Chapter 33 Easton
EASTON
Ihave never liked Kelsey’s sorority sisters.
This might be because several of them tried to hook up with Elijah at various points and may or may not have succeeded.
But the way they’re treating this long weekend like a nonstop binge-drinking contest isn’t helping.
By the time you’re twenty-nine, you should be able to get through The Notebook and a graveyard tour without flasks of Fireball.
It’s a relief to get away from them on Thursday afternoon, as Kelsey and I head upstairs to get ready for the bachelorette.
Outside, poles clank as the big tent is taken down.
Hurricane Mallory is closing in, and the tent won’t withstand the winds.
Even if it hits to the east, Kelsey’s outdoor wedding is definitely ruined.
Flights are already being canceled too. Several people now aren’t coming, and one of the groomsmen is renting a car to get here from Dallas, where he got stranded waiting for a connecting flight today.
Kelsey is perfectly fine with this, but Bridget—Hawk’s mom—is beside herself, and I sort of get it. Though this house is massive, there’s no ballroom or place large enough to seat two hundred and fifty guests.
I blow out Kelsey’s hair, and then she makes me remove the jeans I had on and wear one of several slinky satin dresses she brought along, though I’m significantly taller.
“Kelsey,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at my reflection, “this thing barely covers my ass.”
“You can’t say no to me,” she says, “because I’m the bride.”
I laugh. I could totally say no to her, but since her wedding is being actively destroyed by Mother Nature as we speak, I guess I won’t.
Bridget comes up while we’re doing our makeup, gently pushing Kelsey to consider postponing.
I’m staying out of it, obviously, but I sort of think she’s right: Where are they even going to hold the ceremony?
Unless they livestream it, only a quarter of the guests will be able to watch and all the wedding pictures will need to be indoors, with a backdrop of hurricane mayhem behind them.
“I just want this day to be perfect,” Bridget tells her.
Kelsey, head over heels in love, just smiles. “Winding up married to Hawk is all the perfection I need.”
Bridget and I exchange a look, one that acknowledges two truths: 1) It’s sort of sweet that Kelsey doesn’t care. 2) This wedding is going to be a train wreck.
We’re only an hour into Kelsey’s bachelorette and most of Kelsey’s sorority sisters and school friends are shit-faced.
We still have at least three more hours to go, and I’m wondering if this party bus comes with a stomach pump, because someone here is definitely going to have alcohol poisoning by midnight.
Kelsey isn’t drinking—she doesn’t want to be puffy and hungover during tomorrow’s festivities. She’s doing her best to act as if she’s having fun, but I can tell she wishes it was over.
“I can’t believe you’re not interested in Aiden,” Kelsey says, watching as her former college roommate, Francesca, drinks straight from a bottle of Grey Goose, then taunts everyone who won’t do it with her.
Fucking Francesca. She’s been a thorn in my side since yesterday, particularly in the way she keeps insisting she’s going to fuck Elijah before the weekend’s over.
“I’ve barely spoken to him, Kelsey,” I reply. “And you know, I’m most likely getting back together with Thomas next week.”
Dr. Shearer texted this morning, saying the problem with funding had been “taken care of.” I assume Thomas wrote someone about it. At least now I can tell Betty he occasionally performs an act of service, though I kind of resent giving him credit under the circumstances.
“It’s ridiculous the way Hawk’s mom and mine have arranged everything,” Kelsey says. “They’ve taken ‘Don’t see the bride before the wedding’ to new heights.”
I’ve barely seen Elijah since we got out of the car. He was dragged off to talk to distant relatives at dinner, and I was dragged off to watch The Notebook as soon as it was over. He skipped breakfast to work out, apparently, and didn’t get back until I’d left for the graveyard tour.
It shouldn’t matter. Nothing has changed between us. He never said it was otherwise. I just wanted him to.
I grin. “I won’t say anything if you want to sneak into Hawk’s room tonight.”
She shakes her head with a smile. “I kind of like the idea of making him wait until the wedding night, you know?”
I’d sort of hoped I’d get one last time with Elijah. It appears I won’t.
The party bus drops us off someplace in the French Quarter, and Kelsey gamely allows her drunk friends to usher her inside, wearing the crown and sash I bought her.
They go to the dance floor and I head to the bar, ordering a pitcher of B-52s, checking my phone while I wait.
Thomas has texted again.
He’s doing exactly what I’d hoped he would, but I feel resentment rather than delight.
I don’t care about his feelings or his apologies. It’s bizarre how this mattered so much two weeks ago and barely matters at all anymore. Elijah is no more a possibility than he ever was.
THOMAS
Look, I fucked up. I’ve admitted it. Tell me what it will take to fix this.
You legitimately being sorry, for starters. Not sorry because you’ve made a mistake and because you’re lonely. Sorry about the way you treated me. Sorry about the way you ended it. Sorry about dating an actress two seconds later.
I don’t know. The way you treated me really sucked, to be blunt. It wasn’t the behavior of someone reliable. We can discuss it in Boston.
You want me to propose? I’ll propose right now.
Jesus. I thought being proposed to in a steak house was bad. Being proposed to by text because the guy’s back is against the wall—now there’s an engagement story you’re never going to repeat. When our grandchildren ask, I’d just have to claim I didn’t remember.
I told you how Kelsey was proposed to, right?
Not really. On a trip, I think?
I roll my eyes. I get the fact that Kelsey’s engagement didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me, but the story is so cool he couldn’t possibly forget it, unless he wasn’t listening in the first place.
At the Paris holiday market where they had their first date. Hawk timed it so a sign unfurled just as they reached the top of the Ferris wheel.
Fine, I get it. You don’t want to do this over the phone.
No, I don’t think he does get it. The point is that he doesn’t value me.
The point is that he was going to propose with no fanfare whatsoever, at a restaurant where I couldn’t even eat the food, because some part of him thought that marrying television’s Thomas Prescott, MD, PhD was honor and excitement enough.
I’ve been so outcome-driven for the past couple of years that I told myself it didn’t matter.
That I didn’t matter. That it was okay for him to insist we do what he wanted on my birthday, that it was okay for him to treat me like some kind of project and gift me boring books and cooking classes to get me up to speed.
He showed so little respect or even genuine care for me, and I accepted it because it would net me what I wanted in the end.
And maybe because I no longer hoped for more than that from anyone else.
No, that’s not my point. You treated proposing to me as if it was just one more thing to check off of the to-do list. And you changed your mind just because Devon Hunt suggested you should.
That’s really not what happened.
It doesn’t matter what happened. We were there a few weeks ago, and now we’ve got to work back to that point. And when we do get there, you can’t treat proposing to me as if you’re doing me a favor. Gotta go.
I turn off my phone to face Kelsey, who is absolutely glowing as she jumps around on the dance floor, holding onto her crown with one hand.
I want to feel the way Kelsey does about her wedding. That it’ll be perfect simply because of who I’m marrying.
I was willing to settle for a lot less, and I guess I’m going to have to, eventually. Because if Elijah was going to suggest this could be more with us, he’d have said it by now.
An hour later we are back on the bus, and Kelsey is yawning while her sorority sisters pour J?germeister in each other’s mouths, dumping half of it on the floor. We’re not getting our deposit back on this bus, that’s for sure.
“What would turn this around for you?” I ask Kelsey. “You look miserable.”
“I’m sorry,” she says earnestly. “This has been great. So much fun. I just had a super-long day.”
“I know,” I tell her, “but I can’t let you go to bed or the story afterward will be about how incredibly lame you are.
We have got to stay awake for at least another hour, so what would please you most?
We could find a Waffle House. Your rich fiancé could probably arrange for some bougie late-night tour of a museum. Name your price.”
She laughs. “This is even lamer than you were imagining, but what I would really like is just to see Hawk.”
I slap a palm to my face. “Oh my God. You’re the worst.”
She shrugs. “I know! But we’ve barely seen each other the past few days, and I hate that we’re spending all these nights apart when we’re staying under the same roof.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take before our time together doesn’t feel stolen.
Probably not until Mom moves here and—” She stops herself, suddenly, her eyes wide.
“Wait, is Judy moving here?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, no, of course not,” she says too quickly. “Just wishful thinking. But anyway, I just miss him.”
“Say no more,” I tell her. “Even if I have to peel a bunch of strippers out of Hawk’s lap, we will find him and ruin his bachelor party as you have requested.”
She laughs, not worried in the least that she is ruining anything. And neither am I. I have never seen a groom as whipped as Hawk. I’m pretty sure she has found the only billionaire alive who won’t trade up once Kelsey has hit the ripe old age of forty-five.
I text Elijah.