Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Being in the middle of wedding preparations didn’t help my anxiety.
Nor did it help that the tasks didn’t keep me as busy as I’d anticipated.
Riley and our mom already had the entire operation organized and running smoothly.
I shouldn’t have been in Florida yet. I should have been with Macon and at my store.
I called Mika so often for sales numbers that she ordered me to stop because I was stressing everybody out.
And I couldn’t ask Macon what he thought about marriage because it was a conversation we needed to have in person.
I knew he loved me. I knew he wanted to be with me.
But I had no idea what he thought about the concept of forever .
There were hopeful signs. After three days apart, I convinced him to FaceTime me for the first time ever. His expression broke when he saw me, and he touched his screen.
“See?” I said. “Technology isn’t all bad.”
“I hate it with the fiery intolerance of a thousand book banners, but my love for you burns stronger.”
I laughed and touched my screen, too.
He requested selfies, and I sent them—but only if he sent some in return. The Macon album on my phone swelled. I stared at his face whenever I was alone.
My extended relatives flew into town, and then Jess’s large family arrived, followed by a sea of strapping young women on holiday leave and a reporter and photographer from People magazine.
More than two hundred guests showed up, proving that my mother’s concerns about nobody coming to a Christmas wedding were unfounded.
I was the shortest bridesmaid by several inches.
The candlelit venue dripped with poinsettias and red berries and pine boughs, and the brides wore white dresses with white Air Jordans.
I cried when they held hands and walked themselves down the aisle, I cried when they read their vows, and I cried when they kissed.
The reception was wild. A party full of athletes was very different than a party full of book people. They were not afraid to dance with me, and we danced all night.
The next day was Christmas Eve. When I woke up, I texted Macon a photo of me still wearing my red dress because I’d crashed in it, and he FaceTimed me immediately.
“If you need help with the zipper, I can be there in nine hours.”
“The wedding was very them and very fun,” I said. “And I am very tired.”
His face fell with regret. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I made the wrong decision. I should have been there.”
“You had to make the decision quickly. We’d only just gotten together,” I said, but my heart squeezed because I wished he’d been there, too.
He still looked upset.
“If it makes you feel better, you would have hated the reception,” I said.
“I like your sister. I like Jess.”
His serious earnestness made me smile. “They like you, too. And you’ll have plenty of time to hang out with them in the future.”
Riley and Jess spent their last two days together visiting family, but they were never apart.
I thought about how if it had been Macon and me, we would have told everybody else to fuck off, party’s over.
But they glowed with happiness. They spent Christmas Eve with us and Christmas Day at the hotel where Jess’s family was staying. This left me alone with my parents.
“I like that we don’t have to share you with Cory’s family this year,” my mom said, looping an arm around me.
“Ha,” I said.
“Maybe you’ll bring Macon home next December?”
And it occurred to me that I did want to be home next December—in Ridgetop.
Cory’s oldest brother had stopped coming to their family Christmases after his wife had given birth to their first child, and Cory and I had fallen into the belief that this was the way of things.
That the holidays were meant to be shared with your family until you created your own.
It wasn’t a bad benchmark, necessarily, but it did exclude the people who didn’t want children but still desired traditions of their own, away from their parents and siblings.
Suddenly it was clear to me that I had been feeling this way for years, that I had been shackled to a tradition I had outgrown. This wasn’t where I wanted to be.
It explained why I had felt such dread before coming here. It wasn’t just about leaving Macon and my store behind. It was about leaving my family and my home during the holidays.
I tried to show my parents what I was missing. Macon was at his mother’s house, so we FaceTimed with them. Everyone was self-conscious and overly mannered, but the call was also nice. I hoped to be on the other side of the screen the next year.
And then it was finally time to go home.
It was surreal seeing Cory’s car pull up in front my parents’ house like it had done so many times before.
He got out to say hello, and although it was awkward, it was less so than I’d imagined.
Instead of the usual hugs, he waved to my mom and shook my dad’s hand.
He inquired about the wedding and showed the proper enthusiasm for their anecdotes and the photos my mom shared with him on her phone.
Then he regaled them with a story of his middle brother roughhousing him into a palm tree and accidentally bloodying his face against its trunk seconds before their annual family photo.
He took off his glasses to flaunt the damage and then shared the picture, to my parents’ polite disbelief.
In it, Cory’s face looked like a crime scene, and everybody was cracking up, his mother most of all.
I appreciated Cory’s family but felt relieved that I would never have to live with any of them.
I wondered if quiet Macon and his quiet mother (no need to disclose the agoraphobia yet) had risen another rung in my parents’ minds.
“I’m glad you two are still friends,” my mom said to Cory and me, and the awkwardness returned.
We said goodbye, and he carried my suitcase to his car.
He didn’t have to do that anymore, but I doubted he did it because my parents were there.
It was just who he was. The smell inside his car was uncanny, familiar yet from a past that already felt very distant.
My parents were still watching, so we were stiff with each other until we were out of sight.
Cory exhaled. “Oh my God. That was weird, right?”
The sound of his laughter loosened me. “ So weird.”
“I didn’t know if they’d want to talk to me.”
“Of course they did. They’ve always liked you.”
“Your dad had more of a vibe than your mom. I don’t think he was excited to see me.”
“I think he was just confused and didn’t know how to act. Thanks for driving me. I know it’s weird”—there was that word again—“but I appreciate it.”
“Glad for the company. What happened to your car? Did the engine finally die?”
“Yeah. I’ve been carless since summer, but it’s not normally a problem since I live close to the store.”
“What about everything else? Groceries and going out? Are you ridesharing?”
“Oh no. My—” I broke off. My boyfriend has a car contained a crucial piece of information that I hadn’t told him yet. This wouldn’t have mattered if the boyfriend were anybody other than Macon.
He didn’t miss the implication, though. His grin spread into his voice. “Your what ?”
“My boyfriend has a car.”
Cory hollered and honked the horn with glee.
I shoved his hands away from it. “Okay, okay.”
“What’s his name, how did you meet?” He glanced over and saw my reluctance. “Oh my God. This is going to be good, isn’t it? Please tell me it’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not, it’s just…” I swallowed. “It’s Macon.”
The mirth slid from his face. As he processed the information, his expression turned incredulous before it transformed again into righteousness. “I knew it. I fucking knew it!”
“Okay.” I gritted my teeth. “Calm down.”
“Oh man. Macon.”
“You never did like him.”
Cory laughed with outrage, but he also seemed to find the situation hilarious. “Yeah, because he clearly had a thing for you. And you clearly liked him back!”
“He was my friend! We were only ever friends.”
“Yeah, no.” He shook his head, accusingly but jokingly. “It was the way you talked about him. I could see it. I knew.”
“Well, I didn’t know.”
He laughed again as he yelled, “How could you not know?”
I shrugged helplessly. It was true that I hadn’t been aware. But I also sort of had, and it didn’t feel kind to admit that part to him.
“Fuck,” he said. “Macon Nowakowski.”
I grinned, ready to break his brain again. “We live together.”
“ What ? Since when?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“When did you get together? Did you hook up last winter when we…?” His face screwed up. “Never mind. It’s still weird! I’m not sure I want to know.”
“No,” I said. “It only happened last month.”
“AND YOU ALREADY MOVED IN TOGETHER?”
It made us laugh so hard we both cried.
“I’m not sure how to process any of this,” he said.
“It’s okay. It’s still new to me, too.”
A thought occurred to him. “Wait. Does he know I’m driving you home?”
“Of course he does.”
“And he’s not, like, worried about it?”
I rolled my eyes. “No. He’s an adult.”
“I know he is. Damn it.” We cracked up again before he added slyly, “My girlfriend knows I’m driving you home, too.”
“Oh my God. You have been waiting to drop that.”
He pounded on his steering wheel. “I have!”
“Is it the woman from earlier this year?”
“It is. She’s an adult, too,” he bragged.