Page 93 of Outcast
“Well, yeah!”
He held one up in his hand. “Okay, open up!”
Todd snickered. “That’s what I said last night.”
“Don’t be a perv!” She smacked his arm, then opened her mouth, waiting as Marty tossed an okra. It bounced off her face, and she laughed and picked it up to gobble it down. “Damn, that’s good. Let me try again.”
Marty tossed another and another. We all watched for a few minutes, and I couldn’t help but think that a woman who let Marty throw fried food at her face was definitely his kind of woman.
“Okay, we should probably get this update rolling,” I said. “I talked to Shayla about the bank sponsoring the reunion, so we can get started on putting down deposits on the venue and catering.”
Sasha dragged one of her fries through ketchup. “I got volunteers lined up for the float and made a list of our classmates for invites.”
She picked up her phone and called up the list. I thought she’d forward it to me, but she handed her whole phone across the table. “If you give me the green light, I’ll get the invites made. Can I charge them to the bank?”
“Yeah.” I took her phone and scanned the list. Our class wasn’t that large, but it wasn’t as if I knew every name by heart. I was going to have to trust her?—
Wait. Where was Gray?
“There’s someone missing,” I said.
“Katie Dunn died in a car accident two years ago,” Sasha said. She grimaced. “And Drew Evans got sick our senior year. He never even made it to college.”
“That was so sad,” Allison said. “I always liked Drew.”
“He was a sweetheart.”
“What about Gray?” I said.
Sasha blinked at me. “Gray…”
“Grayson Marsh?”
“He’s one of the foster kids, right?” Marty said next to me. “Out at Forrester Auto?”
“Right, Gray!” Allison jumped in. “He should be on the invite list for sure.”
“But he dropped out and disappeared, didn’t he?” Sasha said, forehead creasing with confusion. “I barely remember him even attending classes.”
“This is an inclusive event,” I snapped. “We don’t just leave someone off the list because they were a loner in high school?—”
“Easy, Emory,” Marty said. “That’s not what she meant.”
I clenched my jaw. Maybe she hadn’t said it in so many words, but we hadn’t done much to include him in high school. Not any of the foster kids. He and his brothers looked out for each other, and everyone else gave them a wide berth. They were just those weird kids on the edge of town.
The memory filled me with shame now. We should have tried to include them. They’d lost their families, for fuck’s sake, and we didn’t even offer them friendship.
“Gray’s back in town,” Allison was saying while I stewed. “He’s out at the auto shop if you need a mailing address. But Emory’s been working with the brothers on some banking business. He could probably hand-deliver an invitation.”
Everyone looked at me. I tried not to squirm. “Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”
Sasha nodded. “Okay, thanks. I’m sorry, Emory. I really wasn’t trying to purposely leave him off the list. I just… I didn’t know where he was.”
I nodded. “That’s fair.”
I’d obviously overreacted. Gray was just such a big presence in my life now that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t even seen him before. That none of us had really seen him.
I handed Sasha’s phone back and tried to listen as Todd launched into an explanation of his progress on the float for the parade.
