One Last Shot at Something Real

*This one came from a daydream about how a wedding can be a second chance at a first impression. I wanted to write something warm and a little cheeky, with the joy of two people who still have mischief in them. Thanks for reading hope it makes you smile.*

Fay Carrington, sixty-two years old and twice divorced, had never in her life arrived at a party without a plan. Well, maybe once, when she was twenty-one and heartbroken, but that didn't count. Tonight she had a plan, and the plan was simple. Look fabulous, catch up with everyone, and see if there was still any fun left in the world for a retired schoolteacher with good knees and better hair.

She checked her lipstick in the car mirror one last time before she went in. The red dress was a little daring for a grandmother, she knew that. So what? Jess was twenty-six, a grown woman, and Fay had spent six decades doing exactly what people expected of her. Retired from thirty-eight years of teaching fourth grade, three years single since Gerald walked out, and she was done being sensible for at least one evening.

The Oakwood Manor was glowing. Gold streamers everywhere, ivy winding up the pillars, and dark wood paneling that made the whole banquet hall feel like a fancy library where nobody read. Fairy lights winked through the tall windows out toward the veranda, where Fay could see the pond and the old oak trees strung with more lights. Somebody had spent real money on this wedding, and good for them.

"Fay! You made it!" Jess came hurrying across the dance floor in her white gown, arms out, and hugged her hard. Ian stood behind her looking calm as always, in his gray suit, holding two glasses of champagne, a man who knew his job was just to stand there and be useful.

"Sweetheart, you look like a dream," Fay said, and kissed her cheek. "And Ian, honey, you clean up nice!"

"Mrs. Carrington, you're going to outshine the bride," Ian said, and he meant it, the dear boy. "That dress."

"See, Jess? This is why I like him better than the last one you brought around."

"Grandma." Jess gave her the look. The well-known look, the one that said please don't steal the spotlight tonight, and Fay gave her back her best innocent face. She had perfected that face on thirty-eight years of fourth graders, and it still worked.

"I promise to behave," Fay said. "Mostly."

"Oh no," Jess groaned, but she was laughing, and then the DJ called for something and she was swept away, and Fay was finally free to do what she'd been itching to do since the parking lot. Scan the room.

Old faces everywhere. She spotted the Hendersons by the cake table, and Doris something-or-other from her book club waving a breadstick at her, and a whole table of Jess's college friends who all looked barely old enough to drink. But it was the bar that caught her eye. There was a tall man sitting alone at the end of it, silver-haired, broad through the shoulders, and something about the way he held his glass, two fingers around the stem like he was being polite even to a beer, rang a bell so loud in her head she actually stopped walking.

No. It couldn't be.

She drifted closer, pretending to admire the flower arrangements, which were lovely, white roses and eucalyptus, in case anyone asked. And then the man turned his head and she saw his profile and her heart did a thing it had no business doing at her age.

Trent Platt. It was actually Trent Platt.

Here's what you need to know about Trent Platt, and why Fay nearly knocked over a centerpiece hurrying toward the bar. Forty-one years ago, when she was twenty-one and taking an evening class in American literature at the community college, there was a quiet man in the second row who wrote his notes in tiny perfect handwriting and laughed at her jokes when nobody else did. They studied together. Once. And at the end of that one study session, in the parking lot by her little blue Honda, he kissed her. Just once, soft and sweet and terribly polite, and then he said he was sorry, and he moved to another state for work before the final exam, and she had thought about that kiss more times than she would ever admit to a living soul.

"Trent Platt," she said, arriving at the bar with her most dazzling smile. "As I live and breathe."

He turned, and his eyebrows went up, and then his whole face changed. "Fay Carrington? Oh my goodness. Fay Carrington."

"In the flesh, and better than ever," she said. "You look wonderful. Sit with me and tell me everything, because I refuse to believe you just happened to be here."

"I'm Ian's uncle," he said, and patted the stool beside him. "Half brother of his mother, on the side nobody talks about at Thanksgiving. Please, sit. Can I buy you a drink?"

"You absolutely may. White wine, and don't be shy about the pour."

So they sat, and she got her wine, and they looked at each other like two people doing arithmetic. Forty-one years. She'd been twenty-one, he'd been twenty-two, and now here they were, silver and creaky and still, somehow, grinning like idiots.

"I can't believe it," he kept saying. "I walked in an hour ago and I thought, that woman by the door looks like somebody I used to know. And then I thought, no, don't be ridiculous, that woman is gorgeous."

"Trent Platt, are you flirting with me at a wedding?"

"Would that be so terrible?"

"Not even a little," she said. "It's the only acceptable place for it. Now. Tell me what you've been doing since you vanished on me and broke my poor young heart."

"I didn't vanish, I transferred to a job in Ohio," he said, but he was laughing. "And I have felt bad about that parking lot for forty-one years, if that helps."

"It does not help. Do you know how that felt? We finally finish Great Expectations, I finally work up the nerve, and you kiss me and say sorry and move to Ohio." She smacked his arm. "A girl could get a complex."

"Well." He swirled his drink. "For what it's worth, the sorry was about the moving, not the kissing."

Fay set her wine down very slowly, because this was getting interesting. "Explain that, Trent Platt, and explain it well."

"I mean the kiss was the best part of that whole year," he said. "And then I panicked and took the Ohio job, because I was twenty-two and stupid, and I've thought about that parking lot roughly once a decade ever since. There. Confession complete. Your turn."

Oh, this man. This quiet, careful man, sitting there at a wedding bar dropping a confession like it was a napkin. Fay picked her wine back up and took a good long sip to buy herself a second, because her cheeks were doing something warm and she was enjoying it far too much.

"My turn for what? I have no confessions. I've been an absolute angel."

"You were the only person in that class who made me laugh," Trent said. "I remember the night we studied. You did a whole bit about Pip that I still think about."

"Pip deserved it," Fay said. "Whiny little thing. And what about Miss Havisham, sitting up in that house in her wedding dress? You know, I understand her better every year."

"Why, what's stopping you from letting time stand still?" he asked, and it was a joke, but there was something under it, she could hear it.

"Money, mostly," she said, and he laughed, a real laugh, and she counted it as a win.

They talked for an hour. An actual hour. About his wife, lost to cancer nine years ago, God rest her, and about Gerald, who Fay described as "a man who thought a candlelit dinner was going out for Italian without his phone," and Trent laughed so hard he had to put his glass down. About her students, hundreds of them, grown up now with children of their own. About his woodworking, of all things, he built furniture in a shop behind his house in Ohio, and when he described a walnut table he'd made for his daughter he talked with his hands and his eyes lit up and Fay thought, well, hello there.

The DJ was playing something slow, and the dance floor was filling up with old couples and young ones, and the fairy lights outside were calling to her through the window. Fay had a plan, remember. She always had a plan.

"So," she said, turning on her stool to face him properly. "Here's my question, and I want a straight answer. Is the Ohio thing permanent, or is there a version of tonight where you dance with me at my granddaughter's wedding and don't disappear to another state by morning?"

Trent looked at her, and something shifted in his face, that same careful look from forty-one years ago, except this time it resolved into a smile instead of an apology.

"There is very much a version of tonight like that," he said. "In fact, Fay Carrington, I was working up my nerve to ask you to dance before you ambushed me at the bar."

"Ambushed. I said hello."

"You said hello like a woman on a mission."

"And you noticed, which tells me you're not as quiet as you used to be." Fay stood up and held out her hand. "Well? You heard the music. Ask me properly, before Jess sees us and dies of embarrassment."

He took her hand, and his was warm and steady. "Fay. Would you do me the honor?"

"Why, yes," she said. "Yes, I believe I would."

So they danced. And listen, when I say danced, I mean that lovely slow swaying kind of dancing where the man puts one hand on your waist like he's asking permission and you have to grab his shoulders yourself and say, "Trent, for heaven's sake, I'm sixty-two, not made of glass."

"I'm being polite," he said.

"Be polite on the way in and then actually hold me. This isn't a handshake with music."

And he laughed, that warm laugh of his, and his arm settled properly around her back, and oh, that was better. That was much better. He was taller than she remembered, or maybe she'd shrunk a little, who could say, and his shoulder smelled like cedar, which she supposed was a woodworking thing and which she decided she liked very much.

"Forty-one years," he said, turning her gently. "And you still dance like you're leading."

"I am leading. You're doing fine, just follow."

"I always did follow you around that classroom."

"You did not."

"Every night," he said. "You'd sit third row by the window, and I'd arrive early so I could get the seat behind you. I told myself it was about hearing the lecture clearly."

Fay pulled back just enough to look at his face, because surely he wasn't about to say what it sounded like he was about to say.

"Trent Platt. Are you telling me you spent a whole semester arranging your seating chart around a girl?"

"I'm telling you I spent a whole semester arranging my seating chart around you, yes. And I never once worked up the nerve to ask you to dinner. I kissed you in a parking lot and then fled the state. That's the full accounting."

"Too shy," Fay said, shaking her head. "All that time I sat there thinking, here's this nice broad-shouldered man, say something, Fay, and instead I had to do all the work myself. Do you know I'm the one who walked you to your car? I'm the one who lingered. A woman lingering by a blue Honda in 1984, and it took everything I had."

"I wondered about that," he said. "I wondered for years what would have happened if I'd asked you out that night instead of just kissing you and panicking."

"And what did you decide?"

"Depends on the decade. In my thirties I decided we'd have gotten married too young and divorced by thirty-five. In my forties I decided we'd have been wonderful. Now I just decide it was a shame, and I leave it there."

Hmm. Well. That was a little more honest than she'd bargained for, standing there on a dance floor in a red dress with her heart doing things she hadn't authorized. Fay decided to meet honesty with honesty, since he'd started it.

"Me too," she said. "Except I never did the math about divorces. I just did the version where you stayed and we had a whole life and I never met Gerald at all. In that version I'm much richer, by the way. Gerald took the good china."

"I'm sorry about the china."

"Be sorry about Gerald. The china survived, it's the principle of the thing."

The song ended and another slow one started, and neither of them moved toward the edge of the floor, which Fay counted as a victory. She spotted Doris from book club over Trent's shoulder, whispering to Marie Henderson, both of them looking directly at Fay, and when Fay caught Doris's eye, Doris had the nerve to wink.

"They're watching us," Trent said. He didn't sound bothered. He sounded amused.

"Of course they're watching us. A silver-haired stranger sweeps into town and dances with the most notorious woman in the over-sixty set? This is the best thing that's happened to Doris since the library fined her."

"Are you notorious?"

"Trent, I have been the entertainment at every event in this county for forty years. Jess spent her whole childhood begging me to behave. Ian thinks I'm hilarious, which is why I've decided he can stay."

"He is a good boy," Trent said. "Best thing my sister ever produced, and don't tell her I ranked her children."

"Your secret is safe, though I'll be honest, I'm mostly listening to your voice and not the content."

"Fay."

"What. You confessed your seating chart crimes, I get to confess I like the sound of you. This is how flirting works at our age. We trade records of our lapses and hope the other one doesn't run."

"Nobody's running," he said, and the way he said it, low and steady, made her glad she'd worn the red dress and checked the lipstick twice.