Other People’s Weddings

Chapter 3

C HAPTER 3

Present Day

“Poppy.” I turned and looked at Quinn, who was holding up a smudge stick and looking at me accusingly. “Did you try to hex Ryan?”

“No,” I said. “I was cleansing.”

The house was old and my grandma had always said it needed the occasional smudging to ward off ghosts and bad luck drifting over from the Clarks.

The family feud was a storied one. The Loves and the Clarks had been in Pineville since the gold rush, and they were predisposed to hate one another. It was said to have begun due to an alleged affair between Ezekiel Clark and Madeline Love on the Oregon Trail. True story. There was a near duel and everything.

After the affair, Madeline and Ezekiel had gone back to their respective spouses, who had then opened businesses on the main streets of Pineville. In buildings that had been in our families for all the generations since – the general store eventually becoming a restaurant still run by the Clarks, the old saloon eventually becoming my gran’s bakery.

But the feud didn’t die with Madeline and Ezekiel.

In the early 1900s the Loves and Clarks had opened competing restaurants. There had been wild accusations of sabotage and even one instance of accused intentional food poisoning.

In the Depression era, businesses on Main Street closed and there had been a desperate attempt at reviving some of the old gold mines in the hills and the Clarks and Loves had competed bitterly over a claim that both felt they had rights to.

The Clarks had won. And the Love family had maintained that the Clarks’ superior financial success in generations since had come from that mine, stolen from the Loves.

The feud might have evolved through the years, but it never ended.

In the eighties, my gran opened up her bakery around the time Hamish Clark opened his restaurant. Right across the street, in the same buildings our ancestors had occupied once upon a time.

When Hamish launched breakfast, with pastries, Gran had taken it as a direct attack on her business. She’d started offering pancakes and waffles. When she’d added bacon, Hamish had taken it as shots fired.

I knew all about it, even though I wasn’t born then, because my gran didn’t forgive or forget. Ever.

Maybe Ryan and I were fated to be enemies.

It had all started with my attempts at being friends with him when he’d first come to town. There were no Clarks in my age group, so the feud had never been a reality to me.

Though funnily enough, it was the feud that first brought us into contact.

When the Clarks adopted Ryan, we were in sixth grade. And Gran and Hamish Clark might have businesses across the street from each other, but they were not on speaking terms.

So when mail arrived at the bakery addressed to Hamish Clark, I was tasked with walking it over to the restaurant.

When I walked in, there was a boy sitting on a shiny red stool at the lunch counter, his dark hair in his face. He turned to look at me and I was struck by the intensity of his blue eyes. And the anger in them.

It felt like the anger was directed at me.

I couldn’t quite muster up the courage to say hi to him, but I couldn’t forget him either. So when he came to school that first day I decided, feud or no feud, that boy was going to be my friend.

I would make him like me.

That had gone down like an absolute lead balloon. For months I tried. And then . . . there was the science fair.

Which had been the moment that cemented Ryan and me as victims of the family feud, no matter how hard I’d tried to make it otherwise.

I’d been so proud of my inertia project, with a massive bowling ball and a big ramp to roll it down. It had been the first time I’d really been brave enough to ask my gran to help me with something. I was always so afraid of being too big of a burden that usually I just tried to do things myself.

But not that time, and Gran had even come to the science fair to watch my demonstration.

Ryan Clark was next to me. The new boy who’d only been in town for a few months, a former foster child who’d been adopted into the Clark family. I’d tried befriending him but he’d been . . . standoffish. And every attempt at being nice to him had gone awry. He’d always acted like he wanted to get away from me as quickly as possible and I just couldn’t stand that.

We’d had one nice interaction. One. And I’d taken it as a personal victory. I had been hungry for another one.

He’d made a solar system which was really, really good and I’d gone over to tell him I thought so, but then tripped and launched my bowling ball right into all his planets, which were sitting on the floor waiting to be suspended from a rafter he’d constructed in his booth.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

He’d growled that at me with all the deep anger that lived inside abandoned kids – I knew because I felt the same anger but I never let it out.

It was an accident . . .

You’re always trying to get my attention like a sad puppy, but I don’t want you around me. Leave me the hell alone!

That was the end of any possibility of us ever being friends.

Or maybe it just confirmed what he’d been trying to tell me all along: he didn’t like me.

And at first he might not have had a reason to, but then I gave him one and he’d held onto it like a talisman all these years.

In the two months since we’d been jointly asked to be maid of honor and best man, nothing had risen up to change our personal status quo.

Nothing good could happen between us without something enormously shitty to balance it out.

This was the way.

He’d been Josh’s best friend for years, Ryan and I had some nice moments during that time. When he was in town, sometimes we all went out for a drink and it was good. He’d joined a D&D campaign I was in once and he had not tried to kill me. So there was that.

And then there had been the weddings.

Two and three had almost been nice.

We’d almost been friends for a minute.

But just a minute. Because we were us.

Contact since the maid of honor/best man titles had been bestowed had been minimal, but we were involved in planning a big going away party at Quinn’s parents’ house for all the locals who weren’t making the trek to NZ to see the happy couple tie the knot which meant Ryan Clark was in my texts.

An irritating development. But not a hexing offense.

“Grandma was the one who hexed. I would never try anything that intense. I’d end up deflating my own boobs or something.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Quinn said.

“Your lack of faith in my witchcraft is disturbing.”

“I just know you too well. In hand-to-hand combat defending a friend using nothing but your determination and berserker rage, I would bet on you. For skilled spell work? Not so much.”

And I couldn’t disagree. I had a sporadic set of skills. Team sports? No. Wild summer camp games that relied on grit and an inability to give up? Yes. Sewing? No. Cake decorating. Yes.

“Speaking of your berserker rage,” Quinn said. “Have you forgiven me for deciding to move away or are you going to sabotage my cake and never speak to me again?”

I felt myself wither. I leaned over the counter and rested my forearms against the cool white surface. “First of all, you know I could never sustain not speaking to you again. Second of all, New Zealand still has internet and phone service, I hear. So it’s not like we’ll never speak.” I was trying to be brave even thought I felt gouged.

But the problem was me, and I knew it. People moved away and it wasn’t personal. They moved away and it wasn’t going to sever relational ties entirely. I knew that.

My specific wounds weren’t for Quinn to manage for the rest of her natural life. But it felt like . . . a lot.

I’d come to terms with my mom. More or less. I’d also come to terms with the fact that – much like putting sprinkles straight into cake batter – if you experience something while you’re still raw, it ends up baked in.

I was a funfetti cake of abandonment issues.

Gran’s death, the out-of-the-blue-no-fault-no-reason breakup with Josh, were sprinkles on the cake. They weren’t foundational in the same way, but they were there.

They’d changed me.

I wouldn’t have said I was a romantic, even then. I felt like I’d had a practical outlook on romance. I had never wanted extraordinary sums of butterflies. Just stability.

I used to think if I found the right man and I found love and I got married, I wouldn’t have to worry about being left. Not because marriage as an institution is so sacred and stable, but because I was sure I could find the right one. I was sure Josh was the right one. Seven years and I thought I couldn’t be more certain.

I’d been wrong.

My phone flashed and Josh’s name popped up on the screen. Another testament to my abandonment issues, after he’d come to pick his stuff up that night two months ago, we’d slid back into texting each other. Not romantically. And I never instigated it. But it was like I was on his friend list again.

There was something comforting about it. It made me feel less abandoned. Like I could still keep one grip on a person who felt foundational to my life rather than losing them entirely.

This is very you.

And under it was a picture of a mug with a raccoon holding a cupcake.

LOL I said, my mouth barely twitching.

Was this . . . him trying to be friends? Did I want to be friends?

Well. It seemed churlish to not attempt it.

See you at Quinn’s party tonight?

It stood to reason Josh would be there. And it was another chance to . . . be friendly.

I sent a thumbs up emoji and put my phone down.

I was very aware Quinn was staring at me. “I know we’ll speak,” she said. “But I also know . . .”

“That I am a shattered feeble mess when it comes to anything that feels like change and people leaving? Yes. True. But that’s not your problem.”

I was torn. Because I wanted my feelings catered to – who didn’t? But I also didn’t want to feel burdensome during the happiest time of Quinn’s life.

“You’re not a problem, Poppy. You’re my best friend. I’m scared to move away, to be honest. This whole thing has been . . . very not me. But Noah is something I could never have planned for. I thought I’d end up married to one of the hometown guys when they came breezing back in after failing out in the big city. I figured I would work for my dad’s accounting business until I took it over after he retired. I just . . . I didn’t think I’d ever be the one to change this much. But he makes me want adventure.”

I said nothing about the very short nature of their relationship and how little I trusted such things because my issues were mine and some thoughts were inside thoughts.

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me.” For a second, though, I was envious. Because my last relationship had made me want to close myself up in my grandma’s house and never leave it and never risk myself again.

It had made me want to make cakes for other people’s weddings forever, and never think of my own again. Because there wouldn’t be one.

I’d wanted love.

I’d been convinced I had it.

And maybe if he’d cheated or he’d transformed into a monster I could have dealt with it. Maybe I could have recategorized it all, because if he’d been lying about who he was the whole time, then I could have pretended I never knew him, and therefore never loved him.

The whimper it went out with had been worse than any bang.

This isn’t going anywhere.

He’d just said it, like that, on our couch two weeks before Christmas. While I was looking at the Christmas tree.

Wouldn’t we have gotten married by now if it was supposed to be forever?

It isn’t that what he said wasn’t wildly hurtful. It was. It still was.

But it was the fact that all that had been swirling around inside that man’s brain while we went to bed together every night and I’d had no idea. And I couldn’t even be outraged because people were allowed to change their minds. Because he’d been honest with me.

He hadn’t been cruel, he hadn’t blamed me, he hadn’t betrayed me. He wanted a different life, he thought we could both have more.

But I didn’t want more.

I’d wanted exactly what we’d had. Nights at home and toothbrushes in the same cup. Comingled coffee mugs. Of course, we’d had issues. Everyone did. But we’d compromised on them. I’d found it easy.

The biggest point of contention had been my traveling for weddings, but we’d . . . worked it out kind of. It had been a big deal for me to do it even knowing it bothered Josh, and I had.

I was especially grateful for that since the relationship had ended.

Now I understood I couldn’t pin my security on another person.

Quinn leaving was a great example of why I couldn’t.

She’d been my best friend since second grade.

“Well, I’m sad,” Quinn said. “Sad to leave you and to leave my parents and to leave here. I’m just doing it anyway.”

I couldn’t really understand that. All I’d ever wanted was security and safety and permanence. Leaving that behind and betting it all on a guy I’d known for less than a year, moving to a foreign country . . .

Could. Not. Be. Me.

“I appreciate your sadness on my behalf, Quinn.”

“And I appreciate you providing goodies for tonight.”

“I would literally be offended if anyone else baked them. It would be a sugar-based infidelity and our relationship can stand distance, but I don’t know if it could weather that.”

“Hate to break it to you but I may have to eat cakes baked by other people when I live on the other side of the world.”

I pretended to consider that. “You can have a get out of jail free card in New Zealand. I won’t ask about your buttercream affairs as long as they occur over the date line.”

I congratulated myself internally for my maturity and magnanimity.

“You could move to New Zealand,” Quinn pointed out.

She was smiling like she knew it was silly. But I heard the hopeful note in her voice, and honestly . . . I felt a little bubble of what if rise up inside me. I could. Gran was gone and my mom coming to visit was a blue moon event that I could and would never array my life around.

But this house was a tether. This town was part of me.

Gran’s legacy with the bakery. My place here. It all meant too much to me.

The security and familiarity meant too much to me.

“I just feel guilty that I’m leaving and you’re staying in a town that contains Ryan Clark.”

I laughed. A hoot, really. “You’re making me co . . . whatever this wedding with him.”

Quinn pressed her hand to her chest. “ I don’t hate Ryan. He’s the reason Noah and I are together. The author of my fate.”

“He’s not Jesus, Quinn.” I went to my fridge and opened it aggressively, revealing the trays of goodies I’d made for tonight. Cupcakes, tiny pies – savory and sweet – and little petit fours.

Quinn gasped in appropriate excitement over everything and I took that as the offramp from this very sad and difficult conversation to something lighter and more casual.

We would have two weeks in New Zealand before the wedding to spend time together. And I would be able to imagine my friend in her new home. Yes, it was a long flight and I wasn’t a huge fan of planes, but it was just . . . a pill and a long night over the Pacific Ocean. I could visit.

Quinn would visit me.

It would be okay.

I ignored the weird panicky sensation that made me feel like I wanted to peel my own skin off and escape the discomfort filling my body.

It just happened when I felt life shift and change. It didn’t mean things were really that bad, it just meant that I was dealing with normal things that were especially hard for me, but I had practice with it and I would be fine.

Quinn hung out and we got ready for the party together. The rest of the bridal party pulled into my driveway about forty minutes before show time.

Hannah, Caitlin and Sierra filled my tiny living room with enthusiastic chatter and balloons.

I batted a balloon to the side and tried to smile. The truth was, I wasn’t being left in Pineville with only Ryan for company. I’d known all of these women since at least middle school and they were all good friends. Though not my best friends.

Only Quinn was my best friend.

Noah and Quinn had met at Caitlin’s wedding, so she took partial credit for the relationship. Fair, I thought, but I’d still known Quinn longer so deserved my maid of honor positioning.

Hannah had married her high school sweetheart when she was twenty, so they were a decade into marriage with three kids who were all in elementary school. She was great, but living a totally different life than I was.

Sierra had gotten married right before I started my cake business and had two kids who were still toddling around in diapers. Hannah and Sierra weren’t coming as early to the wedding because of the logistics of children.

I was trying to be buoyed by this atmosphere of friendship and not depressed by being the odd one out.

I was, at this point, opting to be the odd one.

I was consciously objecting to the institution of marriage.

Even if it made my heart feel like it was being twisted at the center because I really did love weddings. I really believed in soulmates.

At least, I’d always wanted to. Deeply and desperately.

I wasn’t mourning Josh so much really. I was mourning a belief system.

Because, in spite of it all, I’d believed in love.

I still did, really. I couldn’t look at my friends and their lives and convince myself love wasn’t real. But how I saw myself experiencing it had changed completely.

That was a little bit sad. But nothing about tonight was supposed to be sad. We were celebrating Quinn. Celebrating that she had found love.

That she was brave. That she was going on an adventure.

I absolutely could be happy for her for that.

It wasn’t a struggle.

We all gathered the goodies and headed to the party earlier than it started so that we could help get things set up and I was overcome by a weird nostalgia. Like this was every slumber party I’d been to in middle and high school and not a goodbye party for my friend getting married and moving across the world.

But soon people began to pull into the driveway and it was time.

Quinn’s parents’ house was a far cry from the modest place that I had grown up in with my grandmother. It was built into the side of a mountain just on the outskirts of town, with a large expansive deck overlooking the town below. There was a massive pool, and a huge courtyard area where we’d had innumerable parties.

It was so strange to see it like this now.

With her parents, and other people from that generation, plus everyone we knew from high school. A blend of those two parts of our lives. A lot of our old friends had kids, while many didn’t. Another little clash.

Different pieces of life all present and accounted for.

Including Josh, who was standing by a table with chips and dip looking familiar and alien to me at the same time. It was weird that you could see someone more days than you didn’t, for years, and then suddenly not see them at all.

“It was nice of you to come,” I said, smiling so that even I believed I meant it.

“Yeah. I couldn’t let Quinn leave the country without saying goodbye.”

Of course, he didn’t know or love Quinn well enough to go all the way across the world to see her get married. But who wouldn’t want to come to her parents’ awesome house to say goodbye?

“You made all of the desserts?”

That was such an odd question. He knew that was what I did. He’d lived with me for years while I did it.

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

“Hi.”

I looked up and saw Ryan standing behind Josh. He was addressing Josh, but there was a strange edge to his demeanor, probably just exposure to me. Josh turned around. “Hey man. I haven’t seen you much recently.”

“No,” Ryan said, an agreement, but it didn’t necessarily sound easy.

“Well, when you guys get back from the wedding, we should get another campaign together.”

Ryan shrugged. “I’m not coming back here after the wedding. I’m taking an assignment overseas.”

That was the first I’d heard of it. But then, why would Ryan tell me anything.

“Oh wow,” said Josh. “That’s . . . awesome for you.”

“Yeah. It’ll be interesting.”

So, I wasn’t going to be stuck here with Ryan Clark. How . . . how interesting.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Croatia. The Czech Republic. Switzerland.”

“That’s really interesting,” I parroted his own words back to him without meaning it and felt stupid. “I mean . . . good for you.”

There was a glint in his eye that I couldn’t read, and I suddenly felt all the discomfort that had been mitigated by my shock.

Because for five seconds, things had been okay between myself and Ryan. And then it had been ruined.

Then all the ease had been sucked straight out of the vicinity.

And there was none left to be had.

I should have been happy to hear that he was leaving. Or at the very least I should have been neutral about it. But I didn’t feel neutral, as I stood there, looking around the courtyard, and the evidence of how much time had passed, how much everything was changing, at this one last moment where I was going to have my friend here in town with me.

Now even my nemesis was moving away.

And I had found out while I was standing there talking to my ex-boyfriend, trying as hard as I could to be friendly and neutral and not . . . remember that I had spent seven years chucking his dirty underwear into the hamper.

Not that I had always had to do that. And not that he had never done it for me.

It was just . . . It was weird. That was all.

It was like someone had gripped the pavement beneath my feet and pulled it right out from under me. I couldn’t find my footing. I couldn’t find my breath.

I didn’t want Josh and Ryan to see me struggling for either one. What a nightmare.

“Well great. Everything is going great for everybody. Everybody is doing life.” I grinned, and then I went straight to where the margaritas were being served out of a little portable trailer. It was some trendy pop-up drink bar, and under normal circumstances I would pause and ponder how cute it was. But in this present circumstance, I was just pondering my need to drink something that might dull the edge of this discomfort.

This wasn’t like a wedding. I didn’t have a giant cake to serve.

I didn’t have to stay sober.

And that was my justification as the night wore on and my drink consumption increased.

I wasn’t the only one, so it wasn’t especially notable. Except, to my horror, the drinks were not making me feel giddy at a certain point. Instead, the drinks were making me feel maudlin. I was battling crushing, intense feelings of loneliness and the most appalling self-pity I’d ever experienced, and I was trying to keep a smile on my face with diminished control of my faculties.

Apparently, some people got sexy the more margaritas they consumed. And I got weepy. Fantastic.

I wasn’t a big drinker, so it wasn’t a theory that I had tested to its limits. Or even part way to its limits.

“You look like you need to go home and get tucked into bed.”

That voice, gravelly and familiar and suggesting I get tucked into bed, created an avalanche of reaction inside me that I wished I could ignore. But everything felt sharp, like I’d been running with emotional scissors and fallen right on the point.

His voice also felt too sharp.

I turned and then instinctively stepped away, because he was too close and tall and I just couldn’t with him. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Ryan.”

“You look upset. You don’t need to . . . you don’t need to do that here.”

I was mad. Because I felt like it was another scolding from him. Another slap on the wrist about me having emotions because everything in my life was changing dramatically. That it wasn’t his right to go ahead and scold me. To try and tell me what I was allowed to feel, or make me feel like those feelings weren’t in position. “Fuck off,” I said.

“I could do that, or I can give you a ride home, Poppy. It’s really up to you.”

“I don’t need you to give me a ride home.”

“You look like a lost lamb. One that’s about to burst into tears.”

“I am not . . . I am not a lost lamb . What the hell does that even mean?”

“If you could see your face right now you would know exactly what it meant.”

“Well I can’t see my face. So there.”

“You don’t want Josh to see you this upset, do you?”

I frowned. “Josh?” I laughed. “Josh doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No. I don’t give a fuck about him. It’s Quinn. It’s just everything. It’s all the changing. It’s all that . . . and you’re leaving too?”

“You’re mad that I’m leaving?”

“I don’t want things to change anymore. I don’t like it. I want to stay in my grandmother’s house forever. And I wish she was still there in her bedroom. I want the bakery to always be there. I want your parents’ restaurant to always be there. I even want your god-awful photography exhibition to always be there in the Chamber of Commerce where everybody talks about how amazing you are and I scoffed because I think you’re a dick. And I want you to be there. Being . . . grumpy and unknowable and my nemesis.”

I could hear myself, I just couldn’t really stop myself. He was staring at me like I was insane or maybe just sad and I still couldn’t stop the word vomit.

“I just want to grab onto this moment and hang onto it. So that it doesn’t pass. Because next week we are going to be in New Zealand. And Quinn is going to marry Noah. And she’s going to stay there. And she is my beautiful unicorn of a best friend. Before her I didn’t have any friends.”

“You’re going to be fine,” he said.

“Well. I feel awful. Disgusting .”

And a little bit like I was going to be sick. So that was great.

“Excuse me,” I said and then I dashed into the bathroom in the pool house and cast up my accounts.

I stayed in there for a long moment, hating everything. But I just hope that Ryan and his misguided attempt at . . . saving me from myself? Saving everybody else from me? Was over.

I stepped outside, and nearly ran into him.

“I’m happy to give you a ride home,” he said.

“I’m with the bridal party. I don’t need a ride home.”

He stared at me, and I ignored my irritation. I ignored everything else. “You were just sick,” he said.

Humiliation washed through me. I didn’t know why it felt so awful. Only that I felt the worst and saddest and more embarrassed I could ever remember feeling. Perhaps that was the tequila. But maybe everything was hopeless.

You could never discount that as a possibility.

“I don’t need anything from you,” I said, shoving past him.

“I thought you needed me to stay,” he said. “And be your nemesis.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “Well, I’m drunk, and I am being an idiot. I don’t care what you do or where you go. It won’t make any difference to me.”

And with that parting shot, I went and rejoined the rest of the party.