for us, and we’ll be in Amsterdam.”

“I won’t get bored.”

“Yeah, okay.” He flipped his shades back on. “Gotta run. Maybe I’ll see you ’round. Tell Wren I said hey.”

He trotted down the stairs and strode toward his car, a nondescript, black hatchback that Luke’s father told him would build his character.
Tell Wren I said hey
. He honked the horn as the car rode down the street. Maybe he was just being friendly. Maybe he would come around to the new me. I went back inside, trying to ignore the overwhelming feeling that this was only the beginning of some sort of trouble.

Something was up.

He’d dropped the subject of Allegra too easily.

Luke was a raptor too.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

NINETEEN

WREN

SIX DAYS, EIGHT HOURS, TWENTY-THREE MIN
utes, give or take a couple of seconds from the moment Grayson Barrett said those three little words. Common sense told me things were progressing way,
way
too fast, but my heart was enjoying the ride too much. In over my head? More like drowning and loving it.

Which was probably why heading to St. Lucy’s to spread holiday cheer felt like a fun, festive thing to participate in, even if I’d been backed into doing it. Afterward I was supposed to go with Grayson to his mother’s in Connecticut.
I need you there
, he’d said. There was no question in my mind that I would go. Thankfully the parental units approved, but it didn’t stop Mom from grilling me on the car ride to Sacred Heart.

“Where in Connecticut does Grayson’s mother live again?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know, something with a D . . . Darien, maybe?”

“Something with a D, Darien maybe,” she repeated. “I’m letting you go out of state with a strange boy, and you don’t even know where you’re going?”

“He’s not a strange boy,” I said, texting him my mother’s question. “He’s your employee, my friend, and I saved his life. We have a history.”

“A history? Wren, it’s barely been a month. Aren’t things progressing a little fast? You’re meeting his mother?”

“She’s having a tree-trimming party, Mom. It’s not like a special dinner just to meet me. And yes, it’s Darien,” I answered, reading Grayson’s text but quickly shutting down the window. The rest of the message was not something I wanted to share, but it made me grin so wide, my mother raised her eyebrows in response. How could he make me blush with a text? Seeing him couldn’t come fast enough.

“Remember to call me when you get to his mother’s house!”

“Yes, Mom. Thanks for the ride,” I said, leaning over and giving her a peck on the cheek. I slid out, closed the door, and headed for the parking lot, where I could already see a group huddled around Ava. She was wearing a sparkly Santa-hat headband, which looked totally adorable on her flat-ironed style, and she knew it.

“It’s about time,” she said, handing me a bag. I pulled out a
hat shaped like a Christmas tree. To further the tackiness, one push of a button, and it danced on your head.

“You’re not suggesting I wear this?”

“C’mon, it’s a holiday party.”

“Are you trying to get someone to wear that asinine hat again?”

Luke Dobson stood behind Ava. Maybe it was the overcast gray-lit morning, or maybe it was my viewing the world through Grayson-colored shades, but he seemed less imposing than he had at Andy’s house. I met his gaze.

“Perfect word,” I said.

Ava huffed and handed me a jingle-bell necklace instead. “At least wear this, and hand out some of them to the guys on the bus.”

“Great,” I said, accepting the handful of necklaces. She took one and dangled it in front of Luke.

“Not happening.”

“Luke, c’mon,” Ava pleaded.

“I’m wearing red,” he said, unzipping his ski jacket. “That’s festive enough.”

I laughed.

“See, Wren agrees.”

“Fine,” she conceded.

“Okay, people, let’s move it, on the bus,” Mrs. Fiore said, clapping her hands to call us to attention. A large man in
a Santa hat poked out his head from the bus doorway and waved us on.

I waited as the others piled onto the bus, then walked to the back and handed out the necklaces. A few of the St. Gabe’s boys made snarky remarks, mostly about jingle balls. I pretended not to hear and kept moving down the rows of seats. The engine sputtered to life. I held on to the seats on either side of me as the bus lurched forward.

There weren’t many seats available. To the left of me, Luke was sprawled out, head against the window. He caught my eye and motioned next to him, adjusting his position so there was more room for me. I wondered where Ava was, then spotted her up front, sitting next to Mrs. Fiore and pointing to something on her clipboard. I plunked down next to Luke, knocking into him pretty forcefully as the bus exited the parking lot.

“Sorry,” I said, sliding away from him. He didn’t say anything, just locked eyes with me, his lips upturned slightly. I caught myself staring.
That mouth. He really knows what to do with it
. I mock-coughed into my fist and peered out the window as the bus ambled along the boulevard. Someone began a holiday sing-along. Luke muttered, “Hell, no” and hunkered down into his seat.

“So how did you like Andy’s house?” he asked.

“It was cool,” I lied.

“You skipped out pretty early, no?”

The fact that he’d noticed was unsettling. “Yes.”

“Why?”

I shrugged.

“Let me guess, you’re more of a one-on-one kind of chick.”

“Not really.”

“Too bad for Grayson then.”

My body clenched in response.

“Did you get a chance to meet Gray’s other friends?” he asked.

“A few, I guess. Why?”

“We’re all, well . . . curious about the chick he’s been hanging with instead of us.”

“Could you stop referring to me as a chick?” I inched away from him, ready to spring up for a different seat.

He tugged my coat sleeve, urging me back.

“C’mon, stay. Here, I’ll take this,” he said, taking the remaining jingle-bell necklace from me. His fingertips grazed my palm, a move I felt down to my toes.

“Really, just trying to get to know you.”

“Whatever,” I said, digging my hands into my pockets.

“Now who’s dissing who?”

“I’m not dissing you, Luke.”

“Whateverrrrr.”

I wondered if he was being sincere or not. If he was Grayson’s friend, he must have been okay on some level, right? And
if I put up with him, maybe he’d prove to be a wealth of information. There were some definite blanks about Grayson that he could fill in.

“So you, Andy, and Gray all went to Saint Gabe’s together?”

“Yep. We used to be tight. Kind of partners in crime,” he said, shifting in the seat. “Has he ever mentioned Brinker Hadley or Mike Pearson?”

The names sounded vaguely familiar.

“Brinker Hadley?
A Separate Peace
, right?”

His eyes changed, softened the tiniest bit. “You’ve read that?”

There was an edge of disbelief in his voice, which bugged me.

“Yes, last year. It’s one of my favorite books.”

He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Ava stood above us in the aisle.

“There she is,” Luke said.

“So now you’re wearing a bell?” she asked, gesturing toward his chest.

Luke picked it up and shook it. “Wren asked me nicely.”

I took Ava’s arrival as my cue to get another seat. She mouthed,
Thanks
, as I walked up the aisle. There was something about the gesture that reminded me of St. Vincent de Paul Ava. Maybe it wouldn’t be impossible to be friends again. I thumped down into the first available seat, next to a girl
who pressed against the window when she saw me.
Freshman
. The morning was going to crawl by. A text to Grayson was in order.

No sooner had I typed in the message than Mrs. Fiore ripped my iPhone from my hands. I gasped, reaching for it as she shoved it into her shoulder bag.

“I was only going to use it on the bus.”

“You won’t miss it for two hours. These seniors look forward to this visit all season. We need to give them our full attention,” she continued, now loud enough for all to hear. “Does anyone want to join Ms. Caswell in relinquishing their phone?”

“Oh, snap,” someone sounding suspiciously like Luke said from the back. I slunk down in my seat. Ten minutes later we arrived at St. Lucy’s.

The rec room was decked out and ready for our arrival. Multicolored Christmas lights hung around the perimeter, and the focal point was a six-foot artificial tree that had so much tinsel on it, it almost looked like it was made of silver. The room was dry and hot, with a faint medicinal odor. We dumped our coats in a walk-in closet off the kitchen and went out to mingle, offering coffee and tea to the residents while Michael Bublé crooned on a Christmas CD in the background.

I chatted up residents with holiday small talk—the recent snow, favorite Christmas songs, whether or not their
grandchildren were going to visit, which at times melted my heart. So many of them seemed forgotten. I noticed one woman in a wheelchair, sort of off by herself at the end of the long table where Ava was teaching some of the residents how to make pom-pom wreaths, and walked over to see if I could get her anything.

“Tea,” she said softly. Her hair was the color of straw, all drawn up in a messy bun, and her face was plump, cheeks drooping into soft jowls that shook when she spoke.

I returned with a Styrofoam cup of tea, steam swirling above it as I set it down on the table in front of her. “Here you go,” I said, smiling.

She glared at me and swiped the cup sideways off the table. I hopped out of the way just in time, barely missing the scalding fountain of tea that would have sprayed across my jeans.

“Don’t want no tea,” she sputtered, frightening the residents closest to her. “Who the hell are you?”

Sweat trickled down the back of my neck as the woman stared at me with curious gray eyes that appeared slightly unfocused, like it wasn’t really me she was seeing. I touched my necklace, holding the love charm between my thumb and forefinger, a habit that had become instinctive in the last few days. A hand on my shoulder brought me back to the present.

“Everything all right?” Luke asked.

I moved the charms across the chain a few times before
letting them drop. His eyes danced across my chest, taking in the necklace, then back to my face.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. Mrs. Fiore and a heavyset female attendant dealt with the situation. I cleaned up the mess. The attendant spoke to the woman in the wheelchair in a less comforting tone than I would have imagined to be appropriate.

“Rosie, that wasn’t very nice. This young lady is here to help us,” she said, motioning at me.

Rosie cried, bringing both hands up to hide her face. I felt terrible. Mrs. Fiore patted Rosie’s back, then came over to me. The attendant whisked her out of the room.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, it happens sometimes,” Mrs. Fiore said. “Why don’t you join the party?”

I hung around Ava’s craft table, but it only further depressed me. At one time these adorable old people, as Ava called them, were our age, with their futures ahead of them. I thought of my own grandpa, how he’d fought in the Korean War, all those old black-and-white photos of him and Grandma, how dramatic everything looked, how dressed up they got for something as simple as a picnic at the lake. I couldn’t imagine them here, making pom-pom Christmas wreaths and never getting any visitors. Wasn’t there something more we could do?

One of the St. Gabe’s guys played “Jingle Bell Rock” on the piano, which got the residents clapping along. Across the
room Luke chatted with a red-haired woman in a reindeer sweater. He tossed back his head and grinned, enthralling the woman. If I couldn’t see she was in her nineties, I might have imagined he was hitting on her. For that matter, he still might have been. He took the bell from around his neck and placed it around hers. She beamed up at him from her seat. Maybe he did have some hidden depths. He certainly dealt with people better than I did.

“It’s cake time,” Ava announced, striding up to me while wielding her clipboard and crossing off something else on her to-do list.

“I’ll cut,” I answered, jumping at the chance to feel useful.

The kitchen was cooler than the rec room, and quiet. My Camelot skills came in handy, and I attacked the cake like a surgeon, cutting thin slices while another girl scooped vanilla ice cream onto them. The volunteers lined up to carry out cake to the residents. There was a small slab of cake left that I pushed to the side, waiting for Mrs. Fiore’s orders on whether to save it or trash it. I picked up the metal server and ran it under warm water, working the icing off with my fingers.

Luke sidled up to me and placed the extra cake he was holding on the counter.

“Hiding out?” he asked, facing me.

“That obvious? I sort of suck at volunteer work, don’t I?”