Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-eight
It’s jarring to jump from Gone Day back to wedding mode, but that’s how it is these days: a sequence of heartbreaks and celebrations, strung together like beads on a friendship bracelet.
It’s always and, never or. Grief and joy.
Light and dark. Multitudes, all playing out at once.
Somehow, I move through it, and this morning, I’m moving fast. We all are; the house is buzzing, a hive of worker bees flitting about like they’ll fall asleep on their feet if they dare slow down.
If it’s possible to iron tablecloths intensely, that’s what Mom’s up to in the living room.
At the kitchen table, Chris and Chrissy have a system for stuffing welcome bags, and while it’s not one that makes any sense to me, the job is getting done.
Out front, Rishi and his brother wave in a giant beeping truck of wedding rentals.
But no Renee. I swear my heart has arms, the way it reaches for evidence of her.
There’s only the bed pillows stacked beside a neatly folded Pendleton blanket on the couch where she must have slept.
“Have you seen Renee?” I ask anyone within earshot.
Mom shakes her head. Chrissy and Chris are just as unhelpful.
In the kitchen, still no Renee, but the fridge is freshly stocked, replete with caffeine options: cans of nitro cold brew, Diet Coke, and the same energy drinks Aidan likes.
I can smell it—that inedible combination of peaches and batteries, wafting from behind me.
Gin hovers by the window, her short red hair slicked back with sweat into the tiniest nub of a ponytail. There’s an energy drink in her hand.
“Since when do you drink those?”
“Since somebody left a case of them in the teacher’s lounge last year.” Gin’s face twists into a shameful wince. “I know, I know. It’s bad.”
“There are worse vices.”
“No, Alice. I mean it’s bad.” Gin smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “These things taste like cat pee. But the energy.” Her pupils dilate. “I feel like I could fight God.”
I laugh as I snap open a can of cold brew and join her at the window, scanning the backyard for signs of Renee. There’s only Rishi’s parents, assembling a four-posted arbor of sorts.
“That’s the mandap.” Gin lifts her chin to the half-assembled structure. “It’s the altar, essentially. It’ll get draped in tulle.”
“Do we have tulle?”
“Renee is picking it up right now.”
My head jerks toward her. I’m like a dog who just heard the word treat. “Do you know when she’ll be back?” I ask. A little too eagerly, it seems, because Gin sputters a laugh.
“So are you going to tell me what’s happening there or what?”
“What’s happening…where, exactly?”
“Between you and Renee.” She traces a heart in the air. “I should have known I’d have to drag it out of you.”
Something inside me stops and starts at least twice. “So you know about that.”
“Of course I know about that,” she says flippantly. “I did that.”
“I…you what?”
Gin’s smile is somehow both regal and villainous. An evil pageant queen, claiming her crown. “You two think you’re so slick, keeping all sorts of secrets, like I haven’t been trying to set you up all summer.”
Whatever gears have to turn to keep my brain functioning grind to a screeching halt.
“I really thought you’d figure it out in Palm Springs,” Gin goes on. “You know, when I wanted to room with Chrissy?” She drains what’s left of her energy drink, winces, and adds, “You know that girl snores even louder than she laughs.”
For a moment, all I can do is stare at her. Then my mind rewinds. The hotel room. The request that Renee and I really try to get along. Her excitement that we were. “I…you…but…the room…” I’m trying to form a thought, but I’ve been reduced to slinging single syllables.
“Just admit it.” Gin lifts her chin in pride. “I’m a genius.”
“An evil genius,” I amend, and she claws her hands, tips her head back, and does her very best supervillain cackle. There’s no one here to witness, but I’m still secondhand embarrassed.
“I sometimes forget you used to do theater,” I grumble, accidentally out loud.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a compliment, coming from you. Although…” Gin pokes my bicep and smiles smugly. “Word on the street is that a certain someone can really nail the harmonies on the Rent soundtrack.”
My entire body flushes, and a long line of questions marches to the tip of my tongue.
Renee told you about that? What else did she tell you?
Do you know how she feels about me? About us?
I don’t get to ask a single one because here comes Kurt with a fist full of cables, requesting my help with setting up sound.
Time is ticking down, and ready or not, there’s a wedding tomorrow. I refuse to let “or not” be an option.
For the rest of the day, Renee and I are like planets, orbiting each other but never colliding.
She returns with the tulle just as I’m leaving to pick up an extra extension cord.
Then I’m back, and it’s time to test the ceremony mics, but Renee is suddenly needed inside.
It’s amazing, really, the way we were stuck together all the times we didn’t want to be, but now that I’m desperate to get her alone, we’re parallel lines, our paths never crossing.
Not even at the rehearsal dinner downtown, where we’re seated on opposite ends of an extra-long table.
I hardly have an appetite. The only thing I want is to talk to Renee.
Back at the Outpost, we break out the mehndi kits, and Asha paints swirling florals and detailed mandalas on the bridesmaids’ hands in henna.
It’s hard to sit still and even harder not to scratch my itchy hands while the henna dries, but it’s nothing compared to the itch I can’t scratch.
The conversation I need to have, if only I could get Renee alone.
Every time her blue eyes flash to mine from across the living room, I hear that same, steady cadence. I know, I know, I know.
The right time never presents itself. It hardly ever does.
Once the house has all gone to bed, I slip back downstairs, where Renee lounges in the golden lamplight, cozied beneath the Pendleton blanket.
She’s wearing her neon-pink bachelorette party T-shirt, and for a moment, I worry she may be asleep, but then her eyes lift to mine, tired and blue.
Our gazes hold in one long silent question, but when a twitch of a smile tugs at her mouth, all the worry and nerves melt away. What was I so scared of? I have been honest with Renee all summer. I can be honest with her now.
“Can we talk?” I finally ask out loud.
Renee looks at me—really looks at me—before she nods, just barely, then shifts to a seat, clearing space for me beside her on the couch.
She lays the blanket over both our laps, our own little woven cocoon.
Finally, it’s just us, and I don’t want to overthink this.
So I start where it makes sense. With the person who brought us together in the first place.
“So I talked to Gin.”
“Did you?”
“And it seems like you…talked to her too? About…us?”
Renee stares at her hands. She twists the thin gold band on her middle finger back and forth. Left, then right. Every second of silence between us carries its own electric charge.
“I did,” she finally admits. Her throat bobs with a swallow, and her voice is steadier when she speaks again. “I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have said anything. I just needed a gut check with people who have known you longer than I have.”
“People? Plural?”
“Chrissy, too.”
I want to comment on how impressive it is that Chrissy’s kept her mouth shut about that, but I’m keeping mine shut too, waiting for Renee finish her thought.
“We talked about it on that drive home when I told them about losing my job,” she goes on. “And…well, this.” She draws a line in the air, connecting her heart to mine. “According to Gin, this was all her doing.”
I bite down on a smile. “Yeah. She told me that, too.”
We both roll our eyes.
“Pretty funny, huh?” Renee says.
“I think it’s funny she thought we’d be good together, honestly.”
At this, Renee flinches, but she doesn’t disagree. Even before we met, we knew we were opposites, destined to butt heads. “We don’t have much in common,” she admits. “And yet…here we are.”
And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
It’s quiet for a moment while I search for what to say next, then Renee draws in a shaky breath, and I think she’s about to say something.
She doesn’t. Instead, she lays a hand over my knee.
Heat, instantly, down my neck and the arches of my feet, and it’s instinctual, the way I tangle my fingers into hers.
The right thing to say may evade me, but this—holding Renee’s hand—feels like the right thing to do.
I’ve missed her touch, and every second that she doesn’t let go feels like the new best second of my life.
I know. I know. I know.
What I don’t know is what I’m going to say, but I start to say it anyway, reading whatever script my heart offers up.
“I’m so sorry, Renee. I’m sorry I panicked.”
That’s as far as I get before my tongue turns to sandpaper. I swallow hard and start again.
“I care about you. A lot. And I’ve been so afraid of saying the wrong thing and fucking this up.
Because that’s what I do, you know? Or…it’s what I’ve done.
So I’m trying to just say whatever I’m feeling right now, and I’m sorry if it’s messy.
You’re my best friend, Renee. Maybe that sounds stupid because we’ve only—”
“It’s not stupid,” she interrupts.
“But I’m not like you,” I cut back in. “I’m not everybody’s bridesmaid, and the last time I got romantically involved with a friend, that was Gin.
And we all know how that went. I’m only now getting my friends back, and I can’t do that again.
” Tears needle behind my eyes, but I bite them back.
“I didn’t shut you out on purpose. I just thought I might’ve fucked things up again. ”
“You didn’t.” Renee’s broken whisper coils through me like smoke.
“That morning…I didn’t get it. I was angry.
I know it’s been a really horrible few years for you, but I wasn’t thinking about that.
I just woke up and saw this person I…” Her eyes glisten as she swallows a word and starts again.
“I care about you, Alice. But you shut me out in this really vulnerable moment. I was hurt.”
“Of course you were.” I squeeze her hand a little tighter. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I just didn’t know how to talk about this, and I didn’t want to lose you.” I hear my voice begin to crumble. “No matter what, Renee, I just don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either, Alice,” she says. “I want this. I want us.”
She sounds so certain, and for one shimmering moment, it’s perfect.
And then Renee sighs and says, “But.”
That one little word, and my hope disintegrates. I feel like I’m shrinking, shriveling inside myself. I should have known. I should have known. I should have known. I loosen my grip on her hand to pull away, but she holds tight. Doesn’t let go.
“I have to be honest with you,” Renee says. “I don’t think it’s fair to have this conversation without telling you that I’m leaving Chicago.”
I feel my entire body go slack.
“It’s probably not a forever thing,” Renee cuts back in.
“But since I haven’t found a job, I’m moving back in with my parents for a while.
I’ll be in Iowa, about an hour from here, and I’ll save a little money, figure out what’s next, and…
” Her gaze lifts to mine, and despite the sadness in her voice, her eyes sparkle when she says, “I’m going to focus on auditions for a while. ”
“You’re…are you serious?”
She nods, and I shift beneath the blanket, one leg bent while the other hangs off the couch.
Renee does the same, and we’re inches apart.
A bright, burning feeling lights up inside me, an emotion too big to be contained.
It’s like my heart can’t choose between leaping out of my mouth or slamming right through my chest, so it’s trying to do both.
The slightest bit of sadness hangs on to Renee’s eyes, but there’s hope there, too, as she does what she does best. She begins to verbalize a plan.
“I know it’s not ideal, and I completely understand if you don’t want to do the distance thing and you just want to be friends. I can handle that, if that’s what you need. Or if you just want to take things as they come and see where we—”
I close the space between us, a thousand things I could say flashing through my mind, but none of them feel as right as when I kiss her. I’m still kissing her as she starts to rumble with laughter.
I only pull back to say “I’m so proud of you.”
Renee takes my cheeks in her hands and pulls me close again, her mouth opening to mine.
She tastes like wintergreen, and when my tongue dips between her lips, the softest moan catches in her throat.
It’s dizzying. My mind spins away to the life I’m already imagining with her.
Just us. I picture her pink nosed on the ski hill in the winter, raking red-and-gold piles of leaves in the fall.
When I look ahead, she’s there, in every version of my future.
And it destroys me to break our kiss again, but I have to tell her.
“Guess what?” I whisper. “I’m leaving Chicago, too.”
Renee’s hands drop from my face, but I catch them, twining her fingers with mine.
“It’s okay. It’s good. I’m moving here. This is my house.” It feels as true and right as my own name. It’s the best I’ve felt all summer. All year.
I tell Renee everything, legal jargon and all. I tell her about my vision for this place, and her smile widens with every detail, most of all the part about how I’ll be just an hour away. That is, if she doesn’t want to move in here with me instead.
“I don’t mean to interfere with your plans to live with your parents, but—”
Her mouth drops onto mine mid-thought, and whatever I meant to say dissolves into sweet, staticky bliss.
We kiss until our lips are tender and swollen, testing how much of each other we can taste and touch without making a sound.
People are sleeping upstairs. There’s a wedding tomorrow.
But the only thought rattling inside my head is her name, over and over, again and again.
Renee Renee Renee. It’s all I want, maybe for the rest of my life.
Dad,
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think I met my wife.
Love,
Your Dallas Alice