Chapter Eleven
“Okay, and you’re sure you packed all the party favors in Tyler’s truck?
” Morgan asked two days later, checking off the list on her clipboard with her glasses falling down to the tip of her nose repeatedly.
Each time, she’d just push them up with her middle finger, only for them to fall down again.
“The little champagne bottles, the custom Yeti cups, and the chocolate balls, right?”
“Affirmative,” I barked, standing at attention like a soldier.
Harry had his own copy of the list in Morgan’s hand, and he was checking through it, too, looking like his life depended on whether they had everything on it packed or not.
“And you have the beach towels for the bridal party?” Morgan asked me.
“Check,” I said, holding my hand up to my forehead in a salute.
“And I already double-checked that we have everything on my list in the Escalade.” She worried her bottom lip, eyeing me and then Tyler’s truck in a way that told me she did not trust me when it came to making sure none of us would have to drive three hours back to the house for something forgotten.
“Maybe I’ll just run through my list for Tyler’s truck once more, and then we can get on the road. ”
“Aye-aye, captain!”
I saluted her with the hand I’d been holding at attention, and she shoved me through a grin. “You bitch, this is important!”
I chuckled, pulling her in for a hug and holding her there until she sighed and deflated, resting her head on my shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay,” I assured her. “We have checked and double-checked and triple-checked that we have everything on the list. And if by some miracle something slipped through the cracks, I will drive back here and get whatever it is, no matter what time of day or night. Okay?”
She nodded against me, then stood straight, her eyes welling with tears.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, sweeping her hair from her face.
“I just… I can’t believe it’s happening. This is it , Jaz.” She smiled, but two small tears slipped free when she did. “We’re loading up to head to the Cape. For my wedding . I’m getting married!”
She threw herself into another hug, and I chuckled, rubbing her back. “You sure are. You ready?”
“I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment,” she said when she pulled back, and then she wiped away the last of her tears and bolted toward Oliver, who turned from where he was talking to Tyler and caught her just as she launched herself into his arms. He spun her with the motion, and then they were kissing and latching onto each other like koala bears.
I watched Tyler clear his throat uncomfortably before ambling toward his truck.
He didn’t look at me, of course.
I should have been used to it, after the way he disappeared last week and how he’d dutifully ignored me since our day at the lake.
He hadn’t gone back to his place, staying at the house with me, Oliver, and Morgan, instead — but still, he’d been lively and normal when it was just the three of them, but practically silent when I joined in the conversation, and almost immediately after I did, he found an excuse to get up and do something suddenly important.
And honestly, how could I blame him?
In my need to talk to him about that day, to tell him what Morgan had confessed to me, I couldn’t just leave it alone.
I couldn’t just stop at let’s be friends .
Instead, I’d pushed him. I’d forced myself into his space and demanded to know what he would have done had the circumstances been different.
And the answer had fucked us both.
I hadn’t been able to go even one minute without thinking of the way his hands felt in my wet hair, or the familiar scent of his breath on my lips, or the way his voice had trembled when he told me he would have run to me, held me, and never let me go.
I would have never let you go.
It was torture — absolute masochism. I asked him what he would have done in another life, and his answer showed us what could have been.
But it couldn’t be — not now. Not when I had Jacob and he had Azra and so much bad blood had passed between us over the last several years. There were so many ways I didn’t even know the man he was now, the man he’d grown to be — and he certainly didn’t know much about who I was.
That was then, and this is now.
Still… it felt like he did know me, like I knew him, like no matter how much time and distance had passed between us, we would always be connected in a way that nothing would ever be fully hidden from the other.
And after what he said, after knowing what could have happened had circumstances been different… could we really be friends ?
I sighed, watching him walk across the yard and jump in his truck, firing it to life without a glance in my direction. He was avoiding me like the plague, because he knew as well as I did that any time we were together, it was trouble.
He was doing the right thing.
And yet all I yearned to do was the wrong one.
I shook my head, angry with myself as I trotted over to the Escalade just as Morgan and Oliver climbed in.
But when I opened the back door, the overflowing box leaning against it nearly tumbled out and flattened me.
I caught it just in time, and Morgan gasped, hopping out to help me shove it back in.
“Uh,” I said when we had it contained, pointing to the completely full car. “Where am I supposed to sit?”
Morgan pointed across the yard, and I didn’t have to look to know that little finger was pointing at Tyler’s truck.
“We left the front seat open in the truck,” she said, as if it were obvious.
“No reason to have three in one car and only one in the other. Besides,” she said, lowering her voice a little as worry etched itself on her face.
“I know after what I told you, maybe you guys are trying to be friends again. And I really, really want that. Maybe the drive will help.”
I had to fight every urge in my body not to roll my eyes up to the sky, or sigh, or huff, or grab my best friend and shake some sense into her. Instead, I smiled, nodding and squeezing her shoulder before I made my way to Tyler’s truck.
He seemed just as surprised as me when I climbed into the passenger seat, and all I had to do was shrug and point to his sister for him to understand.
Still, his hands gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to break it as I strapped my seatbelt on, and when we all pulled out of the driveway, I knew it would be a long road trip to the Cape.
An hour passed by torturously slow, with an old Eagles’s album playing on the radio and the New England summer landscape flitting by.
I watched out the window as the rolling hills and thick, lush green trees slowly gave way to the city, and only when the buildings stretched up around us did I chance a look at the driver.
Tyler still wore the look of frustration that had settled over him when I climbed in the truck, his brows bent, two perfect lines creasing his forehead and his knuckles all but white now with how they gripped the steering wheel.
He seemed to sense me watching him, because he tried to relax, but failed, glancing at me before his brows furrowed even deeper.
“So, this is just how it’s going to be for the remaining two hours of the drive?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “You’re going to break the steering wheel, or give yourself an ulcer, or both, at this rate.”
Tyler let out an unamused sigh, shifting his grip on the wheel to try to appear more relaxed.
I cocked a brow, but still — no answer.
“Come on,” I said on a sigh. “What happened to us trying to be friends?”
Tyler barked out a small, almost nonexistent laugh at that — one that came out like a puff of smoke from his chest. He raised an eyebrow at me, like I already knew the answer to the question I’d asked.
And I did know it.
But I didn’t want to accept it.
I sighed, casting my gaze out the window again, and my chest squeezed as we rolled through Boston. In another world — the one where Tyler never let me go — I would have been here. I would have gone to college in this city, built a life with him, with Morgan.
I almost laughed out loud at myself for the picture I’d painted, because I also could have moved to Boston for school and then been dumped by Tyler when he realized he didn’t want anything serious with his little sister’s best friend.
Why was I so latched onto an alternate reality that could have gone a million different ways?
But there was another life I pictured when I was in Boston, too.
One with my mother.
My heart ached, and I shifted in my seat, which drew a cautious glance from Tyler before his eyes were back on the road again.
“My mom used to tell me when I was in high school that when she got through rehab and came back for me, this is where we’d go.”
The words came from my mouth without me realizing I needed to say them, and they felt like a paper cut to my tongue.
“She said she’d pick me up, pack up our things, and we’d move to the city.
She said we could live together while I went to college and while she built a career, and we’d explore all the places we’d read about, like the museum of science, and go see the Red Sox play at Fenway, and stroll the harbor, and eat cannolis in the North End.
” I smiled, remembering just how she’d said it, how her voice was light and airy and she’d even said cannolis with an Italian accent that she completely botched.
“She made all these promises, and though it seems impossible to me now, I can still remember what it was like to be the little girl who believed her.”
I felt Tyler’s eyes watching me as I looked out the window, but I didn’t dare return his gaze.