Page 5 of Change of Course

“Just like old times,” Courtney notes when we’re at her apartment and I’m pulling my dress out of its bag. She takes me into her bathroom and opens the drawers. “I got the contents of Ulta in here, pretty much…use whatever you like except maybe my eyeliner and mascara.”

I pick up my own makeup bag. “I got that covered.” I let her do some contour and highlighting for me, and then a smoky cat-eye that makes me look sophisticated. Eat your cradle-snatching heart out, Mike Harrington. I look good.

When I turn to my friend, I can’t help smiling. “Oh, Court—you look terrific!” Courtney’s big dimpled smile is the same winsome thing it was when we were young, and her green eyes are sparkling. Her natural curls are bouncy, and her rusty coral, v-neck dress harmonizes with her autumn coloring. The wrap style flatters her curvy shape and shows off her cleavage, and she looks really wonderful.

I take the makeup “bib” thing Courtney put on me before she did my eyes off over my head, and make sure my dress is free of any spilled powder. Unlike Court, I look best in jewel tones, and my hair is as stick-straight as ever. My dress is a form-fitting royal-blue crepe jersey that skims my less-curvy body from the halter neck to mid-calf.

It’s a dress I bought for an event a few years ago and never wore. I’d put it on, thinking that I looked delicious in it, and modeled it for Mike. He’d made a face, looking at me with disgust, almost. He’d said it was a trying-too-hard outfit. That yes, my legs looked a mile long in it, but it also showed that I only had little skeeter-bite titties.

My B-cups are hardly skeeter bites, so it wasn’t a fair assessment. All the same, I felt really pretty in this dress until he criticized me, and I wound up shoving it to the back of the closet in shame.

I’m looking at it with fresh eyes, and I see that I was right to choose it. Not only is it the blue of our school colors, it’s a great color on me. It’s not tight and it doesn’t show a lot of skin, but I would call it sexy in an understated way.

Courtney thinks so too. When I’m slipping on my strappy black heels, she tells me that I look confident and elegant in it, and she’s sure I’ll be getting my share of male attention in it. She winks at me suddenly. “But maybe not from Jesse Mills. Did you hear?”

“That he’s married to a man? Yes, he told me.”

“I was surprised,” Courtney says, putting on some coral lipstick. “Were you?”

I hesitate. But, after all, the reason we dated is very much not an issue now. “No. I knew. Back then.”

“Is that why you broke up? I mean, you went to prom together and everything, and he was always so nice and so handsome…” Court breaks off, then shrugs, picking up her small gold clutch.

“No, it’s not why we broke up. I knew before we dated. It wound up being, well, cover, in a way, for both of us.”

Courtney looks at me oddly. “You mean you’re a lesbian?”

I shake my head and reach for my favorite berry shade of lipstick. “No. But I was dating someone I didn’t want everybody to know about.” I eye her. “Before you ask, no, I don’t want to talk about him right now. I’ll tell you later, after we get back.”

“Hmm,” Court says. “You know what? I think it would be a good idea for us to take a go-bag with us. You know, just a toothbrush and a change of clothes, in case we get too drunk to drive home.”

I think that’s unlikely. But it’s not worth fussing over, so I pack the essentials into the string backpack she lends me. It’s one less thing to worry about this evening.

On the way to the hotel, Courtney tries grilling me some more. “So this person you don’t want to talk about, will he—or she—be here tonight?”

“It’s not a girl,” I say, placating her. “And no, I doubt he’ll be there.”

“Is he—I mean, did he go to school with us? Was he in our class?” She gasps suddenly. “Was he younger, is that why you had to hide your love?”

I simply laugh. “Not another word from me, Court. Not until this is all over.”

She pouts, but I find David Archuleta’s “Crush” on her satellite radio, and just for three minutes, we’re eighteen again. “We haven’t changed, have we?” Courtney says. “You and me. We’re still the same girls we used to be.”

I take a deep breath, then let it out. “Yes and no. I spent too many years trying to please someone who couldn’t be pleased, and I think it did something to my confidence for a long time. But I think I’m back. I think I’ve found the way to be who I was,” I tell her. “I’ve changed the course of my life, and it’s going somewhere better now.”

“You are a badass, Cheri. You always were, and you are now,” she says, and pats my leg as she pulls up in front of the hotel.

I take that with me as we stroll into the RiverView Hotel.

It’s old, built in the 1880’s—that is, shortly after the railroad sprang up here. The old rail lines were torn up in the Civil War, and there had been a new need for coal to fuel the steel mills up north. Coal was being dug out of the Appalachians and hauled by train to the shipyards at Norfolk. Rivertown, for all that it has a river running right through the middle of it, is and always has been a railroad town. The RiverView Hotel has been updated probably a half-dozen times since it was built, notably when they added the conference center early in this century. It’s a massive edifice on a hill, built of glazed orange bricks that are smooth to the touch and mock-Tudor half-timbering, a grand old lady steeped in elegance.

Inside, the older parts of the hotel are still hung in velvet and damask, and the original hotel desk is formed of black marble with gold veins. We follow the reunion signs to the conference center, where our party has taken over the Kimball Ballroom.

I know everyone here.

How odd that feels, after ten years away. I’d gone to college at James Madison University, and then I’d moved straight to Charlotte with Mike, and while I’ve been back to Rivertown for Christmases and Mother’s Days, I haven’t been in a place where I’ve felt really known.

I’ve really come back home.

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