The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

wasn’t perfectly happy to eat what I would be making on that gorgeous European equipment.  “I’m already done with my weekend homework,” she assured me, which I believed to be true.  “It’s Friday night.  Isn’t it, like, the ultimate time to go out?”  She looked at me, eyes narrowed.  “I remember Hallie saying that you were social all the time.  Why do you want to stay in now?  Is it because of me?  I’d get in your way or something?”

“Of course not!”  I hugged her.  “I’d rather be with you than anybody.  I just…”  I just didn’t want to see anyone else.  Anyone could be out tonight, and you never knew who you might run into.  Northern Michigan was big in terms of land, but not overwhelmed with restaurants.

“We should celebrate your new job and also that you made it past the second round of auditions for your butt-shaking gig.”

“Cheerleading,” I corrected.  “Dancing.  Shaking our butts isn’t the focus.”

“Whatever.  It’s what most of the guys in Woodsmen Stadium will be focused on.”  She stared pointedly at the area in the back of my body and I twisted over my shoulder to study it anxiously, too.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.  “Does it look bad?”

“It might look better sitting in a booth at the Hummingbird,” she told me.

“Marley!”  But then I laughed.  Maybe she was right—not about how my butt would look in a booth, but about going out.  We had both worked hard that week.  She missed Hallie and Gunnar a lot, too, and there wasn’t any set return date for them to come home from Minnesota.  It might be good to have a change of scenery, and maybe I was overestimating the chances of seeing someone whom I didn’t want to see.  I still hesitated.

“I have your keys, and I’m driving.  I need the practice, and even if I hit something, your car couldn’t look any worse,” she told me.

Well, that was probably true.  “You can drive,” I agreed, and that also meant we were going out.

Marley got us to the Hummingbird Café with me screaming to brake only one time.  “You’ve gotten a lot better,” I told her, wiping a little sweat off my forehead when she steered into a parking spot.  I glanced back and saw how far the bumper stuck out into the street.  “You have some room in front if you want to pull up—”  The car lurched forward and we smacked into the curb.  “Ok, that’s far enough!  Good job, Marley.”

She tossed the keys to me over the roof of the low car.  “Gunnar freaks out when we drive together.  He holds onto the door and checks his seatbelt like, a million times.  Kind of funny for someone so big and tough to be such a scaredy-cat.”  She smiled, thinking about it.  “He’s a good teacher, though.”

He was a good guy in general, and I was very happy that Marley had him and Hallie as foster parents.  I was just as glad that Gunnar and Hallie had found each other.  It did give me a pang of something sharp and painful, sometimes, when I saw how happy they were.  Not like I was sorry that they were so in love and had gotten married; it was more like a reminder that I wanted what they had.  Well, I used to want it, anyway.  Not anymore.

“Gaby?”

“Coming,” I answered, and followed her into the restaurant.  I glanced around quickly but it was all clear.  Mostly clear, I amended, because there was a girl I knew from high school, and Martha from the grocery store with her family, and several more people I recognized who were waving at me.  They weren’t whispering behind their hands, and no one was pointing or frowning, so it was ok—

“Gaby, this one?”  Marley stood at a booth and pointed to the red vinyl seat.

“Sure!”  We slid into our sides, me very carefully because I had taken a little tumble while tumbling.  The concrete pad behind the bookstore was great for parking cars, but not as much when you landed on your hip and knee instead of your feet.  I had purchased a large bottle of body makeup to cover the bruises for the first Woodsmen cheerleader practice on Monday, but I was also taking handfuls of herbs to try to make them go away.  I took the baggie of pills and dried leaves out of my purse now.

Marley’s eyes got big.  “Seriously?  Drugs, right in a restaurant?  At least at school we wait until we leave the cafeteria.”

“Marley!  You better be kidding.”  She laughed, so I just shook my head.  “Anyway, these are medicinal plants.”

“That’s what everyone at school says, too,” she told me, and blew the wrapper of her straw across the table.  “I hope they work.  That bruise on your leg is as big as your head.”

“Don’t you think it looks better, though?” I asked anxiously.  I’d been doing every home remedy I could find online to improve its appearance.  Not to mention that it hurt a lot, too, and made dancing and more tumbling not as fun.

“Sure, a lot better,” Marley answered, and shook her head no as she said the words.

I held up my water glass.  “Cheers!  To my bruises healing, to a great week at school, and to my first day taking care of Tessa.  She even waved goodbye,” I said, smiling.  Her dad hadn’t, but she had.  I had picked up her up from her day care and we’d gotten hot chocolate and taken it to the beach to throw stones when she’d told me she hadn’t seen Lake Michigan yet.  Well, she shook her head “no” when I’d asked her if she’d been to the lake, which was almost as good as saying it with actual words.  Then we’d gone back to their cave house and played school with her dolls, setting them up in her bedroom until Ben came home from the stadium.

“Sorry, I know I’m late.  Hey, Tessa,” he’d told us, and she’d