At Last (The Idle Point, Maine Stories)(39)

"That's not a good idea, Gracie. You know how she feels about my family."

"But she always loved you, Noah, I know she did, and she respected your mother. I want her to know how I feel about you. I want her to meet you the way you are now, see how wonderful you are—" She blinked away tears. "If she sees your face it will all come back to her, all of those good feelings. I know she'll be happy for us, Noah. I'm sure of it."

"Gracie, I—"

She reached for his hand. "I want her blessing, Noah."





#





The only thing Noah was sure of was that they were making a mistake but in the end he gave in because he loved Gracie and he respected her grandmother. He didn't want to be the one who stood between the two women and closure as the clock ticked down. He stood up, knocked sand from the backs of his jeans, then said, "C'mon."

Gracie looked up at him. "Now?"

"No time better." Or worse, for that matter. He reached for her hand and helped her to her feet. "We'll take your car. No point letting the whole town in on it."

Gracie threw her arms around his neck and showered him with kisses. "You won't regret this," she said as they walked toward her beat-up Mustang. "We'll get her blessing, Noah. We'll finally have family in our corner."

He hadn't realized that meant so much to her. He didn't need his parents' approval to love Gracie. Their approval didn't change a thing. He had managed to scrape by without it since he was five years old. Sure, life would be a hell of a lot easier if he'd fallen in love with someone from the list of rich girls from the right side of the tracks, but he didn't need easy. He needed Gracie and suddenly he had the feeling she was slipping away.

"We could run away," he said as they neared the docks and the house where she'd grown up. "Keep driving and see where we end up."

She glanced across at him. "You don't mean that."

"Yeah," he said. "I think I do." He swiveled in his seat until he faced her. "Just keep driving, Gracie."

She laughed uneasily. "I'll run out of gas before we reach Portland."

"I have money." He dug into his pockets and withdrew a fistful of credit cards. "I have enough plastic to float us for a year." He motioned for her to pull over to the side of the road and she did. "We'll go to New York," he said, "or Paris or San Francisco. You name the place and it's yours."

The look in her eyes was shadowy, intense. He took that as encouragement.

"Noah, that's crazy. We have school to think of. Jobs. Our futures. We can't go running off."

"Give me one reason why not."

"My scholarship." She drummed the steering wheel with her right thumb. "Maybe you can afford to take off whenever you feel like it, but I can't. If I lose that scholarship, Noah, I lose everything."

"Take a hiatus."

"I'll lose momentum."

"We'll get married," he said. "I'll support you."

She started to laugh. "Doing what? You're a student too, Noah."

He waved the credit cards at her and she made a face. "I have savings," he said. "Trust funds. Books I can hock. We can make it work, Gracie. Hell, we really could go to Paris."

"We could stay here in Idle Point."

"Paris has the Eiffel Tower."

"Idle Point has the lighthouse."

"Marry me, Gracie," he said again, taking her hands between his. A sense of urgency was building up inside of him, almost a sense of desperation. "We could do it this weekend, just drive down to Portland and get a license, pick a judge somewhere and do it."

"Noah!" She sounded breathless and pleased but not quite as enthusiastic as he would have hoped. "Where is this coming from? We can't just run off and get married like that."

"We'll elope. We've loved each other for a long time, Gracie. This will make it official."

She hesitated and in that moment of slight hesitation Noah felt his world begin to shift and change forever.

"Noah, I—"

"Forget it," he said, leaning back in the passenger seat. "You're right. It wouldn't work."

"I never said it wouldn't work."

"Listen, if you have to think about it, it isn't right."