Other People’s Weddings

Chapter 20

C HAPTER 20

“Tomorrow morning,” I said, staring down at the screen.

“Me too,” he said.

“Oh.”

I was flying back to Auckland, and then would be taking an evening flight to Los Angeles.

“I’ll be flying to Sydney, and then on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Have you had a good morning?”

He wasn’t acting like it was a big deal. Wasn’t acting like it was sad. I had just been thinking that I needed so badly to get back home, and now I didn’t want to go.

Because at least here it was like we were outside of time. At least here, I didn’t have to know anything. What I felt about him or my life, or anything.

I didn’t know how I could want so many different things so badly. How I could want things to go back to how they were, but also want to stay on a vacation from everything forever.

It was that game I played. Imagine what my life could be like when I was somewhere else.

If I were a different person. If I weren’t quite so broken. If I were brave.

If I was the kind of person who took off to parts unknown to live there just for a while. Who could get on a plane without taking lorazepam, and without wearing noise canceling headphones and an eye mask.

“We should go downtown tonight,” he said. “Have dinner.”

“Yes,” I said.

Because surely a dinner date would fix it. It would make this feel good. Likely to draw a line under it. Like everything would be fine.

Like it could all go back to normal. Just something we got out of the box in New Zealand, but back in Pineville, it would be safely packed away. Stowed with our suitcases. Yeah. That would work.

I wouldn’t even have to worry about it for several months, because he wasn’t coming back. Not for a long time. I didn’t even know when.

He hadn’t told me. Because it wasn’t my business. Because we were . . . whatever this was. Taylor Swift had an invisible string, and we had a long, torturous rope with so many knots in it we could never begin to untangle it.

“I have a couple of places I’m going to try to get pictures of. Do you want to come?”

“I should pack,” I said. “Make sure I have everything in order. I have to figure out my connecting flight home. Because it’s on a different airline and they didn’t rebook it. Separate reservation. It’s just . . . it’s going to be kind of a headache.”

It was true, but it was also kind of an excuse. When he left, I went to work in my Alaska Airlines app trying to rebook my flight. I couldn’t manage one until the day after my flight got to LA.

Los Angeles.

That always made me feel weird, because of course my mother was just a skip away over in Hollywood.

I didn’t loiter down in that area of the world for a reason.

I can remember the first time I drove to Hollywood. I had been down in the area for a wedding convention, and I had thought that it would be a good idea to see the glittering place that she had left me for.

It hadn’t glittered at all. I had been shocked by how old and dilapidated it was. How the streets were cracked and the buildings were faded. The brightest colors on the pink oleander blossoms and the spindly palm trees. The Hollywood sign on the hill had seemed somehow less in person than it did on the screen.

I had been more confused after seeing it. Nothing felt resolved.

I ignored the feeling that the world was throwing deliberately difficult things my way.

The world was giant.

The world outside the window with its big blue skies and ancient mountains didn’t care about my emotional issues.

Only I did.

That gave me perspective.

I packed. I made a hotel reservation by LAX. I ignored the weight pressing down on my chest.

I took a bath, by myself, which was infinitely less interesting than taking one with Ryan.

For the first time since I got to New Zealand, I got out my paper planner and looked ahead at my calendar. I had a few weddings to try and manage when I got home. Only one coming up quickly.

Weddings Ryan wouldn’t be at.

Weddings I wouldn’t number, because I didn’t assign numbers to the ones he wasn’t there for.

For another moment, I wondered what it would be like to leave. To do something different.

To run away with him.

But what would happen to the bakery? To the brides?

What would happen to that safe space I’d made?

That echoed inside of me.

I didn’t want to let anyone down. I never had.

And yet, I always felt like it wasn’t enough. Like I wasn’t enough.

For God’s sake. I was so melancholy.

I got dressed for dinner, and just as I finished, Ryan rolled in.

“I’m going to get in the shower,” he said.

He disappeared into the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation. But I was already dressed and I had done my makeup, so I didn’t take him up on it. Even though I wanted to.

There was something so domestic about this. We had been cohabitating.

Even listening to the shower running, knowing he was in it, it felt like something it wasn’t.

It was so easy to feel like we were something we weren’t.

When he walked into the living room wearing only jeans, his chest still wet from the shower, my body went into overheat mode. He just did that for me. Every time. And now that I had given myself permission to react to him, it was just over the top all the time.

I had never been like this before. I had never been so hungry for sex.

But it wasn’t just that. It was the living together, the sleeping together. Waking up in the morning together.

It was everything. And going back home would mean leaving this.

“Did you have something in mind that you wanted?”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

“You sure?”

“No. I’m into whatever.”

“We’re going to have to walk down. There still aren’t any cars.”

“We should probably feel lucky to be got flights out so early.”

His expression was unreadable. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean because I was in a hurry,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

Except, I didn’t think he did. I was frustrated at myself. For sorting through my own thoughts and feelings just . . . way too slowly.

I wanted to say something reassuring, but I couldn’t even reassure myself.

“How about hot pots?” I asked. “I went there with the other girls. And it was really great. I think you would enjoy it.”

He looked pleased at that. “I would enjoy that. Thanks.”

He finished dressing, and we left the house together. He reached out and grabbed my hand, just casually. He laced his fingers through mine, and I just enjoyed the moment. Our hands linked together as we walked down the street. Like we had nowhere pressing to be. Like it was normal. Like this was who we were.

“How many more weddings do you have this year?”

“Six,” I said.

“Wow.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot.”

“I think I’m pretty much done with it,” he said.

“Really?” It felt like something inside me had torn.

“Yeah. It was good for a while. Like I said, and helped pay the bills. But it’s not what I really want to do.”

There was something about the way he said that. It turned something inside me on its head. It also made me feel like he was being honest about something I wasn’t able to.

“I really love baking. It makes me feel closer to my grandmother.”

“I can tell.”

“I went to school for business. I wanted to figure out how to help run the bakery a little bit better. I don’t know that I would’ve opened a bakery. It was what my grandmother did. I mean, I really enjoy baking. I like the artistic design of cakes. I guess you can’t know the answer to that question, can you? What you would be if you didn’t feel tangled up in . . . obligation.”

I felt guilty calling the bakery that.

“Is that how you feel it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“What business would you run if you weren’t doing wedding cakes?”

I had always liked doing other people’s weddings. I got a lot out of it. I got to see people making commitments to each other. It was artistic. It was fun. And nobody was ever happier with you than a couple who was pleased at their wedding.

It was the ultimate high for me.

That made me feel so small and sad.

At the same time, I felt like as long as I did cakes, I had grounding for it. A basis to start from. The baking my grandmother had taught me to do, her legacy and reputation with her bakery.

I didn’t feel good enough to try for more. And that was even sadder.

“I . . . I had the thought it would be fun to help plan the whole wedding.”

“You want to be a wedding planner?”

I nodded. “I mean, I’m close enough. But think about all of the things we’ve seen. Bears in my car and missing wedding rings.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. Maybe I wouldn’t really like it. It seems silly, to still be waffling on all that at thirty.”

“It’s okay to not know what you want.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of person that’s ever been uncertain.”

He looked up at me. “I mean, I have been, about plenty of things.”

“I don’t mean about life, or what was going to happen to you. I mean about what you wanted.”

He nodded slowly. “That is true. The reason that I went to school in New Zealand was because I can remember very clearly seeing a picture of Waimangu Volcanic Valley hanging on the wall at one of my parents’ friends’ houses. They were those kinds of people. They had traveled the world, you know? Suddenly I knew rich people, and before I never had. But I remember seeing that. And thinking it looked magical. The water was so blue. It didn’t seem real. And they said that it was. Even bluer in person. I wanted to see it for myself, I wanted to capture it for myself. And suddenly, I realized it was possible. That was one of the first times I set my mind to something. Because suddenly I could dream. It wasn’t too expensive.”

I was in awe of him. He had looked at a photograph of a place around the world and had seen it as a place he could go.

I felt like my own dreams were so small in comparison. I couldn’t see past the four walls of my grandmother’s house because they represented safety. I had been able to dream as far as getting a degree to help run her bakery better.

And then I had taken that and turned it into my wedding cake business. It was a small thing. I was proud of myself. I wasn’t downplaying it. It was only that I could see my own limitations. Limitations I put on myself. The way that I was sort of cautiously circling the same basic thing. In ever widening circles, but they weren’t all that wide.

“You made your dreams come true,” I said.

“Some of them,” he said. He tightened his hold on my hand, and we dropped down into town. We walked past the now familiar fern statue, down to the walk in front of the lake. Past the statue of the man and his sheep. All the way through to the hot pot restaurant.

The light was low inside, and faintly red.

We sat down at a table and ordered an array of vegetables and meat for our broth.

I looked at him across the table, and had the sudden, terrifying feeling that I could look at him across the dining table for the rest of my life and be happy.

I pulled way back. Way, way back. I didn’t want to have thoughts like that.

But they were so insistent. And futile all at the same time.

He was leaving.

I had escaped in the dead of night when I had thought we were going to be separated the first time because I didn’t want to say goodbye. Because I didn’t want to have thoughts like this. I didn’t need to romanticize what had occurred.

But I also couldn’t reduce it.

I couldn’t just tell myself that we were two people blowing off steam that had been building up for years. It was something that I could’ve done a few days ago. But not now.

Because yes, there was something to the steam. It was amazing. Better than anything I had ever experienced before.

But I didn’t just like being with him when he was naked. I liked being with him in every way.

I liked walking with him. Holding his hand. I liked learning about him. I liked watching him work. I liked sitting across from him at a dinner table.

That was more than sex.

I looked down, and concentrated on picking up a piece of meat and swishing it around in the broth.

“Where are you going first?” I asked, trying to loosen some of the tightness in my chest.

“Croatia,” he said.

“Oh. That sounds great. Where are you staying?”

“Dubrovnik.”

“Have you been there before?”

“No. I’m only going to places I haven’t been before.”

I wish I had something to say to that. I felt like a tear had started to form at the center of my chest. Or maybe it had been there for a long time and it was just now beginning to expand. One side was being pulled right, the other was being pulled left, and it was going to leave me split.

Ryan didn’t seem split. He seemed to have found a way to be everything to everyone, and himself, and I had no idea how he did it. I had no idea how he was all the things he was without fear.

I wanted to figure out how to stop the horrible tearing in my chest. The one that wanted to go back to my safe, quiet life, and the one that wanted something more.

Everything.

No. I already knew no one got to have everything.

“And you’re going to go back home?” he asked.

I nodded. “I have a wedding cake to make.”

“Of course,” he said.

I looked up at him and it was like everything, all the feelings from the past few days and forever, bubbled over inside of me.

“I don’t want to stop this,” I said.

The words tumbled out of my mouth, I hadn’t been aware that I was about to say them, and I really didn’t know quite where I was going with it. Just that I couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. I just couldn’t.

“What?”

“This. When you get back to Pineville, I want the two of us to still be . . . I like this. I like that we’re friends now. And I want to keep sleeping with you.”

It would change so many things. We would be walking around the town where everybody knew us, holding hands. People would have opinions. Josh would probably be upset.

I didn’t know his parents very well, and my grandmother had hated them, because I was a Love and he was a Clark. And as much as I was pretty sure only my grandmother had ever put much stock in that, I didn’t really know what his parents would think.

It made my mouth dry. It made my heart pound so hard I thought I was going to be sick.

“Let’s talk about this when we get back to the house.”

“I want to talk about it now,” I said.

“Poppy, eat your food.”

I did. But it was difficult. Because he was maybe on the verge of protecting me. Or something. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what.

He was very certain. He was certain in ways that I never had been. Maybe he found me too timid. Maybe I was only good for sex, and now the sex had been demystified he wasn’t interested anymore.

We finished our meal, which I could no longer enjoy, and when we were out on the street I turned to him. “I really do want to know what you think.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a people pleaser.”

“Not with you. I want . . . to keep doing this.”

“Is that it?” He stopped walking, he looked at me. People were milling around us, walking across the gray cobbled path, but we were frozen. Totally in the way. I didn’t care.

“I think we can try for . . . something,” I said. “Because no matter how many years we’ve known each other, no matter how many different things we tried to be to each other, nothing has felt quite right, has it? But these last few days have felt really good. And I want to hold onto that.”

“You’re proposing that we do a friends with benefits thing?”

That he found such an easy, neat label relieved me. Because I could see that working. I could see how that was what we were. We had told each other secrets. And we had touched each other in ways I had certainly never been touched before.

We were friends. But there was more to it. I could handle that. It felt finally like a good category that I could put Ryan into. Not the messy, fascinating thing he had always been, but something that sounded so nice and permanent and would let me have my life and him have his.

“That’s exactly what I want. Exactly that. Because the idea of going back home and pretending that none of this happened just isn’t something that I want. I don’t want to pretend that this didn’t happen.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

I was relieved to hear that. “Good.”

“I’m not your fucking friend.”

He started to walk ahead of me.

“Ryan,” I said, trailing after him. “What you mean? Of course you’re my friend.”

“No. I’m not going to let you downplay this. I’m not going to let you hide. Yes, you are a people pleaser, Poppy love. You are also the most ridiculous little control freak that I have ever met. You’re always shocked when something doesn’t go according to plan. When a bowling ball falls on something, or when a bear eats your cake. But that’s life. You can’t stop it. Things are going to happen, just because you didn’t mean to hurt somebody doesn’t mean that you’re exempt from the consequences of it.”

“It’s not . . . it’s not a bowling ball, Ryan. I really want this. I’m not trying to ruin things.”

He looked so angry. Furious. He had been mad at me before, but not like this. The closest thing was the fifth wedding.

“Maybe it could be something else, but maybe it won’t be. And we have to live in the same town. I know that you travel a lot, but you’re going to be home, and I can’t face it if we . . . I don’t want to implode.”

“And I’m not taking your half-assed offer.”

“It isn’t a half-assed offer, I mean it. It’s a big deal for me.”

“It’s a big deal for you? To get to keep safe? To keep your little house, to keep your life exactly the same way it is except you get me in your bed when I’m home from an assignment. What changes for you? Nothing. And that’s what you want. That’s why you liked Josh, and it’s why you ignored the little undermining things he did and said to you. Because what you really wanted was somebody who wouldn’t challenge you. What you really wanted was somebody you wouldn’t have to give anything up for.”

“He never asked me to give anything up for him.”

“I know.”

“I don’t understand why you’re mad at me about this.”

“I told you. One of the first things in my life I was ever sure about was that I wanted to be a photographer. But you know what the first thing was?”

“No,” I said, my heart suddenly dipping, fighting against my breastbone.

“When I saw you, sixth grade. And you smiled at me. I knew what love was. For the first time in my goddamned life. I was sure. I have been sure every day of my life, ever since. It didn’t matter that you tried to avoid me, it didn’t matter that you had that same easy smile for everybody else for all those years after, and you didn’t have it for me anymore. I do.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt like I was in a freefall, there on the sidewalk in New Zealand.

What he was saying didn’t make any sense. There was no way that Ryan had loved me since we were twelve. It didn’t seem possible or reasonable or rational. He had hated me.

Except I started to circle around all the things he had said to me. And all the things he hadn’t.

“Love felt a lot like resentment to me,” he said. “I didn’t want to feel those things for you. I wanted to push you away. You were scarier than Mary and Michael. Scarier than anything. And you never looked at me like that. You were kind, but I was never special to you. Not like you were to me. I was kind of grateful for that, because . . . I wouldn’t have known what to do with you even if I could’ve touched you. I would’ve broken you. It would’ve been worse than a bowling ball on a science project, believe me. But when we came back from college, I wondered . . . I thought that maybe we could try something. But then you started dating him.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “And you were everywhere. You were everywhere , I never got away from you. It didn’t matter how many women I slept with, it didn’t matter how many photography assignments I took. It didn’t matter how good I made myself feel about all of my achievements, I still didn’t have you. And then there was the . . . the wedding photography. Being constantly in your path. It was like a joke. Finally, finally he broke up with you, and I was just mad that he hurt you. But then you were kissing me, so it didn’t matter. Except you were only kissing me because you wanted to get back at him.”

“I told you,” I said, feeling like I was being scraped raw. “I told you it wasn’t that simple.”

“Yeah. That’s what you said.”

“I meant it. Ryan . . .” I felt like I was dying.

He loved me?

He loved me .

All those years, I have felt weird and awkward and alone. Afraid. Just marinating in the precariousness of everything. Of being a middle schooler, of missing my mother. Of being afraid of losing friends, because I was afraid of losing everything. And he had loved me? All that time. I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Stop trying to rationalize it. Stop trying to make it a math problem. If it was that easy, if it was that simple, I just wouldn’t feel it,” he said.

“What am I supposed to do with that? You love me, but you don’t want to?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”

“Well that’s not . . . very nice.”

“Why should I want to? Because all it has been is me caring more for you than you do for me. And I’ve had enough of that. I spent my life dealing with that. And I didn’t need to meet you and fall right back into the same pattern.”

“It isn’t the same,” I said. “I have feelings for you. I do. But it’s not reasonable to think that we can just jump into the deep end. We have to figure out how our lives are going to work together. You have a job that takes you overseas all the time, and I can’t even get on a plane without taking pharmaceuticals.”

“Is that the real reason?”

“I don’t know. It’s enough of one. Why can’t we take things in steps?”

“Because I don’t want half measures. I know what I want. I have known what I wanted since I was twelve. Since I saw you for the first time in my grandpa’s restaurant delivering the mail. I want to marry you. I want you to belong to me. I want to belong to you. I love you, Poppy. It’s not ambiguous, it’s not a question. I don’t need to get my toes into the shallow end. And more than that, I can’t. I am not a man who does halfway. And I don’t deal in uncertainty.”

“That’s not fair. You can’t let me have one moment to try and process this?”

“You didn’t ask me what I felt. You started making proclamations. You started trying to control it. Because that’s what you have to do. You have to shrink everything down to fit inside that little box that you want to stay in. But I can’t fit in that box. And my feelings for you sure as hell can’t.”

“So it’s all, everything, right now or nothing?”

“It fucking is,” he said.

“I can’t . . . I can’t make a decision that quickly.”

“Quickly? We have known each other since sixth grade. I’m not asking you to make a decision quickly. I’m asking you to finally make a decision. You can’t even tell me when for sure you were first attracted to me. And I think if you are genuinely honest with yourself, you would know. You would know that we both felt something, all those years ago. But you have been running from it. And I’ve been waiting. Waiting for you to look at me and see me the way that I see you.”

“I do. I think that you are the most incredible, amazing man that I have ever known. You’re so strong and you’re so talented and you—”

“And it doesn’t matter. Because you don’t care about me any more than you care about whatever fantasy you have about the perfect life.”

He started to walk away from me again and I hurried after him. “That’s not fair,” I said. “Everybody wants to have a perfect life. Everybody wants to be safe and happy. Everybody does. Don’t turn it into some kind of psychosis that I alone am suffering from.”

“You don’t just want to be happy and safe. You want to have everything be comfortable and on your terms. That is not what everyone wants. Because if you have another person in your life, it has to be about them too.”

We were back at the rental house. I hadn’t even been aware that we had been walking that quickly.

“I’m going to the airport,” he said, picking up his backpack.

“Ryan,” I said. “Don’t run away from me.”

“I’m not. I’m not running away from you. I have been here the whole damned time. But if this doesn’t do it, if it doesn’t show you what we could have, if it doesn’t show you what you feel, then nothing is going to. And I need to have permission to move on. To go live my life.”

“So you’re just going to swan off into the darkness and have some kind of sad man fantasy? Are you going to bang some Croatian girl against an ancient wall when you get to Dubrovnik?”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business. It would only be your business if you were in love with me.”

I wanted to say something, but the words got stuck in my throat. Everything was jumbled up inside of me.

I couldn’t figure out how we had gotten here.

And before I could say anything, he had picked up his backpack, and was headed out the door.

“You can’t walk to the airport,” I called after him.

He didn’t answer me. He didn’t turn around.

He didn’t say goodbye.

And it hurt so much worse than saying goodbye ever could have.