Chapter 13
C HAPTER 13
The Fifth Wedding
Leavenworth
Nine Months Ago
The radio was on, but I wasn’t singing. My hands had been frozen in a single spot on the steering wheel since I had finally pulled out of my driveway an hour later than I was supposed to.
It was a nine-hour drive to Leavenworth, and the weather was iffy. I wasn’t going to get there until well after dark.
I was angry. Upset.
Devastated .
There weren’t enough words. Or maybe, I was just tired of repeating them over and over again. Because I was . . .
Angry. Upset.
Devastated .
It had been the single most fantastic implosion of our entire seven-year relationship, and it had been the end.
He had broken up with me while I was standing in the kitchen putting cream in my coffee.
Like he was asking me what I was doing today. Like he was asking me about the weather.
Just casually.
I don’t feel like we’re on the right track.
I had . . . asked him a thousand questions. Gone over all those years in my head. Nothing that made sense.
Nothing that felt real.
What do you mean by that? How can we not be? Look at this . . . place, this place we share with each other, how is this not that right track?
Then why does it never seem like the right time for us to get engaged?
It had felt right to me. Or I thought it had. But then he’d said that and it made me question everything. How I’d never brought it up, and how I’d never pushed for it even though it felt like something I wanted.
I think we’ve been together since we were so young and we’ve never had a chance to really . . . play the field.
Play the field?
I really hadn’t seen that one coming.
We haven’t married each other, and maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe we need to go out and spread our wings and see what else is out there? Maybe . . . maybe that’s what we have to do and if we’re meant to find our way back to each other we will, but we have to—
You want to have sex with other women?
It was all I’d heard.
My stomach felt hollow. And I just stared at the road ahead.
I was borderline catatonic.
I still had a wedding to go to. I had a cake to bake.
This was about love. Somebody else’s love. And I couldn’t afford to let my thwarted love affect it.
But I felt awful. Sick.
I felt like I was dying.
This was my nightmare. My stable, perfect life was falling apart around me.
Everything that I had ever hoped for. Everything that I had wanted.
I had invested so many years in the relationship because I had been so sure of where it was going.
You don’t want me?
He’d deflated.
You’re the only woman I’ve ever . . . He’d cleared his throat. And you’d been with someone else before we were together.
I really hated that. That he was using me having been with someone before him against me, especially when . . .
It had never been that important to me. Sex had never been a huge deal to me. He had always been more important. The relationship had always been more important. No, we didn’t exactly make for a hot, erotic romance novel. And I can certainly appreciate the fantasy aspect of some guy calling you baby girl while he put his hand around your throat, but that wasn’t love. And it wasn’t real.
I had already been rejected because somebody had bigger fantasies than being with me. And it got me. Right between the ribs.
He’d apologized. He had told me he would be gone by the time I got back. I had cried.
I was going to spend Christmas by myself, and it made me feel like being a child all over again and not knowing when I would see my mom again. It made me feel like myself, when my grandma died and I knew I was going to have to face the holidays without her. Even though all she would do was complain about them. And make cookies even through the complaints.
Lonely at Christmas was far too familiar a feeling. I could barely breathe past it.
The drive was a blur. And the hotel that I was staying and working in was beautiful.
The whole town was. A snow globe brought to life.
Beautiful historic buildings, built to look like a Bavarian town and thoroughly bedecked for Christmas.
Normally, I would have enjoyed it. Immensely.
Instead, I was just sadly unloading my car.
And getting angrier and angrier. Some of the numbness from the drive up had faded.
And I was just starting to feel . . .
Did he think I might want something more? But I had decided that I wasn’t going to take it. I had decided that what we had was more important.
I understood that love and security were the stuff of life, not . . . roaming around indulging yourself in fake passion. And anyway, wasn’t that the privilege of men? That he could think maybe he would go out and get laid and satisfy some need he had for variety. He knew that he would come. A woman could never know that.
You picked a random partner at your own peril. Even with Josh it had been a grab bag. The prize, or whether or not I’d even get one, had been uncertain.
But I just wanted to be close. Maybe.
My rage was starting to feel like it had teeth.
Oddly, it made me feel closer to my grandmother, who had always had choice things to say about men. She’d cursed my grandpa’s name as a daily prayer.
She hadn’t liked Josh, but the thing was, she didn’t like anybody.
I tried to breathe past the pain in my chest.
I checked in, and I went and introduced myself to the restaurant manager, who was allowing me to use the kitchen to make the wedding cake.
I managed to do it without being a puddle, and without imploding. I felt personally quite pleased about that. Maybe the bar was low, but at least there was a bar.
My hotel room was pristine. The bedspread was velvet and berry, and the details in the room were all gilded and ornate. It was hands down the nicest place that I had stayed during all the weddings that I had done.
I sat on the bed and I cried. Because I was by myself, because he couldn’t see it, because nobody had to know that I felt like an abandoned child.
I wanted my anger back, but it had been far too fleeting for my liking.
I ordered room service and stayed under the covers to eat it.
The next morning, I got up early and collected everything that I needed to bake. The wedding was early in the day, because it got dark so early this time of year. I needed to get moving.
I got a cake baked and assembled quickly. I knew the process so well now. I was good at baking in strange kitchens.
I was good at things.
I told myself that repeatedly as I decorated the cake with fondant evergreen trees and tiny reindeer. With sugared cranberries and little sprigs of pine.
I had a life. It wasn’t completely upended.
I had put too much weight on another person, and I could never do that again.
What if I was untethered? What if I didn’t make marriage and love my goal?
What if I sold the bakery and I started my own business. What if I planned weddings, from top to bottom, and used all my creativity and my business degree?
What if I was just me and I wasn’t trying to earn anything or pay anything back?
I stood there at the counter, feeling like I was having a revelation.
What if I was in charge of how happy my life was? I really had been this whole time, it was just that I had convinced myself that I needed to make a family that looked a certain way in order to truly have security. But was that even true?
I just felt miserable.
But . . .
He was going to go out and travel. He was going to sleep with other people.
I had suppressed parts of myself in order to maintain that relationship, because I had decided that it would be the safest. And here I was, completely not safe.
Completely undone.
That wasn’t fair.
I had hotel staff to help me move the cake into the reception hall, and I was walking through the ornate lobby when Ryan came in.
He was wearing a black coat, wool, with a sprinkling of snowflakes on his shoulders and in his dark hair.
The strangest sensation gripped me then.
I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to ask him if he’d had any idea that Josh had intended to break up with me.
But that wasn’t all.
There was something else. Something dangerous. Something that gripped me down deep and held onto me. Held me fast, kept me motionless there in the lobby.
“Ryan.”
I would never know for sure if I’d meant to say his name out loud.
He turned his head, and the momentary ferocity there pinned me to the spot. I wondered if he knew. Did men call each other about things like that? Did they ring up and have a chat about the recent and random breakup? Did the breakup even seem random to Ryan?
Maybe Josh had talked to him about his changing feelings, his insecurities.
The idea that somebody could know more about my relationship than I had filled me with a deep sense of rage.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I hated that I looked wrong. I hated that I looked like I felt.
Nobody wanted to look like the dried-up husk they felt like.
“You don’t know?”
He moved closer to me. “No. What happened?”
I didn’t know what to do with that expression of genuine concern on his face, because I had never seen anything like it. Not just from him, but from anybody.
The intensity there was something entirely foreign.
“Josh broke up with me.”
I couldn’t read what happened to his expression after that. But the end result was something like the face of a mountain. Remote, and craggy. Completely solid.
Impossible.
“He what?”
“This morning. Before I drove up here to the wedding. Honestly, I would’ve thought that he told you.”
“No. He doesn’t talk to me about you.”
I felt like I had been stabbed. He didn’t even talk to Ryan about me? That was a huge part of what Quinn and I talked about. Not everything, obviously. My life passed the Bechdel test.
I had other things going on with Josh, and I always had, but I absolutely did talk to my friends about him. He didn’t talk to Ryan about me at all?
“Well, that’s a little defensive. I guess kind of telling.”
“I’m not the person to talk to about things like that.”
Of course not. Because he was the kind of guy who hooked up with women at weddings. He was the kind of guy that Josh wanted to be like.
“Well, even though you don’t talk to him about things like that, apparently he idolizes you.”
“Does he?”
I was so acutely aware that we were having this conversation in a lobby. That he had a backpack slung over his shoulder, black and utility looking, with his camera equipment inside of it, I’m sure.
Camera equipment that I had damaged last time we had been in serious proximity to each other. Not that I hadn’t seen him since that incident, but we had barely exchanged a handful of words. Even with Quinn dating one of his friends.
We had taken avoidance to a level of high art.
And now here we were, talking about my devastated personal life in public.
“Yeah,” I said. “He wants to travel. He wants to have sex with other women.”
Josh drew back as though I had punched him. “He what?”
“Yes. Part of the very fun conversation that we had this morning. It’s not me, it’s him. Except, when your boyfriend wants to have sex with other people, it feels a little bit like it’s you.”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry, Poppy. I genuinely had no idea that he was thinking about doing that.”
“And if you had?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s . . . It’s not my business. But it just feels . . . hell, I feel shocked, so I can’t imagine how you feel.”
Of course, it wasn’t like he was my friend. He wouldn’t come talk to me if he had known about it. Why would he?
No.
I wasn’t his friend.
“I have stuff to do,” I said.
I turned away from him, and he grabbed my arm, stopping me in my tracks.
His touch was warm, and firm. His gaze like fire. And I found that I couldn’t breathe.
I found myself immobilized like I had been looking through the window between my cabin and his in Lake Tahoe. I found myself once again breathless with the realization that I was attracted to Ryan.
Right now, there was nothing preventing me from doing something about it.
Except that he was Ryan. Except that he didn’t like me. Except that I had never in my life made a physical move on a man that I didn’t have a relationship with.
Except that I would have to walk down the street and see him, and face what had happened.
But everything already felt upended. I was going to have to go home and see Josh again too.
This feeling was so strong. It was almost bigger than the anger that I felt. And the shame and the sadness. I was tempted. Tempted to move closer. Tempted – in this hotel lobby – to close the distance between the two of us so that I didn’t feel quite so alone.
I snapped back to reality suddenly and sharply.
“I have work to do,” I said, going back to my room and sitting on the bed, curling my fingers into fists over the top of the velvet bedspread.
My heart was pounding hard.
I was running scared. Because that had been the single most disorienting moment of my life.
I had almost done something completely out of character.
That stuck with me for the rest of the day, for the rest of the wedding.
It was a beautiful wedding, filled with snow and Christmas cheer, and even in my heartbroken state, I couldn’t be cynical about it.
I still believed in this for other people.
Families existed too. Families that were like mine. Mothers who loved their children, and who wanted to raise them.
Love could exist in its many splendored forms and still not be something that everyone had.
I had friendship. Great friends .
I’d had my grandmother.
I didn’t need everything .
No one got everything.
After the cake was served, I melted back from the glittering reception and felt myself begin to crumble.
A tear slid down my cheek, and I wiped it away.
I wanted to be done with that. Every breath was like a different emotion, every moment passing bringing with it a different wave. I had been angry. I had been sad. I had been fine. Resolved. But then angry again. And now sad.
It was a lot.
I sniffed, and walked out of the reception hall, taking the elevator back up to my room.
I slipped the key card in the slot, and watched the light turn green. Then I slipped into my room.
I meant to change into something comfortable. I meant to take a shower. Instead, I just sat on the edge of the bed. Staring blankly at part of the scrollwork on the brass lamp sitting on the nightstand.
I don’t know how long I sat there. But there was a knock on the door, and I stood up.
I walked across the room and peeked through the peephole.
Ryan.
Without thinking, I jerked the door open. And without that standing between us, I felt it. That same thing that I had felt down in the lobby. But it was stronger. Because it was coming from him too. This wasn’t just inside me.
He felt it too.
I knew that. As I drew in my next breath, I could taste it on my tongue. As I let my eyes meet his, I could see it.
The ferocity there. The intensity.
He felt it too.
I didn’t think. And I’m not sure who moved. But I was suddenly pressed against him, my hands moving up his broad chest, around the back of his shoulders. And then he lowered his head, his mouth claiming mine hungrily.
The force of it was enough to make my knees buckle.
He wrapped his arms around me, lifting me onto my toes, then entirely off the ground.
He was hard. And big.
I had never been held by a man like him.
I had never felt anything like this.
My heart was pounding so hard I thought I was going to die, and he was kissing me so deep that it was like he was trying to consume me.
His tongue slid against mine, the most delicious friction, and I shivered.
My hands kept moving, up the back of his neck, into his hair. Ryan Clark’s hair.
I was so painfully, acutely aware that he was the one holding me. That he was the one making me feel like a lit match.
I had never understood this. I had never understood passion with the absence of love.
But this was passion. And it was no less acute for being disconnected from those things. No. If anything, it was more.
There was an edge to this. An explosiveness that I had never believed was real. I thought it was the stuff of fiction. Something that made an exciting paragraph, but would be elusive in real life. But here it was.
Combusting between the two of us.
Josh had wanted to find this. He had wanted to find this sexual excitement out there, and I had found it with his best friend.
I couldn’t let go of that thought. Of that momentary bubble of triumph that fizzed in my chest. It mingled with the desire that I felt, a cocktail that was stronger than anything I’d ever had before.
He loosened his hold on me, and I slid down the front of him, breaking the kiss. I could feel the hard ridge of his cock against my stomach.
I had given Ryan Clark a hard-on, and I didn’t know what to do with that. Except go right back in for another kiss.
“Are you just doing this to get back at him?”
His words were rough, spoken close to my lips.
“Yes.”
He went rigid. And moved away from me.
“I mean . . .” I felt stunned.
“I’m not here for you to fuck out your feelings for somebody else.”
“I didn’t say—”
He moved away from me, and the look in his eyes made me wish I could evaporate into nothing. I had always felt with him that he disliked me for no good reason. But right now, I felt like I deserved every moment, of every hour, of every day, he’d spent hating me.
Right now, I felt like I was as unlikeable as he’d always treated me.
Then he turned away, and he walked out the door.
He said nothing.
He just left.
I could have opened it again. Except I was just standing there, shocked. Unable to believe what had just happened. That I had just kissed Ryan, and that I had managed to ruin it a minute later.
But I couldn’t lie to him. I had felt petty triumph at the thought of kissing Josh’s friend, when he had hurt me so badly.
But I wanted him too.
Surely both of those things could exist together.
But I had run over the camera lens. I had dropped a bowling ball on the solar system.
I had broken everything with him, just like I always did.