Battle Scars by Jane Harvey-Berrick

Author:Jane Harvey-Berrick [Harvey-Berrick, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Battle Scars
Publisher: Harvey Berrick Publishing
Published: 2017-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

The only person I knew at the baby shower was Emmy, which felt a little awkward. But to hand it to her, she was nothing but friendly, introducing me to the other women as Jack’s girlfriend.

Everyone there was beautifully dressed, pearls being a favorite accessory, but with my borrowed outfit, I didn’t feel too underdressed.

Emmy was wearing a gorgeous shantung silk dress in a rose pink that perfectly complimented her strawberries and cream complexion.

I caught her staring at me several times during the afternoon, a perplexed expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite work me out or what Jackson saw in me. And I don’t think she did get it. For one thing, I was several years older than all these women; and for another, even though they’d all gone to college and gotten their degrees, only two of them worked full time, and one of those admitted that she’d give up work as soon as she was pregnant, which she planned to do as soon as possible.

Lisa, the only woman there who had no plans to reproduce in the immediate future, threw me a sympathetic look and came to sit next to me, explaining that she was a lawyer, specializing in criminal law. We had an interesting discussion about world politics until the others deemed it “too miserable” for the current occasion. They were probably right.

The rest of the women were friendly, inquisitive, but really I had nothing in common with them. I smiled at the baby clothes and made the appropriate appreciative noises. I drank iced teas and laughed at the ‘guess the baby food’ games.

When Jack arrived by taxi to take me to dinner, I was very ready to leave. Two hours of small talk had left me feeling like the outsider I was. But as soon as he walked into the room, several of the women came over to hug and kiss him, and it was only then that I realized it had been more than two years since he’d paid a visit to his home town.

Emmy was one of the ones to greet him. She was friendly, but not over-friendly, although she couldn’t completely hide her disappointment that he was with me.

Jack gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and passed on his mother’s good wishes.

Then, with a sigh of relief, we climbed in the taxi and drove away.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Very polite,” I said with a smile. “Very friendly.”

“You hated it, didn’t you?”

“No, honestly I didn’t. We don’t have much in common, but they were very sweet.”

“You’re sweet,” he said, his gaze slightly unfocused. “You’d make a great Marine.”

I couldn’t help laughing at his non sequitur.

“Is that right? A Marine, huh?”

“The British Army used to have WRACs,” he said, grinning broadly.

“Excuse me? Racks?”

“Yeah, Women’s Royal Army Corps—WRACs. You know, racks . . . which means . . .”

“Let me guess: you screw them against the wall.”

Jackson burst out laughing, I guess he really was pretty drunk.

“How many beers did you have while I was at that baby shower?” I chuckled.

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