Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
NOW
AFTER THE WAY THINGS turned out at the market, I’m thankful the rest of the day was uneventful. Georgie even spared Jeremy one of her grilling sessions. I’m still confused about that. No one has ever been spared, so why now? Is it because he’s an actor? Maybe Lola introduced them before, or maybe Lola warned Georgie not to after everything that just happened. That seems more likely. Lola is one of the few people in the world Georgie actually listens to. I’ve never heard the full story, but from the little bit I’ve heard over the years, something went down their freshman year at SCAD, and Lola had no problem putting Georgie in her place.
Elizabeth’s legs rest across my lap underneath the fleece blanket Selena had tossed our way when we sat down. She sips on a glass of red wine—Pinot Noir, her favorite—and I swirl the last sip of whiskey in my glass, committing the scene to memory. On the way back from town, I decided if this was going to be my last year here, if this was truly our last hoorah, I was going to make the most of it.
Somewhere in between Selena telling us she’d be moving to Dallas at the beginning of the year and Lola announcing she decided to get back into producing for a special project with one of her old Hollywood friends Elizabeth had closed the gap between us. Her arms draped around my chest, still clutching her wine glass, as she laughed along to a story one of her friends told. A little while later, she moved to lay back against the couch, with her legs across my lap and her perfectly manicured left hand resting on my shoulder, occasionally playing with the hair at the base of my neck.
The other couples lounge in similar positions, minus Georgie and Noah. They had kept a small gap between them as they sipped on their hot apple cider—keeping up with Georgie’s no-alcohol stance this weekend. She slipped away quietly about ten minutes ago and has yet to surface to help the other girls reminisce not just about their times at Palm Valley but their years of friendship in general.
“Oh no,” Selena groans when Lola asks if she remembers that guy. How in the hell is she supposed to remember him by calling him “that guy?”
“You brought him in…2020, maybe? Yeah, it had to be! But he said he used to live here, so he kept trying to get in the way of our plans. And then”—Lola snickers—“he got sloppy drunk and told you he loved you.”
Selena tries to hide her cringe. “He wasn’t that bad.”
“He was pretty bad.”
“Tried to make a move on the bartender when you were in the bathroom, right after he told you he loved you,” Elizabeth adds.
“And when she rejected him, he started trying to sweet talk me even though Andrew was right there,” Lola says. Andrew was Lola’s ex-boyfriend, the man she had assumed she would settle down with, but in the end, he said he didn’t see a future with her (after three years of dating). “I think he said he loved all of us that night.”
“Me, included,” I say.
“Yep, same.” Noah chuckles.
Selena covers her face, trying to hide her giggle.
“Where did you meet this guy?” Elijah asks.
“We reconnected from school.”
“Oh! So, an arteest .” He gives the word extra emphasis.
“She was always a sucker for a painter,” Elizabeth says.
“It’s romantic,” the girls say in unison. Elizabeth and Lola imitate Selena at the same moment she defends herself.
“It is!” Selena demands.
“Are we talking about Selena’s infatuation with painters again?” Georgie asks when she returns to the pool house.
Elizabeth smirks behind her wine glass. “Lola was just recounting that one guy Sel brought who got sloppy drunk and started hitting on everyone.”
“Derek! From school, I remember him. Didn’t he used to call his mom ‘mommy?’”
Yes, yes, he did, and you want to know something? I could have gone the rest of my life without being reminded about that. We had been sitting around the fire out back at the Thompson house, just like this, when Derek’s phone rang. He was about to ignore the call until he saw who it was. “Hi, Mommy!” he answered enthusiastically and tromped off to find a quiet place to talk to her.
“He sounds like a real winner.” Jeremy snickers when Selena covers her face in embarrassment.
“That’s one way to put it,” I whisper, earning a playful glare from Elizabeth before we share a laugh.
“What an odd place to tell someone you love them,” Noah says. He crosses his arms and leans back onto the couch. “There were a lot of red flags, but that should’ve been the biggest.”
“Didn’t you date him for like two more months after that?” Lola asks, finishing the wine in her glass.
“Unfortunately.” It comes out mumbled, and Lola begs Selena to repeat it, much to Selena’s dismay. “Unfortunately, I didn’t see the red flags until it was too late.”
Part of me is curious; the other part doesn’t think I want to know what that means. When I glance at Elizabeth, she shakes her head, and that’s all the answer I need.
“Didn’t he break up with you before—”
“No!” Selena yells, interrupting Georgie. She points a tawny finger at her friend for extra emphasis. “No. I broke up with him.”
“Oh, right. That was Kyle, the one after.”
“And then we got together,” Elijah says. It’s simple and soft, but it’s sweet, especially the way he leans over, gripping her chin to kiss her.
“You didn’t tell her you loved her in a bar, right, Elijah?” Noah asks, earning a laugh from his wife.
“And then turn around and tell the bartender the same thing?” Jeremy adds, this time earning a laugh from all the guys, and Elijah’s face turns into a beet.
“Never,” Selena swoons, her dark brown hair falling over her shoulder as she smiles up at him. “It was completely out of nowhere, though.” Elijah protests, but she pushes back. “I walked into your apartment, and you just…blurted it out. Out of nowhere!”
“There’s more to it than that,” Elijah says and rolls his eyes, taking the final sip of his beer, and Selena quirks her thick brow in a manner that says she still doesn’t believe him. “It was a Saturday morning. You had just walked in from your yoga session and you brought back donuts from our favorite bakery by the studio. When you walked in, it put everything in place…You had turned my apartment into a home—our home—and seeing you in there felt right. I knew I had fallen in love with you. So yeah, maybe I just blurted it out, but I didn’t want to wait to tell you. I wanted you to know right then and there.”
Elijah pulls her to him again, pressing a soft kiss to her lips and then her temple before she settles back into his side.
I’m happy for them. Happy they were able to make it work. Selena isn’t the only one who has dealt with some bad relationships in the past. Elijah has had his fair share too. The girl he had just broken up with before our wedding had more than one screw loose if you know what I mean. Let’s just say there was a car involved when he broke up with her—do with that information what you will.
“Remember when you told me you loved me?” Georgie bats her eyelashes up at her husband, snuggling a little closer to him.
“I do,” he says with a small smile, but that’s his only reaction.
“Trust me, we all do.” Elizabeth shudders at the thought.
Yes, we do, unfortunately. Noah had never said he loved Georgie until the day he proposed. He popped the question on the beach outside his parents’ house, and needless to say, they spent the day locked away in their bedroom. The rest of us did our best to steer clear of that part of the house, including Selena, who ended up sleeping on the couch downstairs that night instead of in her room next to them.
“You guys are so dramatic.” Georgie scoffs.
“Tell that to my trauma,” Lola argues.
“Oh, Noah! Noah! Yes!” Selena imitates just some of what we heard that day if we dared enter the house.
“Right thereeeeee!” Lola and Elizabeth add before they fall into a fit of giggles. Georgie rolls her eyes before smiling at her husband, who stares off into the darkness of the sideyard.
“What about you two?” Elijah asks Jeremy. “Have you said it yet?”
“He said it pretty quick, actually,” Lola says, taking a sip of wine.
“Hey, when you know, you know.” Jeremy shrugs and pushes a strand of strawberry-blonde hair to the side so he can rub her back. “I won’t say it was love at first sight, but pretty damn close. And when I saw her with my daughter…that sealed the deal.”
“Don’t let her fool you, Jeremy. She called us not long after meeting you and said she was head over heels for you,” Selena says, earning a what the fuck look from Lola. “What was it you said, Lo? Oh right, ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life with that man.’” She adds a swoon-worthy sigh for extra dramatics.
“Oh really?” Jeremy’s brow arches, smirking at his girlfriend.
“When you know, you know, right?” Lola shrugs and smiles when he kisses her.
It makes me even more curious about what could have driven such a wedge between them amid the chaos of the stalker situation.
“How old is your daughter?” Elizabeth asks.
“Gabby is six. Her mother and I realized pretty quickly after we got married that we weren’t meant to be together. We’re far better as friends,” Jeremy says as Lola absentmindedly plays with his fingers, eventually lacing their hands together.
“Shay is a great mom, though,” she adds. “It’s nice to have a good co-parenting situation instead of the alternative.”
“You’re one of those super secret romantics, aren’t you, Jeremy?” Elijah says, pointing his finger toward the actor. “I can see it.”
Jeremy laughs in return. “I may have rented out her favorite restaurant with a violinist and a shit ton of roses for the occasion.”
“I knew it! You just have that vibe.”
“What about you two?” Jeremy asks me. “Surely, Mr. and Mrs. Perfect have a great story of how you knew you were in love.”
Elizabeth and I share a sheepish glance before Georgie answers for us. “Everyone knows their story. Well, I guess everyone but you, Jeremy.”
Lola rolls her eyes. “Josh and Liz have been together longer than all of us put together, and they’ll be together until the end of time.”
“Oh, we have not.” Elizabeth scoffs.
“Have so! You’ve been together for what, ten years at this point?”
“Ten years since I rescued her on the dance floor,” I say, smiling at Elizabeth—a real, genuine smile thinking of the memory. When she meets my stare, she offers nothing in return, her gaze unreadable.
“And seeing her standing there, in that light, you knew you’d just found the woman you’d marry one day,” Georgie quotes, and Elizabeth finally smiles, hearing the rehearsed story I’ve told many times over the years. “Yes, we know .”
“That’s not when I knew,” I say, but I never take my eyes off Elizabeth, whose face scrunches in confusion. “No, I mean, yeah, I think deep down maybe…but that wasn’t when I realized I was in love with her.”
Elizabeth rips her gaze from mine, staring into the fire, and takes a sip of her wine.
I take the opportunity to re-memorize everything about her—the two freckles on her left cheek; the way her cheeks flush from a combination of the wine and heat from the fire; the small scar (almost unnoticeable to anyone who wouldn’t know it’s there) on her neck just below her jaw from that time she begged Nina to pierce her ears because her parents wouldn’t let her; the soft, natural wave in her hair now that she keeps it short, tucked behind her ear; the reflection of the flame dancing in her eyes, still refusing to look at me; the way she clutches the ends of her long-sleeve in her left hand covering the scars of her past, and the right dangles her glass from the edge of the couch, swirling the red liquid absentmindedly. She’s beautiful. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, with a heart of gold and a soul to match—but sometimes, it gets buried deep to protect herself from any potential hurt.
“It was her birthday. We were at the house in Savannah, decorating for Christmas. She was supposed to be studying for finals, but she called and begged me to come down and help her decorate because you girls wanted to study first and decorate later. I told her she should be doing the same, but got in the car and drove down anyway. Got there around one in the morning, but it was worth it when the door swung open, and she had the biggest smile plastered on her face.”
I notice a slight tick upwards in the left corner of her mouth.
“I begged her to please let me get some sleep, and I promised we’d get up early and get started…Well, she held me to that, woke up at eight on the dot.”
My laugh is joined by the others.
“But, that night…She was finishing up the tree, singing along to ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,’ and I walked back from the kitchen and the sight…It took my breath away. This feeling came over me. It’s hard to explain, really, but when she turned and looked at me with that smile…I knew I’d never be able to go on without her. I didn’t want to. It’d be unbearable.”
I watch as her lips curl inward, chewing on my words, turning them over and over again in her mind.
“Part of me thinks, maybe, I fall in love with her every day. There’s something new every day that reminds me of why I want this. I’m blessed to have this beautiful, amazing woman by my side…And I can’t imagine the day I have to go on without her.”
The others are too busy swooning over my words to realize what I just said, but not her. Not Elizabeth. She heard me loud and clear. Even though she still refuses to look at me, I can see the tears brimming in her eyes and the way she bites her lip to hide the small quiver.
I clear my throat and the tears that have started to form in my own eyes. “I need another drink.”