Page 37 of The Magic of Sea Glass
With an affectionate look at her, Mitchell came into the room and took her hand.
Stephanie pulled loose from his grip and wrapped her arms around her fiancé’s neck. “Iloveyou.”
He huffed out a laugh and addressed Brody. “We’ll see you later. And I’ll bring her over to get the jeep tomorrow.”
“Sounds good.” He walked them to the door.
With the click of the latch, Lauren and Brody were alone. She didn’t realize how much they’d all been talking and laughing until they were left in the quiet.
“Think she’ll be okay?” Lauren asked.
The corner of Brody’s lips turned upward. “She’ll be fine.” He picked up the near-empty wine bottle on the table and offered more to Lauren, but she declined. “Stephanie has never been a big drinker, so nights like these get her every time.”
“How did you first meet Stephanie?”
His wine barely drunk, he set his glass beside the bottle before lowering himself next to her on the sofa. “We met when we were eight. Her desk was beside mine in school, and I kept passing her notes with little jokes on them, but she wouldn’t read them. They sat there all day, and I was on the edge of my seat for her to take a look at them. Then on the bus, I saw her laughing and I knew she’d finally opened them. When I asked why she waited all day, she said she didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“You were a bad influence on her, then,” Lauren teased, her pulse rising at the sight of his amused wink.
“I wasn’t trying to be. I just would rather have been anywhere than that classroom. School was never my thing.”
“But you said you went to college?”
“Yeah. My parents wouldn’t have let menotgo, even though it made no difference in what I do today.” He stopped talking and suddenly, something seemed to be bothering him.
Lauren leaned forward. “What is it?”
He hesitated.
“Tell me,” she urged him, her interest piqued.
“I was generally a… disappointment. At the very least, I had to go to college for my father’s sake, rather than mine.” The hurt he felt with those words was evident in the lines that formed between his brows.
“What makes you think that?”
He shook his head. “You don’t know my family. And you don’t have the length of time it would take to explain it.”
“Try me.”
“You’re one to talk,” he said with a slight glimmer returning to his eyes as he reached for his glass and took a sip of his wine. “You want me to tell you my life story when you’ve barely told me a thing?”
“I did tell you,” she said. “I told you themainthing.” She couldn’t actually sayitbecause this was the first halfway regular conversation she’d had in a year, and she needed to keep her focus on the present moment. “But fair enough. What more do you want to know about me?” Now that the biggest hurdle was out of the way, everything else would be easy.
“I heard my mother and Mary talking about your wedding company. Why did you sell it?”
“Because I couldn’t handle all those happy endings anymore—one after another—given what I’ve been through. It made me feel like less of a person, as if it had been decided that I didn’t deserve that kind of contentment.” She looked down into her wineglass, knowing the alcohol had given her the ability to verbalize it. She wondered if she’d be upset with herself in the morning for being so open.
“You absolutely do deserve it,” he said, the resolve in his words making it sound less of an opinion and more like fact.
She wanted to believe him. “Then why was it all taken away?”
He frowned, as if contemplating her question. “The day my dad left us, he told me that his own dad had told him, and he was telling me now, ‘Some people come into our lives to help us get where we’re going, but they were never meant to stay.’ I believe it to be true.”
“Was your dad speaking about himself?” she asked.
“I think so. But it applies to your life as well. You’re allowed to love your fiancé and to miss him. But you’re also allowed to find your own peace and be happy. I believe that’s what he’d want for you.”
“How do you know he’d want me to move on?”
