Chapter Sixteen #3
“And of course, we’re all enjoying this summer evening in Vermont because the woman in that photograph was Rose.
Landon was head over heels for her in a way that should have alarmed me—and Rose, too, if I’m being honest. Not a single one of Landon’s many, many brain cells understood what it meant to ‘play it cool’ where Rose was concerned.
The man pulled her chair out for her in the dining hall like they were out to dinner at a five-star restaurant.
He saved every program from every play she ever did, then pasted them into scrapbook ‘for posterity.’ He laughed way too hard at her jokes in all the wrong places, recounting them to me when she wasn’t even there.
And, Rose—I’m sorry if I’m the first to tell you, but you’re not a born comic.
“The only part of their budding romance in which Landon achieved a modicum of success in keeping his jets cooled was his first ‘I love you.’ I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that after their first few weeks together, those three words could have slipped out, inadvertently, at any moment.
And thank goodness he had the good sense to come to me for advice.
I remember the evening was cool and rainy, leaves sliding off the trees and turning campus walkways into booby traps.
I remember I offered him a gin and tonic to ease the pain of the fall he’d taken on the way to my dorm room.
I don’t remember the particulars of the advice I gave, but knowing me, it was thoughtful—worth at least a therapist’s co-pay—and an enormous part of the reason we’re all sitting here in the first place, on this sweltering summer night in Vermont.
“I am so glad my friend waited until just the right moment to cement his connection with Rose, or else I may never have had the chance to see what it was about her that had cast such a spell. Rose is everything I saw in that black-and-white photograph, and one thousand times more. She is a study in contradictions: gentle and wild, poised and undone, kind and exacting. She is in motion one moment, still the next. She has an eerie, hard-won magnetism. She is my friend, and the best possible partner I can imagine for critical, honest, unwavering Landon.”
Rose felt Landon tense up behind her, a telltale sign he was fighting hard to hold in the emotion Conor’s words had surfaced. Rose let the happy tears come freely.
“On that spring day in the photography studio, I was alone in my opinion that Landon had done something truly spectacular. Today, I’m standing in a room full of people who know what I said to be true.
Landon has done something truly spectacular.
Remarkable, really. The most incredible thing we humans can do.
It’s in the air here, tonight. It is indefinable, irreducible, and bigger than all of us.
We are lucky to be part of it. So please,” he said, hoisting his champagne glass high, “raise a glass to Landon and Rose!”
Rose did not wait for the toast to conclude. She leaped from their sweetheart table, skirting chairs and raised glasses, and flung herself into the arms of Landon’s dearest friend. “What a gift,” she said. “How can I ever thank you?”
Conor squeezed her tight, then released her. “You’re the gift,” he said, “the two of you.” He nodded toward Landon, who’d just risen from their table and was making his way over. “You give me hope.”
Landon clapped his friend on the back and pulled him into a hug. “Couldn’t resist bringing up that failed photography gambit, huh?”
“You’re lucky you only gave me five minutes, otherwise I would have found a way to weave in that impossible mission you dragged me on, in search of a tie that might be able to say ‘I love you’ without the words actually coming out of your mouth.”
“I still maintain there’s a tie out there with those exact magical properties, and that the fabric could sense you were a nonbeliever.”
Then Poppy was there, materializing behind Rose and circling both arms around her waist. “I couldn’t help but notice my name wasn’t mentioned a single time in that speech, Conor,” she said, playfully as Poppy knew how.
“Again,” Conor said, “they only gave me five minutes. Otherwise, I would have allotted a healthy chunk of time to junior year spring break, when you and Rose fell asleep in the back of the car on the eighteen-hour drive from Vermont to Florida—and only woke up to critique our driving.”
“I don’t think that would have been thematically relevant.”
“I would have found a way.”
Rose was positively sparkling, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.
She wanted the dancing to start up again so she had somewhere to release this precious joy, to have some outlet for it that wasn’t just the inadequate words that came out of her mouth.
“This is the best night of my life,” she said.
Landon leaped forward and dipped her, deep and low. Glasses clinked and they kissed, her loose curls sweeping the ground. “This is the best night of your life so far,” he said. “I’ll make sure the best keeps getting better.”
“You are so cheesy,” she said, still suspended in the air.
“And you’re stuck with me,” he said, with the goofiest, freest expression Rose had ever seen him wear.
“Till the end,” she added. “Until the very end.”