Chapter Thirty
I slide a thrift-store-bought orange dress over my head and adjust the ties on the shoulders so they lie like perfect little bows. I slip on a pair of beige strappy sandals and brush my hair into place. I smear some pink blush over my cheeks and roll Sonya’s perfume across my wrists.
I may not actually be put-together, but I certainly can look it. At least enough to face the Chases.
You can do this.
I flop down on the bed, careful not to get any makeup on the white pillows, and text Henry.
Ready for that drink?
Blue dots appear on my screen as he texts back.
Just got back from the beach. Let me shower quick. Five minutes.
I close my eyes, head against the pillow, and try to center myself, but my stomach is twisted in knots so tight I can hardly breathe. I haven’t been able to eat any food all day in anticipation of this night, and I feel lightheaded and woozy.
A knock at the door tugs me from my mind, and I roll out of bed to answer. Henry’s hair is damp and disheveled and his cheeks are pink from the sun. He’s wearing a light green button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of dark blue fitted pants. He smells divine, like coconuts and salt.
“Hi,” I say, suddenly shy around him.
“Hi,” he says, stilled by the door, not moving toward me.
“You’re, like, super-hot. Did you know that?”
“Look who’s talking.” He smiles at me and my heart jumps.
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me slow. I go limp in his arms, wanting to pull him closer, but my head is full of buzzing bees. I wrap my arms around his waist, feeling the warmth of his body recharge me.
He tucks my head under his chin. “It’s going to be hard not to act like I’m crazy about you tonight,” he whispers as he tightens his grip around my shoulders.
Me too , I think.
And then Sam’s eyes flash through my mind. His big, soulful eyes. Suddenly it feels like I’m choking. Suffocating. Like the walls of this hotel are collapsing in on me, and I’m powerless to move.
I pull away from Henry quickly, brushing my hands down the front of my dress, hoping it didn’t wrinkle while we were pressed together.
“Shall we?” I say as I grab my key card and purse.
Henry guides me by the small of my back into the elevator. I look around to make sure the hall is empty. Satisfied that we’re alone, I grab his hand and hold it the whole way down.
The elevator doors open into the lobby and we make our way to the hotel bar. I take a seat on a high-top stool, swinging my legs above the floor. He gets a beer for himself and a rosé for me, which we sip silently as gentle music wafts over the veranda.
“So…” My stomach boils with nerves. I take a breath. “What’s our story?”
“What do you mean?” he asks as he inspects a cactus bloom on a succulent on the bar. This place is full of them.
“I mean, like…how did we meet? How do we know each other? For the Chases.”
He folds his hands in his lap and purses his mouth. “What’s wrong with the truth?”
“We can’t exactly tell them how we really met,” I say, my cheeks getting hot remembering that awful night. How Henry was asked to go out with me. How I puked my guts out and spilled wine everywhere. “How about we met at work. You temp at the same place I do and we became fast friends after a couple of shifts.”
He frowns. “I can’t even be honest about who I am now? What I do?”
“Don’t think about it like that,” I say. “You’re still you, just slightly different. We don’t have to tell them about the Passion Project or anything, because that’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Since when is it embarrassing?” He crinkles his brow, looking distraught. “That’s kind of important to this entire summer,” he says. “Don’t you think?”
I tap a fingernail on the stem of my glass. “I just want to be on the same page, that’s all.”
“If you wanted us to be on the same page, you’d have told me you wanted to hide our relationship from the beginning,” he says, tearing at the edge of a bar napkin.
“I thought you weren’t mad,” I say, turning toward him.
“I’m not,” he insists. “I’m just feeling a bit jerked around.”
I open my mouth to say something, but I come up short. The pit in my stomach grows, threatening to drag me under. I turn back to my glass of wine, tapping at the stem again.
“I’m sorry,” he says, scratching his chin. “I’m sorry. I know this weekend is hard on you and I don’t want to make it harder. I’ll play along, okay? We met at work. No Passion Project talk. I’m fine with that.”
I close my eyes, trying to banish every dark thought creeping into my brain. Thoughts about how Henry deserves someone better. Someone who wouldn’t put him through this.
He taps my ankle under the bar, a subtle touch that no one besides Henry or I would notice. “It’s going to be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
Henry’s optimism never wavers, and it feels a bit naive.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to seem convinced. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Good,” he says, nudging me on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Bennet!” a voice booms from behind me. I hop out of my seat as quickly as I can as a big barrel of a man heads toward us.
“Theo!”
“Where have you been hiding?” Theo’s muscular arms wrap me in a big bear hug before turning his attention to Henry. “And you must be Henry.”
“Yeah, I’m Bennet’s—”
“Friend,” I spit.
“Thank you for letting me crash your wedding.” Henry eyes me as he shakes hands with Theo, but it’s only for a moment. Then his attention is fully back with Theo. “This place is gorgeous.”
“Alexandra picked it out. The woman’s got great taste. She’s going to flip out when she sees you, Bennet.”
Is flip out a good thing or a bad thing?
“I’m excited for her!” I try to sound as peppy as I possibly can, hiding my panic. “And you. I’m excited for both of you! To get married! Yay!”
Henry chuckles a bit beside me, no doubt an endearing poke at my lack of social skills, but it doesn’t put me at ease like his teasing normally does. I take a step away from him.
“How did you meet?” Henry says, noticing my retreat. “You and…um…Alexandra?”
Theo beams, hearts practically flying out of his eyeballs. “Alexandra was buying art for one of my clients. I deal with musicians mostly, and this one woman couldn’t find the perfect piece for her living room. Alexandra was just an intern at the time, but she swooped in with this portrait of a butterfly stamped in this purple fabric, completely on a whim. My client fell in love with it. So much that she made it the cover of her new album, actually.”
I know the album cover immediately. A black butterfly stamped over purple waves of velvet with Pollock-esque splatters of red paint on top. I knew Theo’s clients were big, but this particular pop princess is huge. That album cover is everywhere. A bit of pride wells up in my chest for Andy.
“Anyway, my client invited us both to her housewarming party out in Calabasas. As soon as I saw her…I knew.” Theo laughs, the sound like tambourines. “You know the effect Alexandra has on people, right, Bennet?”
I smile. “She sparkles.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Henry says, beaming.
“The party should be starting soon.” Theo checks his watch. “Oh, and the open bar starts in five minutes. We’ll see you over there, right?”
“Yeah.” I swallow down a huge gulp of wine and also the feeling of dread pooling in my stomach. “Congratulations again!” I call after him as he speed-walks toward the patio.
My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my fingertips as I adjust the straps on my dress.
“Breathe,” Henry assures me. “We’ve got this.”
The bartender returns his card and a hotel employee ushers us to the patio for the reception.
Time to face the music.
···
The patio is on the backside of the hotel overlooking the ocean. The dim crashing of waves on sand fills the air with a salty mist. Lights hang like weeping willows from the wooden beams overhead. The breeze is sweet and warm and gently blows Henry’s hair off his forehead. We stand at a table by the edge of the patio so that we can look out over the ocean.
A cocktail waiter offers us a tray of coconut shrimp and I grab two. The irony that I’m usually the one passing out shrimp is not lost on me.
With not one, but two shrimp tails hanging out of my mouth, I finally see her. She’s wearing a clean white strapless jumpsuit with delicate feathers floating along the neckline. Her crimson hair bounces as she glides across the patio to greet her guests.
I spit the shrimp tails into a cocktail napkin.
Henry leans back on his heels. “Is that her?”
“Yeah.” I swallow. At one point, that woman was one of the most important people in my life. Now…practically a stranger.
I check my pulse with my fingers against my neck. It’s racing. “Should we go say hi? Or should we wait for her to come here? Or should we hide in the bathroom?”
“Let’s wait for her,” Henry says, squeezing my wrist. “She’s the bride, everyone will be shoving through the crowd to talk to her.”
I jerk my hand away, trying to be discreet. Henry seems to have already forgotten we’re not dating .
I follow her with my eyes, heart thumping, throat constricting. When she reaches Theo, he breaks off a conversation with his brother to kiss her. They kiss like the longest they’ve ever been apart was the amount of time Theo spent talking to Henry and me earlier. He whispers something in her ear and then points to me, smiling.
When she looks at me, her expression is stony. She waves from across the room, a tiny delicate wave.
“She’s waving,” Henry says.
“I can’t move.”
“Go say hi to her,” he whispers.
In a flash, Andy turns toward Theo and laughs, presumably at something he just said. Her attention on me was fleeting, like I’m a fly to bat away. Butterflies don’t bother with gnats, do they? Not when the gnat flew away after the butterfly’s brother died. She doesn’t want me here, otherwise wouldn’t she have come say hi? Wouldn’t she do more than wave?
“I have to go,” I mumble. I can’t be here.
I crumple my cocktail napkin into a ball and nudge my way through the crowd back into the hotel lobby. I don’t look back to see if Henry is following me.
In the bathroom, I splash cold water on my wrists. I take a deep breath, making eye contact with my reflection. I wasn’t in this position too long ago at L’italiano, yet so much has changed. I’ve changed. But, being here at this wedding…I feel exactly like that girl on the bathroom floor of a restaurant, puking her guts out.
“Bennet?” A twinkly voice says my name as the bathroom door cracks open.
Andy steps inside, her white heels clacking on the tile.
I whip around to face her, my cheeks and chest hot from the stress. “Andy.” Looking at her feels like looking at a memory. At once, I’m transported to her dorm, a pencil eraser pressed to her lip as she studied for an art history final. I was reading a book I don’t remember while sipping chamomile tea from a dining hall mug.
You know what? she said, turning toward me. You should meet my brother, Sam.
I blink, staring at her as the faucet runs. She’s slightly older yet entirely different. All that’s been broken between us, all that’s been lost, hangs in the air like laundry clipped to a line.
“Why did you run out?” she says, playing with her engagement ring.
I turn the faucet off. “Sorry.” I gesture to the stalls. “I had to pee.”
“Oh,” Andy replies.
“I’ll be out soon.” I grab some paper towels from the dispenser. “You should be outside with your guests.”
“You’re my guest too,” she says. Her eyes are glassy and blue as the ocean.
“I, um…” I toss the paper towels into the trash and turn to face her. “I don’t know what to say.”
She frowns, still twisting her ring around her finger. “This is weird.”
“So weird.” I pinch the fabric of my dress, feeling the cool cotton against my skin.
“You didn’t really have to pee, did you?”
I shake my head, my nose stinging. “No.”
To this, she laughs, despite the awkwardness. “How have you been?”
“Shitty. You?”
She wipes her nose. “Shitty. And good.”
I nod, swallowing the knot in my throat. “That’s good.”
She looks down at her perfectly clean shoes. “I know you said your date is just a friend…but when I saw you standing there with him…for a second, I swore it was Sam.” I’m surprised to see a tear rolling down her cheek as she looks up at me again. “I’m so used to seeing you with him. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
My throat stings, and I try to breathe through it. “I shouldn’t have brought a guy. Even just a friend.”
She shakes her head, glancing at the floor. “It’s just hard. Not having him here. I keep looking for him.”
“I hope me being here…I hope it doesn’t make things harder for you,” I say.
“Of course not,” she says, wiping the corner of her eye. “I’m glad you came. You’ll always remind my family of Sam.”
I’m not here out of pity. I’m here because I remind them of Sam. Because I’m their closest connection to him. If there was any question as to whether or not I should hide my relationship with Henry, it’s crystal-clear now. They don’t need me to be Bennet with a new boyfriend. They need me to be Sam’s Bennet. At least for this weekend.
I can do that.
“I always thought I’d be at your wedding with him,” I say.
“Me too.” She steps forward, grabbing my hand. “Me too.”
I swallow my tears, gathering myself. “Sorry for crying before anything even happened,” I say. “You haven’t even put your wedding dress on yet.”
“Weddings make people cry,” she says. “It’s okay. We can talk about it after.”
I dab my cheek with a paper towel and take a deep breath. “Should we go back to the party?”
She nods, and I watch her transform back into sparkly Andy before my eyes. Her cheeks are dry and perfect, and her mascara didn’t even run. She grabs my hand. “Let’s go before they do the toast without us.”
We enter the patio hand in hand, like the sisters we might’ve been. I spot Henry at our table, still standing there, abandoned.
“That’s your friend, right?” Andy says, leading us toward him. “I want to meet him.”
I gulp as we approach him.
“Alexandra Chase, this is my friend Henry,” I say when we get to the table. “Henry, Andy.”
His forehead creases as he reaches out to Andy. “Nice to meet you, Andy. You look beautiful.” He shakes her hand. “This place is amazing. I can tell you put a lot of thought into it.”
Andy laughs. “I like him already.”
Henry leans against the railing, being as friendly and charming as ever. “It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.”
“If you’ve got Bennet’s stamp of approval, you’ve got mine.” Andy pats him on the arm. “It’s hard to crack her.”
“What?” I let go of her hand and cross my arms.
“You made the Chases work hard,” she jokes.
“I loved you all from, like, the moment I met you,” I say.
Andy raises an eyebrow. “I thought you hated me at first. Sam too.”
“Me too,” Henry agrees. “She’s not the best with first impressions…but in a good way, I think.”
“I object to that,” I say, shooting daggers at him with my eyes. “I wasn’t trying to impress you.”
“Yeah,” he snorts. “Believe me, I know.” He turns to Andy. “When we met, Bennet got way too drunk and puked in the bathroom instead of going on a date with me.” He laughs to himself at the memory. “Definitely thought she hated me after that.”
“Henry.” I snap my head toward him, my heart thumping.
“What?” he says, squinting at me, then turns back to Andy. “Took all summer to win her over.”
“Oh,” Andy says. “You two are dating?”
Henry’s eyes widen, realizing his mistake. Not only did he let it slip that we went on a date, he also told my ex–best friend I’m trying to act normal in front of about one of the most embarrassing nights of my life when I explicitly asked him not to.
He turns to me, his mouth agape, but nothing comes out.
“No,” I cut in. “No. We’re not dating. I mean, I guess we went on one date, but I…That’s how we met, but…” I turn to Henry, whose face is turning red. “But we’re just friends,” I stammer.
Henry shakes his head, pressing his eyes closed. The skin behind his ears starts to turn red. “We’re not together…” he says, swallowing back his embarrassment. “That night was a mistake. It didn’t mean anything to her. It’s not like that between us.”
“Long story short,” I bluster, “we went on a date, but I realized I wasn’t ready to move on from Sam.” It’s the truth. That is what happened.
“You can be honest with me,” Andy says. “You know that, right?” Her expression is hard to read, but I know she’s thinking about Sam.
I nod. “Of course. Yes.”
She grabs my wrist. “I just want you to be happy,” she says, her eyes watering again.
“I know,” I say. I can’t make this woman cry at her wedding. Not when I’ve already caused her so many tears. “If I was with someone, I’d tell you,” I say. “But I’m not. And that’s the truth.”
Henry stills beside me. I can’t look at him.
“Okay.” Andy squeezes my wrist and smiles before letting go. “Have you seen my parents yet?” she asks.
A cement brick drops in my stomach. I shake my head no.
“Mom! Dad!” She beckons across the crowd to Mr. and Mrs. Chase. “Bennet’s here!”
Mrs. Chase makes a beeline for our table, squealing. Her hair is trimmed to a white bob, and she’s wearing huge green seashell earrings that swing as she walks. She’s wrapped in a paisley shawl with long black tassels over her simple black dress. Mr. Chase isn’t far behind wearing a camel-colored suit he’s probably had since the seventies.
“Our third baby,” Mrs. Chase sings into my ear as she hugs me. “How are you doing, sugar?”
“I’m good. I’m okay.” The air leaves my body.
She releases me, but keeps her hands on my shoulders. “Oh, my love.” She pulls me into another hug, soft and warm. “We’re so happy you’re here.”
“Me too,” I say into her cheek.
She lets me go, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear as she spots Henry. “Is this your boyfriend?”
Static fills my ears and my pulse starts to throb. “No, Henry’s just a friend.”
Be Sam’s Bennet.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Chase.” Henry shakes her hand, his face still pink from the embarrassment earlier.
“Please, call me Laura.” Her voice booms louder than the din of the crowd. “And the silent one back there is Jon. My husband.”
“Pleasure.” Henry takes a deep breath after greeting the parents. “I’m, uh…” He clenches his jaw. “I’m going to go grab a drink.”
“Good idea,” I snip. Henry gives me a tired and disappointed look. He’s tense as he walks toward the bar.
Mrs. Chase looks me up and down. Her lips tremble into a smile. “We’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too.” My hands are sweaty—I ball them into fists. “More than you know.”
Her eyes go misty. Sam’s eyes. She tilts her head, studying me, placing a hand on my cheek. “I feel him when I look at you.”
Be Sam’s Bennet.
Mrs. Chase. Sam’s mom, here in front of me. How can I express what she means to me? How can I express the guilt I feel? “I feel him too. Everywhere.”
She buries my body into an embrace that’s just like home, covered in her familiar scent. The scent Sam would bring back with him from Christmas break.
My muscles shake as I squeeze her. This is the person I need to be for them. And it’s who I should still be. Who I would still be if Henry never came around.
She lets me go and wipes a tear from my eye. “I know,” she says. “It’ll take a long time to heal.”
Part of me knows I’ve been healing this whole time. But part of me wants to take a knife to the stitches and pop them open. Mrs. Chase looks up at me with Sam’s eyes, pulling me in like a gravitational weight. Her heartstrings pulling on mine.
“I hope you know how much Sam still means to me,” I say. “He’s the love of my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving him. With him I was the best version of myself. He’s the only person who has ever really seen me. Sometimes I feel like…like I’ll never know love like that again. Even if I’m with someone else, I’ll never feel that way again. Never.”
Right as the words leave my mouth, I spot Henry in the corner of my eye, holding a fresh glass of wine for me. He freezes; his face looks pale.
My stomach sinks and all the blood in my body goes cold. I feel my face flush as a tear spills down Mrs. Chase’s cheek. “Sugar,” she says, brushing a hair from my forehead. “We all love you, I hope you know that. Always will.”
I breathe a shallow breath as she shakes herself out of it. “But this is a party.” She sniffles and grabs a napkin from a cocktail waiter. “We don’t need to get emotional yet, right?”
“You’re right.” I clear my throat, noticing Henry retreat to another corner of the party. “Tell me about your trip to Alaska.”
I keep the conversation going for as long as I can. Luckily, it’s easy with Mrs. Chase. She’s such a dynamic woman, telling stories and jokes from her travels. She’s always been like this, adventurous. She and Mr. Chase started traveling when Sam and Andy were in college, and they’re well on their way to spending time on every continent. While she recounts an ice-fishing excursion, I scan the room for Henry.
After a few minutes, I excuse myself from the conversation and search for him at the bar. The sun has completely set by now, making the patio glitter with the lanterns burning against the night sky. Every party guest is speckled with tiny spots of firefly-like freckles. It’s beautiful, but makes finding Henry difficult.
I check inside the hotel lobby. I peek my head into the men’s bathroom. I go back to the patio and nudge my way through the crowd hoping to run into him. I scan the beach. The cool shores are empty except for one lonely person with his toes in the water. A lonely person I know.
I kick off my shoes and carry them by the straps as I walk through the sand. He doesn’t turn to face me when I reach the shore, he just stares off into the water. We stand shoulder to shoulder, gazing at the black horizon.
He takes a deep breath, blowing it out his lips. “Hey.”
I feel the cool water rush between my toes and up to my ankles. “Hey.”
“Did you mean that?” he asks, his tone even and low. “What you said to Sam’s mom?”
“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” I say, my heels digging farther into the wet sand.
He shakes his head and looks down at his feet. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
The salt spray of the ocean mists my shins and I shiver. “Yes. And no. It’s confusing. I mean, I’ll always love him, but with you…” I let my voice trail off.
He tucks his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “I’m starting to think I was right, in the bathroom at that party.”
“What does that mean?” My voice cracks slightly at the end.
“That you’re not ready. I’m not sure you will be for a while. I mean, I thought you were, but then we came here. You hid me from the people you care about, and you only invited me here to be charming. You said so yourself. And then to hear that you’ll never love anyone again…”
“What was I supposed to do?” I turn to him. “You outed us in the first three seconds. I had to do damage control.”
He almost laughs at this, and then shakes his head. “I’m really sorry I messed that up, okay? I didn’t mean to. But you didn’t exactly give me enough time to prepare for lying about our entire relationship.”
“It’s not that hard,” I say, gritting my teeth. “You did lie to me for months, remember?”
His expression gets very stern. Serious. “I don’t believe you’re still mad about that, Bennet,” he says, turning toward the ocean again. “I just think you want to be mad about something. I think you want to be miserable because you’re afraid to be happy.”
“That’s unfair,” I say, my throat tightening. “I don’t want to be miserable.”
He takes a frustrated breath. “Think about this weekend,” he says. “You built up this entire lie about our relationship for no reason. They are lovely people. They want you to be happy. But you’d rather complicate things.”
“You don’t know them,” I say. “You don’t know the history.”
“All I know is what I see. And what I see is a group of people who love you and want the best for you. You are the one who wants to be restricted by the past. Not them.”
My heart starts to race and my fingertips buzz. “I’ve had such a shitty few years, Henry,” I say, heat rising up my chest. “If I want to be miserable, that’s my problem.”
“Well, it’s also my problem because you’re in a relationship with me,” he says.
“I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship!” I throw at him, my ears ringing.
“Why did you agree to be with me, then?” he says. “Why do any of this?”
“Because you pushed me,” I say, anger clouding my decision making.
“What? I didn’t push you,” he says, confusion in his eyes.
“Did I not tell you multiple times that I needed patience?”
He folds his arms around him. “Yeah, but—”
“But nothing,” I say.
He presses his fingers to his forehead. “If I pushed you, Bennet, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. And I definitely don’t want to continue to push you into being with me if you don’t want to be. I want to make you happy, and I think that I do. But sometimes it feels like you won’t let me in all the way.”
He pauses. All I hear is the sound of the ocean, crashing up against us over and over again. He looks away for a moment, back to the glow of the party on the patio. Then he bows his head, almost in defeat.
“You know…” He frowns. “It took me being here to realize it. It took me seeing all this to really understand you. And I really think you meant it,” he says, his voice shaky. “I think you meant what you said to Sam’s mom. That you don’t want to move on.” The breeze from the water sends a chill through my bones as he steps away from me. “And if that’s the case, I don’t know where that leaves us.”
I want to scream. I want to run into the ocean and dunk my head under and wash up on a shore where no one knows me. I want to cry. I want to hit something with a baseball bat. I want Sam. I want Henry. I want all of this to stop.
Instead of any of that, I take a deep breath and try to shove all my feelings into an airtight box. “This is who I am,” I say. “This is what I deal with. And I’ve been pretty clear about it from the beginning. Maybe you weren’t listening.”
He looks at me in a way I’ve never seen from him. And I realize it’s because he’s crying. His eyes are shimmering in the night air and his lip is shaking.
“I’ll keep up the act through the end of the wedding,” he says, his voice wavering. “Just so they don’t ask questions. But after that…” He swallows, his eyes flicking from me to the rest of the party. When his attention is back on me, he looks more resolute. More sure. “When we get home, I think…”
The waves fizzle in front of us, white foam slowly disappearing back into the earth. Henry and I stand like statues, letting the water spray us and dampen our clothes. He is silent, the kind of silence so loud it pierces your eardrums.
“I don’t want to be with someone who will never let herself love me back fully. We’ve had fun this summer, and I’ve loved every second of it. But you’re not always there with me. I’ve sensed it, and I think deep down you know it’s true too. You deserve to be happy, Bennet, but so do I,” he says.
I can’t even look at him, at the hurt in his eyes. I feel grief in my body, spreading out into my vision. Grief that has lived with me since the day Sam died. Grief that will always be here, suffocating me, making me make the people around me miserable. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m not ever going to be happy. Maybe this is who I’m supposed to be.
“I know,” I say, folding my arms around my stomach.
“Do you? Love me?” he asks, not looking at me.
I stand, silent, unsure of everything. Beyond how I feel, I know that Henry deserves full love, unabridged. Someone who won’t be haunted by ghosts, by her own mind. Someone who is ready to jump in feet-first at a moment’s notice. I want that for him. I want him to find that girl.
When I finally look at him, I’m shocked that he doesn’t seem mad or even sad. He looks at me with one thing he never has: pity .
“I think that’s my answer,” he whispers.
My skirt ripples around my hips as a gust of wind blows by. “You should go back to the party,” I say, dabbing my eyes. “They’ll be wondering where we are. I need a minute, but I’ll be back there soon.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“Okay,” I say. “See you out there.”
He scratches behind his neck. “See you out there.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as he walks away. Music swirls in the air and the scent of hors d’oeuvres mixes with the salt of the ocean. I catch the lilt of Mrs. Chase’s laugh, the cadence of Andy’s speech, over the crowd. I hear the sound of Henry’s voice and then the chime of Theo’s laugh.
I take a deep breath, swallowing back the feeling that I’m losing the best thing in my life, and I head back to the party.