Chapter 17 Go on a Final Walk-Through
? Go on a Final Walk-Through
It turns out drinking was a great idea.
The best idea.
Jordan’s pleasantly buzzed. Skin so warm, he has to ditch his tie and undo the buttons of his collar somewhere between the stone steps leading into the main house and crossing the front door’s threshold.
He considers stopping in the kitchen. Drinking on an empty stomach seems like a mistake, but fuck it.
He’ll add it to his growing list of colossal mistakes.
The night hums around him. In the distance, cicadas sing. The indigo sky is moonlit. He sips from the bottle. Inhales the heady scent of maple and cedar and late July heat.
He manages to trip only once down the front steps.
The circular driveway is at capacity. Every car is sleek and expensive. The young valets are too busy scrolling through their phones to pay any attention to him.
Jordan wanders to the side of the house. Short palm trees spring up from the manicured lawn. Beautiful flowers crawl out from the hedges. The neatly arranged marble lion statues match a handful of stone benches spread across the green.
This property truly is a fairy-tale setting. Too bad it doesn’t promise magic and silly things like happily-ever-after kisses.
Whatever. Jordan doesn’t need any of that bullshit. He only needs an escape and the quarter-empty bottle of Bollinger he’s clutching.
And someone sniffling nearby?
Clumsily, Jordan turns to his left. In a corner, on one of the benches lit blue by the moon, is Amy. Head in her hands, shoulders quaking as she quietly sobs.
Before he’s even thought about it, Jordan flops down next to her.
“Ames?”
She bolts upright, dragging the back of her hand over her face. It doesn’t help. Her waterproof makeup is flawless, but her eyes are puffy, red circling her brown irises. Her lips tremble. Tears hang off her chin.
Jordan drops a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Did you … just call me Ames?”
Jordan tries to think back. His brain’s moving at half speed. “Maybe?”
The tears start again. “Sorry, sorry,” she says in a watery voice. “I’m fine. These aren’t sad tears.”
“Are you sure?”
She nods. Her eyes scrunch in an attempt to stop anything from coming out. It’s another epic fail.
Jordan offers her the bottle. “You look like you need this.”
Amy doesn’t question where he got it from. Or why he’s drinking at her engagement dinner instead of doing his job. She tips the bottle back, gulping. Jordan’s impressed. She lowers it and burps, her tight shoulders finally dropping.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Jordan says.
“No.”
“I’m not trying to be rude, but your face says otherwise.”
She takes another lengthy swig. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“Here as in … out here? On a bench?”
“No!” She gesticulates in the general direction of the giant white tent in the backyard. “Here.”
Jordan nods, even though he’s lost.
Amy passes him the bottle before pulling her knees up to her chest. Her deep navy flare dress has a plunging V neckline and gorgeous floral appliqués all over. She looks like a young girl, disappointed her date didn’t show up for prom.
“Do you know why my parents are in Seoul?”
“No.”
He never bothered to ask. Should he have? It feels like such a personal question. Jordan’s the wedding planner. He’s not Jamie.
“My harabeoji is in the later stages of Alzheimer’s,” Amy says. “I’ve never met him.”
Another tear rolls down her cheek. Silently, Jordan hands her the bottle. She sips, then sniffs.
“When my mom married my dad, my harabeoji cut her off,” she explains. “He never wanted her to come to America and study. Or marry someone like my dad, who wasn’t Korean. He didn’t meet the standards my harabeoji had for her.”
Soft tendrils of hair fall from the flawless updo the stylist gave her. She doesn’t attempt to fix it.
Her gaze drifts. “He and my mom didn’t talk for a long time.
My harabeoji didn’t even know I existed.
By the time he did, he was diagnosed and—” She pauses, her eyes wet.
“I wanted to go to Korea. To meet him while I still could. But my mom said it’d be too much for him.
To learn who I was when he’s barely holding on to who he is. ”
Fuck. Jordan whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
She hiccups, extending the bottle his way.
He takes a gulp.
“I’m angry with her. She took that choice from me. She left me.” Amy stops short. A tiny knot forms between her brows. “Sorry, that’s selfish.”
“It’s not.” Jordan can relate.
There were moments in his teens where he was angry with his mom too. For never introducing him to his dad. Deciding everything for him. But when that rage subsided, the guilt set in. He felt awful.
His mom has always sacrificed so his life would be better than how it started.
He’s never told his mom about those moments he felt angry at her. When he’d give her the silent treatment. Lock himself away in his room. Yell for no reason. He kept it to himself, just like she kept the real reason why she did what she did to herself.
Amy laughs bitterly. “My dad’s amazing. He didn’t want my mom to be alone, so he’s in Seoul too. Helping take care of a man who never liked him. Absurd, right?”
“Not at all,” Jordan says.
A fresh tear slips down her rosy cheeks.
Jordan presses their shoulders together. “That’s where you get it from, isn’t it?”
“Get what?”
“Your selflessness,” Jordan says. “Doing what Sam’s parents want. Sacrificing your own dreams. You get that from your dad.”
Her lower lip wobbles. “Is it that obvious?”
“A little.”
Amy laughs again. It’s a choked, nasal sound. “Fuck, I’m trying,” she moans, taking the bottle.
“I know,” he assures. “But it’s your big day. Yours and Sam’s. Not theirs.”
Her nose wrinkles. “His parents are sweet. Kind. And so … different from me. Not in a bad way, just—”
“Different,” Jordan agrees.
“I feel so out of place with them,” Amy goes on. “I was out of place at Brighton too. If it wasn’t for Jamie—” Jordan flinches. She doesn’t notice. “I don’t know. I’ll never be right for them. Or their world. Does that make sense?”
Jordan hates how much it does. He hates that he wolfs down more champagne musing about it. Hates that word: “right.” It’s the same one Jamie used. The same one Jordan keeps applying to himself.
How do you define if something’s right unless there’s something wrong next to it?
He stands. Paces in a wobbly circle. “You shouldn’t feel like that. Like you’re not enough. Like something’s wrong with you.”
Amy sighs at the sky. She doesn’t have an answer.
It angers Jordan more. He empties fizzy champagne into his throat.
“You’re brilliant, Amy. Jamie wouldn’t be friends with—”
His voice dies. Just saying his name wretches up a sick, nauseous sensation in Jordan’s gut. He tampers it with another swig.
How did they go from smiling tenderly across a crowded tent to this? Jordan doesn’t have the brain … capacity? Function? Whatever. He can’t think about Jamie right now.
“You’re better than them,” he says. “All of them.”
Amy stares at him, still quiet.
Good. Jordan’s not done.
“The McClintocks and the Peterses are like everyone else here,” he rants between chugs. His circle of steps has become oval-shaped. Egg-shaped. “They’re all clones of each other. A pretentious clone society.”
“Jordan,” Amy says sheepishly. “My family’s part of that society.”
“Mine too!”
He undoes another button on his shirt. It’s too hot.
“But, like.” He waves a hand around aimlessly. “They’re also not? The Carters aren’t perfect. By far. They’re just not…”
He remembers what Jamie said. How he dared to compare Jordan’s family to his own.
Jordan sighs. “They’re not this.”
Sadness boldly inserts itself into all the other emotions swishing around his body. He drinks more to dilute it. To numb it.
Amy grimaces. “Then what are we? Me and Sam?”
Jordan doesn’t know. Doesn’t have a direct answer. He stumbles on grass, finds his balance again. “No one gets to decide what our love story looks—”
He stops. Nope. Not going there.
“Our future looks like,” he pivots. “They don’t get to decide. We do.”
He glares past the hedges. At all the fancy amenities. Straight to the big white tent where the party is still alive and kicking, even without one of the most important hosts.
Unthinking, Jordan imagines what Jamie’s up to. Is he standing next to his parents? Listening to their boring conversations with their boring friends about their boring lives? Maybe he’s slow dancing with Sloane? Showing her off like a good son.
Or maybe he’s in a corner somewhere. Alone. Looking out across the lawn wondering where Jordan is.
“You’re right.”
Jordan startles. “Excuse me?”
Amy’s on her feet, heels digging resentfully into the McClintocks’ unblemished grass. “You’re right,” she repeats, furious. “Every decision of our wedding hasn’t been for us. It’s been for them. It’s someone else’s vision of how my life should look.”
Jordan blinks. “Right.”
“I’m sick of it,” Amy hisses. “No one listens. No one gives me a say.”
The flush in her cheeks isn’t just from the alcohol or the crying anymore. It’s from the rage. Jordan’s never seen her like this.
He’s a little afraid.
“I’m done,” she half yells.
“You’re … done?”
“I’m over it.”
Jordan raises his hands, realizing three seconds too late that this has gone from venting to catastrophic. “Okay, by ‘over it,’ you really mean—”
“I mean,” Amy huffs, shaking out her shoulders, “I’m fucking over doing what they want. I’m over Sam letting it happen. He wasn’t always like this. He used to ask my opinion. He tried things to make me happy. Now we’re engaged and it’s like I’m marrying Sam and his parents.”
“Okay,” Jordan repeats in his calmest voice. “But—”
“I didn’t sign up for this!”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s over.”
Jordan swallows the lump in his throat. “Like, the dinner?”
Amy spins, wobbling on one heel. She stomps back to the front of the house. Jordan attempts to stop her.