Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Read Free Book Online

run up the hill to demand Forrest Ritter meet him with pistols at dawn. “I just feel creeped out and so sorry that it ruined Rose’s rehearsal dinner.”
    “ You did nothing wrong,” she said with a sad laugh. “Though Reg and Don are probably up there making excuses for Forrest and helping him lick his wounds.”
    I nodded and looked down at my feet sadly. I kept thinking about that line from F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The rich are very different from you and me.” And even if Forrest Ritter had been a scruffy boy from Wichita once, he was one of them now, the glittering people with houses like glass boats, and I wasn’t. And never would be. And I just kept proving how out of place I was. Someone like Catalina would have known how to deal with drunken literary gods with grabby hands. She wouldn’t have blown up a party as effectively as a grenade.
    “I’m sure my dad is setting them straight,” Michael assured me as he stood up. “And I’m going to tell Ritter what I think of him.”
    “No! Please. Just stay here, with me, please. I want all of those people to just forget about me and what happened,” I pleaded.
    He looked at his mom, who cupped his chin with her hand and said, “Georgia doesn’t need you to ride up there on a white horse.”
    “No, please,” I repeated. “I feel bad enough.”
    Michael sighed, held out his hand to me, and suggested, “You want to go upstairs and call it a night?”
    I smiled a little and said, “Yes,” and he took my hand and squeezed it. In the confusion of the past hour, I had all but forgotten that this would be our first night together—or at least across the hall from one another. That morning, he had shown me to the guest room, bounced a bit on the bed, and declared that he looked forward to tucking me in for the night. That sounded like a sweet way to end a creepy evening.
    I said good night to his mom and after changing out of my dress, I waited for him in the hallway outside the bathroom. I had on a kimono over my pj’s and he wore long plaid flannel shorts and a T-shirt with a bear on it, which was close enough to little boy footie jammies to make me smile. He looked beyond adorable.
    “You look so cute!” I said, and put my arms around him for a hug, which he returned somewhat stiffly. I stepped back to look at his face and his expression was troubled.
    “You’re not mad at me, are you?” I tried to joke. “Just because I whacked a literary treasure in the face with a copy of his own book?”
    He sighed, hesitated, and admitted, “I just wonder, sometimes, why you get into situations like that. More than anybody I know … You know I hate drama. I hate big scenes, and you’ve already started a couple, even though we’ve only been here for two days.”
    “‘Scenes’ like what? Being molested by a former literary stud muffin who now smells like salami and paint thinner? Yeah, I set that scene up masterfully.” I hugged my arms to my chest, barely daring to breathe. “You’re not really blaming me for what happened?”
    “No! That sickens me, and I think you know that.” He sighed and leaned against the door to his room, saying, “I mean like the way you were making fun of my grandmother. Yeah, Gram can be a judgmental old crow—but I love her. You don’t have to mock her, especially in front of the rest of the family. And Catalina? She’s a friend. Whatever was going on between the two of you when I went back to the house … That was like a catfight from one of those Real Housewives shows. I can’t even watch five minutes of one of those shows—I don’t want to live in one.”
    He was right about his grandmother. And probably even Catalina. Forrest Ritter could be consigned to a trash heap in hell for all I cared, but I needed to try harder with Michael’s family and family friends. I was the alien in their world. I had to learn to adapt before I alienated Michael.
    Groping for humor at the end of one of the worst days that had ever