If the Shoe Fits Read Free Page A

graduated from law school just five years prior. Today was a banner day, and it deserved some serious celebration.

    Will trailed behind as his father and Julianne headed for the kitchen. Being there in his family home again, so much familiarity between his dad and his best friend, Will half expected his mom to bound through the back door, a sack of groceries in her arms and a beaming neon smile on her pretty, suntanned face.
    “You get the ice cream, and I’ll get the root beer!” Julianne exclaimed.
    Will’s father nodded. “Anywhere else in the world, a celebration like this might involve popping champagne corks and glasses of wine raised overhead,” he declared. “But here … root beer floats are the stuff that toasts are made of.”
    “Don’t forget we’ve ordered Chinese,” Julianne reminded him with a grin. “The celebratory meal of champions.”
    “Where’s Amanda?” the elderly man asked as he dipped a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a tall glass.
    “Mom’s just back from her sculpting class. She’s changing into a clean blouse and said she’d be over in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
    Will grinned, knowing that was a direct quote. Julianne’s mom always said things like that.
    “Shall I make her a float, too?”
    “Please.”
    Quick flashes of past root-beer-float celebrations blinked through Will’s memory. He and Julianne had become quick best friends when her family moved in next door, both of them ten years old at the time, her with her pigtails and gangly long legs, and him with his scruffy hair and debilitating shyness.
    “Remember our first floats?” Julianne asked as if she could hear his thoughts.
    “In the backyard,” Will replied. “We barbecued chicken on the grill, and your mom brought that horrid potato salad she makes with the green olives in it.”
    “Shh,” Julianne said playfully. “She’ll be here any minute.”
    “That was the day the doctors told my mom she’d beaten her cancer.”
    “Round one, anyhow,” his dad chimed in, and the mist of emotion in his eyes inspired Will to touch his father, Davis, on the shoulder.
    “I miss her, too.”
    “Adele was awesome,” Julianne added as she took Davis’s hand into hers. “So beautiful, and so kindhearted.”
    “Yes, she was,” the older man agreed with a nod before glancing up at Will. “Your mother would be very proud of you, Son; proud of you both.”
    “She would have been the first one to the root beer!” Julianne exclaimed, and Will nodded.
    “Who might have ever seen this day coming?” his dad asked, returning his attention to crafting four perfect floats. “Those two kids racing their bikes around the cul-de-sac—lawyers now! And starting their own practice.”
    “Am I too late for the toast?”
    Will offered his hand to Julianne’s mother, helping her up the last step and through the back door. “Just in time,” he told her with a smile.
    “We ordered some beef with broccoli just for you, Mandy,” his father announced, pouring cold root beer into four tall glasses.
    “Oh, thank you. That’s my favorite.”
    Julianne poked straws into each glass as she distributed them. “Okay! Let’s toast!”
    “Here’s to our two kids,” Amanda piped up.
    “To Hanes & Bartlett,” Will added, and they all clinked their glasses together.
    Will and Julianne exchanged meaningful smiles. Their world would certainly take on a new life of its own now that they would be working together every day. They already spoke their own language, a dialect consisting of half-finished sentences and meaningful nods. Even a simple grunt-like murmur had meaning in this wonderland that was the friendship of Will and Julianne.
    But they were more than friends, a fact that Will knew more assuredly than he liked to admit. They were best friends. Even more than best friends, if one cared to count the fact that his half of the twosome had somehow managed to fall in love along the way.
    “Did anyone feed Isaiah?”