Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen Page A

horseback riding, and tennis she only ever favored for the outfits—but there was a fine line separating certain behaviors from other decidedly darker ones, which she was mindful never to cross. When she realized she might have given the boxer the wrong idea by dancing with him, she shook her head kittenishly, demurring. He had her hand firmly, however, and might even have succeeded in pulling her along against her will had they not been noticed, at just that moment, by a familiar face. The face was rather full, and it belonged to Gracie Northrup.
    Gracie—the girl she’d found in Charlie’s bed one vile night at Dogwood. The big-chested beast who very nearly broke them up was walking along the edge of the blankets, her cheeks pink from who knows what sort of exertion, and she didn’t even have the humility to appear awkward when she recognized Astrid. With an expression that was either very stupid or very shrewd, she greeted her former Miss Porter’s classmate, her smile wide and her wave ungainly.
    She was wearing a red-and-white-striped dress, which Astrid might have advised against if she had any sympathy for the girl, and she tugged at it as she made herself comfortable on the grass. The image of Gracie with her blouse undone on Charlie’s bed recurred in Astrid’s thoughts, and perhaps in Gracie’s, too, because she went on smiling as she asked, “Where’s Charlie?”
    The gall of this statement lit a fire inside Astrid that threatened to erupt into conflagration. She narrowed her eyes at Gracie and hoped that she saw what an incomparably light and superior creature Astrid was, how delicate she looked beside the Irishman, how universally desired. But Gracie only stared back dumbly. In the next moment Astrid stopped feeling hateful toward the girl in the red stripes and began to wonder where, indeed, Charlie was.
    â€œI haven’t the foggiest,” she announced. “We aren’t one of those couples that cease to function without each other by our side,” she added proudly, although the fact that he was not currently at her side was beginning to make her brain tick, and before she knew it she was furious again about the lack of adornment on her ring finger. She still hated her mother for having pointed out his failure, but that did not make it any less humiliating.
    â€œWell, can I sit here with you?” Gracie went on with a simple-minded smile. “Seems my friends have gone off.”
    Before Astrid had the chance to reply, she caught sight of Charlie. He was ambling through the blankets alongside Danny, the red-haired guard at Dogwood, holding his ridiculous lemon yellow jacket over his shoulder with one finger, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. Her eyes darted from Gracie back to Charlie, and she wondered where he had been.
    â€œYou’re in luck,” she declared coldly as she pushed herself up from the blanket. “There’s our darling Charlie now. I hope he’s just as sweet with you as he used to be with me.”
    Without so much as looking at Gracie or the boxer for a reaction, she began to stride away from the crowd clustered at the waterfront. She almost really did wish that Charlie was sweet to Gracie, at least for a little while, and that they ended up together, so that Charlie could spend the rest of his days wondering why he was with such a second-rate cow instead of his first fiancée, the one he’d not bothered to buy a ring for. “Damn him,” she muttered, telling herself not to cry as she continued on toward the Beaumonts’ big, pompous house, the grand fireworks display illuminating her face as though it were high noon whenever she looked back.
    At first she didn’t think Charlie had seen her, but when she heard him calling out her name, she kicked off her shoes and began to run. She ran as hard as she could, her feet barely touching the ground, her limbs wheeling around her body. She felt so