My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Since June

I looked at the text on his phone.

Hugh's thumb was white on the edge of the phone.

"Is it?" I asked.

I hated how small my voice came out.

"No," he said.

"You sound sure."

"I'm sure." He shoved the phone back into his pocket like it was hot. "I'll tell you why. But not in a parking lot, with my mouth still..." He stopped. He looked at my mouth. "Not here."

"Then where?"

"Sunday. My grandmother's. She's been asking me to bring you to lunch for a week." He opened the truck door for me, rain dripping off the brim of his cap. "And Shayla's going to come."

"How do you know?"

"Because my grandmother's table has the most people at it," he said. "And she needs a room."

Mrs. Meade lived in an old brick house in the North End, up on the bluff, with a long sloping lawn and a view straight down to the water.

She opened the door herself on Sunday in an apron that said WORLD'S OKAYEST COOK.

"Bonnie," she said, "you brought the bruised knees. Wonderful. Edie, you brought nothing, which is correct. Come in, the roast is resting."

The dining room had a long table under a brass chandelier and a wall of family photographs.

Tugboats, mostly. Men in wool caps squinting into the sun.

And in the middle, in a silver frame, a young woman in a lace wedding dress with a cinched waist and a skirt so full it filled the whole picture.

"Is that you?"

"Nineteen sixty-five." Mrs. Meade handed me a gravy boat. "I was nineteen, and I thought I was the most beautiful thing in Puget Sound. That dress was my mother's. I had it taken in twice."

"The darts at the waist are hand-stitched."

"See?" she said to Hugh. "I told you she'd notice the darts."

Hugh carved the roast.

He did it with a captain's seriousness, sleeves pushed up his big forearms, while Bonnie told the story of her derby team losing to a team from Olympia called the Clam Slammers.

Mrs. Meade laughed so hard she had to put down her fork.

It was warm in that room. The windows were steamed. The pot roast fell apart.

I hadn't sat at a table like that since my mother died.

I didn't realize how hungry I was for it until I was halfway through my second plate.

Then the doorbell rang.

It rang again. Then someone started pounding on the door with a fist.

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