The Promise of Amazing Read online

  “I’m sorry. I had to walk,” I answered, whipping off my coat and pulling down the sleeves of my starched white work shirt. My underarms were damp. I did a quick sniff test. Clean.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you, Wren,” she said, rubbing her eyes and leaning back in her rolling chair. The wall of her office was covered with forty-five years’ worth of framed thank-you letters and pictures of smiling couples. Mom looked harried. The weight of the world or, more precisely, the weight of every wedding and event, sat on her shoulders.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I said.

  “If one more thing goes wrong tonight, I’m going to jump ship myself. The florist is running late, Chef Hank is complaining about the quality of the salmon, and Marguerite and José called in sick. We’re seriously understaffed for this wedding tonight. Any chance Jazz or Madison would want to earn some extra cash?”

  “I think they’re already out,” I said, tightening my messy French knot.

  “Then you’d better hustle, sweetie. Cocktail hour starts in less than thirty minutes,” she said, standing up and reaching for her suit jacket.

  I hurried into the Lancelot to find a dozen or so black-and-white-clad Camelot staff assembling table settings with more silverware than any modern-day person needed. Eben saw me and grinned.

  “Hey, ’bout time you showed up.”

  Twenty-one and working his way through culinary school, Eben Phillips had started at the Camelot around the same time as my sister, Brooke. He was practically part of the family and hands down my favorite work bud.

  “Check this out, charitable donations as favors,” he said, handing me one of the cards.

  In lieu of little glass swans or bars of chocolate with their names on them, the couple had donated money to a charity that distributed mosquito nets to needy families in Africa.

  “Cool. That’s one I’ve never heard of,” I said. “Need help?”

  “I’ll be your bestie for life if you take over,” he said. “I’m assigned the head table tonight, and they’re in Guinevere’s Cottage. I have to get over there, like, yesterday, to make sure everything is in order.”

  “Lucky. Can I be your second in command?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.

  Cocktail hour at the Cottage was always fun because it was like being at the epicenter of the party. You caught a glimpse into the lives of the couple and their friends as they rehashed the ceremony and took silly photos. The change of scenery also made the night go faster somehow.

  “Aww, baby, maybe if you had your butt here on time. I already picked the new guy,” he said, motioning with his chin over to a tall, blond boy who appeared confused as to how to arrange the water goblets.

  “New guy? Come on,” I said. “But I guess it’s not his skills you like.”

  “Um, don’t go there, Baby Caswell. I’m not into jailbait,” he said. “You’ll just hafta sling those cocktail franks yourself tonight, darlin’.” He handed me the box with the rest of the engraved donation cards and summoned Clueless Blond Boy to follow him across the parking lot to the Cottage.

  By the time I’d finished setting out the favor cards, there were guests in the lobby waiting for cocktail hour. I closed the curtains on the glass doors to the ballroom so the big reveal would be more dramatic and made my way to the frenzied kitchen to pick up a serving tray for the first round of hors d’oeuvres. I waited and watched as others walked by with platters of mini quiches, fried ravioli, and shrimp-cocktail shooters, getting a sinking feeling about what I’d get stuck serving.

  Chef Hank pushed a tray of cocktail franks toward me. I reluctantly grabbed it and made my way to the already bustling ballroom as the opening strains of the wedding band’s version of “Fever” echoed through the back room.

  Little hot dogs were the bane of my existence. On my first day serving, when a guest asked what they were, I felt like saying, “Duh, are you blind?” but instead came out with “Tiny batter-wrapped kosher frankfurters with dipping sauce” in a formal voice that Eben never let me live down.

  “The proper name is cocktail frank, but I like your style,” he told me, after he composed himself in the back room.

  “I was just trying to make them sound . . . I don’t know, more impressive.”

  “Call ’em whatever you want. They’re the height of tacky, but everyone gobbles them up faster than you can say, ‘Mustard with that?’”

  Since then, whenever a guest asked that idiotic question, Eben and I made up some lavish-sounding name to make the lowly cocktail frank sound classy. The hot-dog name game was more fun when the two of us were working the same room. I was not in the mood.

  When I ran the Camelot, they would be banished from the menu.

  I put on my cheek-busting service smile and wandered into the crowd, offering the tray to anyone who looked interested. It wasn’t long before I ran into the other bane of my existence at work: the group of rowdy guys. They were the ones at a wedding who made obnoxious jokes, drank too much, and flirted with anything that had a pulse.

  “The Weenie Girl!” bellowed a ruddy-faced man in a brown suit.

  Rowdy guys who gave me a nickname: a special breed. At least I knew they wouldn’t ask me what I was serving.

  “Not a party till the wieners come out!” someone else said as thick hands emptied the tray, leaving nothing behind but grease stains and crumbs on the paper doily. I went back to the kitchen, hoping to snag more trendy hors d’oeuvres like crab-cake sliders or raspberry Brie bites. Instead I watched helplessly as Chef Hank gave me more of my vile food nemesis.

  “You really hate me, don’t you?”

  He saluted and busied himself with the next server.

  Back in the Lancelot, I took my time weaving through the crowd, ducking here and there and trying to avoid the Rowdies.

  “Hey, Weenie Girl!”

  People actually turned to look at me. I froze, embarrassed from the shouted nickname and the laughter it provoked. My face cramped from smiling. I walked slowly toward them, but all I wanted to do was throw the tray Frisbee-style across the room and let them deal with the fallout.

  “Grayson, just the girl you’re looking for,” said the brown-suit man.

  The person in question spun around and flashed a dazzling, white-toothed grin that made me want to fix my French knot. He was younger than the rest of them, with dark, jagged hair that fell into his eyes. I held up the cocktail franks to him, softening my smile and praying he wouldn’t ask any questions, since his appearance had completely short-circuited my brain.

  “Sweet. Watch this,” he said, grabbing at least five dogs.

  He tilted back his head, threw one of the hot dogs high in the air, and caught it in his mouth to the applause of the surrounding group. While chewing he kept his eyes on me, maybe wondering why I wasn’t cheering along with the rest of them. I should have left, but there was something about the way he oozed confidence while acting so asinine that fascinated me. He was a complete tool, but I bet no one ever accused him of being too quiet.

  For his next trick, he threw two weenies in the air at once and successfully caught them in his mouth, to the delight of his rapt audience. This time, when he brought down his chin, he wasn’t grinning. The rest of the hot dogs fell from his hand, and he gestured frantically toward his neck.

  No one in the group thought he was choking for real. The brown-suit man pounded his fist against a nearby table and chanted, “Gray. Gray. Gray.” Gray’s face blossomed into a bright shade of red, and drool spilled out of the corner of his mouth. My first thought was that if he would go to those lengths for a joke, he must be a real asshole. I was about to leave when I saw the animal-like panic in his eyes.

  I dropped my tray and wrapped my arms around him from behind. The words fist, thumb in, right above the navel came out from the recesses of my brain, and I squeezed upward several times to no avail. Someone yelled for help. There was desperate movement around me, but I continued pushing my fist into Gray’s abdomen until I felt his b
ody release. Just as the band finished playing “The Girl from Ipanema,” a gooey mass tumbled out of his mouth and landed with a splat on the cocktail table in front of him. Someone groaned. Gray gripped the table, head down, and coughed. Sound. A good sign. My arms fell from around his waist, and I stepped back.

  His navy-blue jacket stretched taut across his back with each breath. Brown-suit guy put a glass of water in front of him, but Gray waved it off. He stood up straight and turned toward me, mouth dropped open like he had something to say.

  His dark brown eyes held mine for a second. Open. Honest. Longing. As if the hot-dog-tossing tool was just some mask he’d put on for the party. A wave of recognition coursed through me. Did I know him? No. I’d never seen him before . . . but . . . I took a step toward him.

  He blinked and lurched forward.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Then he hurled all over my black Reeboks.

  TWO

  GRAYSON

  REGURGITATING ON SOMEONE’S SHOES IS NOT the best way to make a first impression.

  Especially after that someone saved your life.

  I wiped my mouth along the sleeve of my suit jacket, eyes zeroing in on her black sneakers and the puddle of upchuck around them. The noise of the room was smothered by the ba-bum, ba-bum of my heartbeat in my head—a jagged zigzag of pain. The Weenie Girl was a statue of calm shock, mouth slightly open, brows knit, as her eyes went from the pool of vomit on the floor to my face.

  I was breathing, and it was a miracle.

  “Grayson?”

  Hands were on me. Voices urged me to sit. A chair slid underneath me, and I flopped down onto it. All the while my eyes remained on hers. She brushed some stray hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. The distance between us closed, and it was just . . . her. And me. Calm in the chaos. The hair tumbled across her face again. My fingers ached to sweep it away. I wanted to say something, but for once words wouldn’t come. Then Pop blocked her from view.

  “Grayson, are you all right?”

  They all thought I’d been joking. So, okay, pretending to choke would have been some smart-ass spectacle I might have pulled, but I doubt I could have been so convincing.

  He clapped his hands in front of my face.

  “What, Pop?” I croaked. His weathered brow creased as he tugged me to standing.

  “You need some air,” he said, gripping my forearm. We knifed through the crowd made up of the extended Barrett family, always ready for a party. I craned my neck, searching over the sea of animated faces for the Weenie Girl, but she was gone.

  Pop led me through glass doors into the dark lobby. The doors glided to a close, muffling the band’s campy rendition of “I Get a Kick out of You.” He took me to a quiet corner, right next to a shiny suit of armor, which was so out of the ordinary, it made the whole episode more surreal. My head throbbed.

  “Grayson,” he said.

  “Pop, I’m fff—” I began, but got distracted by the rise and fall of party noise as the doors to the ballroom opened again. Weenie Girl. But no, it was my stepmother, Tiffany, sauntering over holding a martini glass filled with bright blue liquid.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, I’m fine,” I said.

  “It’s not nothin’,” Pop said. “He almost choked to death.”

  She let out a high-pitched squeak and placed her martini glass on the stone mantelpiece.

  “Grayson Matthew, are you okay?” she asked, one hand running through my hair, the other on my cheek, as she gave me a once-over. Tiff liked to use my middle name for emphasis when something significant happened. I’d heard it a lot in anger after I got tossed out of St. Gabe’s last spring. This soft version, almost a whisper, was something new, and I felt myself falling into it.

  “I’m fantastic,” I said, shrugging her off. “Can’t we just go back in?”

  “Gray, you’re loopy. I’d feel better if you got checked out. We can hit the ER and be back before they cut the cake,” Pop said.

  Tiff ruffled. “Let me get my coat and say some good-byes.”

  “Tiffany, no. You stay. Mingle,” Pop said.

  She put her hand to her chest and sighed. “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Gray and I will be filling out paperwork and fannin’ our balls at the ER. Nothin’ we can’t handle.”

  I stifled a laugh and winced, my throat still raw.

  “Really, Blake, do you have to be so crude?” Tiff asked.

  “C’mon, you love me,” he said, pulling her in for a kiss so intense, I felt like a perv for witnessing. When your father gets more action than you do, it’s all sorts of wrong. Like natural selection gone awry.

  They were rubbing noses as a woman in a dark suit walked up to us. She tucked a strand of short blond hair behind her ear, folded her arms, and waited uncomfortably until Pop and Tiff broke apart.

  “Are you the boy who choked?”

  The Boy Who Choked. Pretty much summed up my seventeenth year.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  She turned to Make-Out Master Blake Barrett. “I can call the paramedics if you want. I’m—”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. We’re going to the emergency room,” Pop answered, cutting her off. Her eyes widened, and she tucked her hair behind her ear again. There was something vaguely familiar . . .

  “You have a daughter,” I said.

  “Grayson, are you okay?” Pop asked.

  “She works here,” I continued, ignoring him.

  “Yes. Wren. Do you know her?”

  “She saved my life.” The phrase sounded strange, dramatic as it hung in the air.

  “Really? I was downstairs checking on another event. The minute I heard I came up. I’m still not quite sure what happened.”

  Pop gave her the no-nonsense “he choked on a hot dog, and your daughter did the Heimlich” version, making it sound less epic than it felt. He left out that he’d been at the bar at the time and that my uncles had watched like a panicked Greek chorus while a complete stranger took control of the situation.

  A beautiful stranger with a name.

  Wren.

  “Please, send me the ER bill,” Wren’s mother said, handing Pop a business card. We were interrupted by a waft of cold air as a vision of white burst through the front door.

  “Uncle Blake!”

  My cousin Katrina swished across the lobby in her poufy white dress. Pop turned to us and made a short cutting motion with his hand across his throat that I could easily interpret. Shut your trap. The bride doesn’t want to know someone almost died at her wedding.

  “Trini, you’re a vision,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  “The ceremony was so touching,” Tiffany chimed in.

  I stood back, feeling about as useful as a bobblehead. A brown-haired bridesmaid, who I’d shared some serious eye-fucking with during the wedding vows, waved to me. Two hours ago the adrenaline surge from flirting had made me rethink my foray into monkhood. I hadn’t been with anyone since . . . Allegra. A wedding reception where everyone was juiced up and ready to party seemed like a prime moment to get back in the action.

  Now hooking up didn’t matter. I was more interested in Wren’s mother and the waiter she was talking to who’d come in behind Katrina. He put a hand up to his mouth, nodded, and disappeared into the ballroom. I was about to follow, hoping he could lead me to Wren so I could say thanks, or what’s up, or whatever was the appropriate thing to say to a person who saved your life, when Pop tugged my sleeve.

  “C’mon, Gray.” He waved and mouthed something to Tiff as the wedding party rustled into formation, lining up to make their grand entrance. The pretty bridesmaid tapped my shoulder as we brushed past them.

  “Dance later?” she asked. Her glossy lips promised sweetness and warmth. A familiar rush, the thrill of being with a new person, made me pause. Then I thought of Wren; her body pressed against my back, soft but strong, and fighting for me. Even though I’d done jack shit to deserve it.r />
  “No, wish I could but I’m heading out,” I said, and followed Pop into the brisk autumn evening.

  Pop paused at the top of the stairs and fumbled around with a cigarette case and lighter. The business card fell from his pocket. It whirled helicopter-style and landed on the bottom stone step.

  “I hate weddings. Here, help me,” he said, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He handed me the lighter and cupped his hands against the breeze coming off the bay. I ran my thumb across the spark wheel until it flickered with a pop. He sucked in, making it look painful. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange. I tossed him the lighter, and he tucked it back into his jacket.

  “You should quit, Pop,” I said, watching him exhale a long stream of smoke.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. That and eat bran fiber. They’re on my list,” he said. “C’mon.”

  At the bottom stair, I picked up the business card.

  “Here, you dropped this.”

  “Don’t need it.”

  “But . . . she was nice,” I said, feeling oddly protective.

  “Nice?” Pop said. “Gray, she was covering her ass. She doesn’t want to get sued. Not that I would do that to the Caswells.”

  “You know her?”

  “No, not her,” he answered, shaking his head. He took a hard hit from the cigarette and blew out another deliberate smoke stream. “Jimmy Caswell was first string on St. Gabe’s with me. We took ’em to a championship that year.”

  “You never mentioned him,” I said, running my finger across the engraved letters on the card.

  Ruth Caswell

  Proprietor—Banquet Manager

  The Camelot Inn

  “Lost touch after high school. He’s an attorney with the city now. Thrown a few clients my way, but that’s as far as it goes. Why so interested?”

  “No reason,” I lied, sliding the card into my wallet. “Pop, I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

  “Yes, Grayson, you do.” A jet-black Mercedes chirped and lit up as we walked toward it. Pop’s leased wheels to impress potential home buyers. “You’re acting weird. And your mother will be all over me if I don’t take you somewhere to get checked out.”