Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin Page A

against the island, and smiled. I smiled back at him. Then, just as we heard Margot making her way into the kitchen, he gave me a mischievous wink and whispered, “And just think. If all goes well … you’ve already met the family.”
    For the rest of the weekend, my excitement grew as Andy and I exchanged many knowing glances, particularly the following evening when Stella probed into her two sons’ dating status.
    “Isn’t there anyone special?” she asked as we played Scrabble at the leather table in the game room.
    James laughed and said, “Yeah, Mom. There are lots of special girls … If you get my drift.”
    “James,” Stella said, shaking her always professionally coiffed golden head, and feigning exasperation for her middle child, as she spelled out the word gnomes with her remaining letters.
    “Good one, Mom,” Andy said adoringly. And then to me, “Do you know that Mom never loses this game?”
    I smile, noting how Southerners drop the word my when talking about their parents. “I’ve heard that,” I said, feeling both impressed and slightly intimidated by the Graham matriarch. In fact, winning board games was only one of the many things I’d heard about Stella over the years that contributed to her beloved, almost cult-like, status in her family. Smart, stunning, strong Stella. Charming and charmed, she certainly wasn’t going to die of cancer—I was sure of it—but rather asleep in her own bed, at the ripe old age of ninety-four, with a smile on her face, and that perfect head resting on her silk pillowcase.
    “That’s ‘cause she cheats,” James said in his slow, deep drawl, an accent so much thicker than rest of the clan’s—which I chalked up to his general slothfulness that permeated even his speech. He winked at me and said, “You gotta keep your eye on her real good, Ellen. She’s a slippery one.”
    We all laughed at the preposterous image of the ever-proper Stella Graham cheating, while she shook her head again, her long neck looking particularly graceful. Then she crossed her arms across her gray couture dress, the heavy gold charms on her bracelet sliding toward her elbow.
    “What about you, Andrew?” Stella asked.
    I felt my face grow warm as I fixed my gaze on her Eiffel Tower charm, undoubtedly a gift from Margot’s father, who I call Mr. Graham to this day, the only one not playing tonight. Instead he was reading The Wall Street Journal by the fire and occasionally consulting the dictionary and playing arbitrator of controversial words.
    “What about me?” Andy said, evading his mother’s question while looking simultaneously amused.
    “He dumped Felicia,” Margot offered up. “Didn’t I tell you that?”
    Stella nodded, but kept her eyes on Andy. “Any chance of reconciling with Lucy? Such a sweet, pretty girl,” she said wistfully. “I loved Lucy.”
    James cracked up and then imitated Ricky Ricardo, “Luuuuuuuu-cy! I’m home!”
    We all laughed again, while Andy shot me a fleeting, eyebrows raised, insider’s look. “Nah. I’m over Lucy,” he said, his bare big toe finding my stocking-covered one under the table. “But I do have a date lined up next week.”
    “Really?” Margot and Stella said at once.
    “Yup,” Andy said.
    “Potential?” Margot asked.
    Andy nodded as Mr. Graham looked up from the newspaper with minor curiosity. Margot once told me that her father’s only wish was that Andy someday move back to Atlanta and take over his law practice—and viewed his marrying a Yankee as the only significant roadblock to his dream.
    Sure enough, Mr. Graham peered over the paper and said, “Is she from the South, by chance?”
    “No,” Andy said. “But I think you’d all really like her.”
    I smiled, blushed, and looked down at my letters, taking it as a good sign that I had an F, A, T, and E on my rack.
    So that’s how Andy and I got our start. Which is why visiting Margot’s family (whom I now refer to as Andy’s family, having made