26. Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus
26
POLIS CHRYSOCHOUS, CYPRUS
Now
A lex didn’t know the layout of the resort, but as soon as she saw the look on Paul’s face, she was on autopilot, in search of a discreet secondary location where they could speak privately. She walked to the far staircase off the terrace, taking them around the back of the property and toward the beach below. The luxurious hotel pool area was closed, even to their party, but there was a small, ornate garden where the grassy landscape of the resort ceded to the Mediterranean sand. There were stone benches, cypress trees, flowering bushes, and plenty of privacy from the raucous party above.
Still holding Paul’s hand, she sat them both down on a bench, buzzing cicadas forming a secondary symphony to the band on the terrace.
“What is going on?” she asked.
He turned to face her, tears still flowing freely, squeezing his eyes shut again as soon as she met his gaze. His whole body crumpled into a new sob, pitching forward into her chest.
“Oh, honey, no,” she said, wrapping her arms around her best friend, pulling him into her and kissing the crown of his head. “What happened?”
“My—” His voice hitched on his sobs, and he took a moment to clear his throat, composing himself. “My clothes for the wedding aren’t here.”
“Your tux?”
“It’s not a tux, but, yes. My outfit for the wedding is gone. It’s gone,” he reiterated, folding once again into open cries.
“Shh,” she said, patting his back as he cried. “It’s fine, it’ll be okay. It probably just got lost in shipping. We’ve been traveling a lot.”
At her words, he pulled back, shaking his head and wiping under his eyes.
“No,” he corrected. “I know it came. I’ve been working with a custom couturier in New York for months, and it was sent COD. I have photos and everything. It arrived yesterday, and now Guy says it’s gone.”
Alex took a beat to process the information.
“You think he’s lying to you?”
“I think he’s gaslighting me,” Paul said, sounding less heartbroken and more coolly certain. “Like he always does when I embarrass him.”
“And he’s embarrassed of your wedding outfit?”
“Yes. And he’s embarrassed of the way I talk, and my hobbies, and the shows I watch, and almost literally every other thing about me.”
She swallowed hard. “There’s nothing embarrassing about you, Paul,” she offered, knowing it would do nothing to counteract the constant stream of denigration from his partner.
“Thanks.”
“And I don’t know what you’re planning to do about tomorrow, but—”
“There’s nothing to do.” He sniffed hard, composing himself. “We’re obviously getting married.”
“Okay,” she started, tentatively, “but if for whatever reason you decide you want to rethink your next steps, we can have that conversation.”
He looked at her, eyes narrowing in a mix of denial and fending off tears. “I don’t want to call off the wedding. I want to know what to say to him.”
It was a ludicrous request, but it made a strange kind of sense. Paul had always been so effortlessly charming, so good with words, and that talent should surely have an application in a situation like this.
“I can’t give you that,” was all she replied.
“Come on,” he pleaded, sounding desperate. “Don’t make me regret telling you this, Lex.”
She felt a familiar frustration rise up within her, at this constant dynamic of being let in only enough to be worried but never enough to meaningfully help. “Well, maybe you should regret telling me, if the answer is to let him get away with it again.”
He blinked hard at her statement, composing himself before speaking again.
“You’re making him out to be a monster. You never see his good side.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t have a good—”
“There you are.”
Alex whipped around to the sound of the iron gate closing, Guy striding toward the two of them with a look of barely contained outrage. His crisp ivory suit seemed to reflect every bit of light available in the night sky, glowing with a bluish tint.
“Hi,” Paul said, straightening himself and folding his handkerchief. “I’ll be back up in a minute.”
“What happened now?” Guy asked, checking the time on his phone before slipping it back into his pocket. “And please do not tell me it’s about that stupid dress.”
“It’s a caftan,” Paul clarified, meekly.
“You are unbelievable,” Guy spat. “Do you know how many people are up there right now, wondering where you are? And now I’m spending yet another important event dealing with one of your melodramas. Your caftan got lost. I’m not having a fight about this.”
Alex had never seen the reality of their fights—or, what had been described by Paul as “their fights”—and she felt her heart sink into her stomach at the sight of it. She could feel the blows of Guy’s words landing on Paul, the horrible weight of them.
“Get up,” Guy insisted, blowing past Alex and roughly grabbing Paul by the arm. “I’m not doing this tonight.”
“ Don’t touch him ,” Alex shouted, surprising herself with the volume of her voice.
Paul looked over at her, shaking his head. Guy turned to face her, his expression full of disdain.
“Don’t get involved.” His voice had a booming finality that scared her.
“I’m already involved,” she said, feeling her hands shake at her sides and clenching them into fists. “And I’m not leaving here without Paul.”
“That’s funny, because you had no problem leaving the boat we paid for.”
She felt a hot flush of embarrassment at the reminder.
“That wasn’t her fault,” Paul pushed back, taking a deep breath and straightening his back. “And she was my guest.”
“Why don’t you marry her, then?” Guy sneered, shooting her a look of pure disdain. “You might as well, honestly.”
She looked between them, the truth snapping into place: of course Guy never liked her. He probably couldn’t stand that they dated first, that they were still so inseparable as friends, that she loved him for exactly who he was. Her stomach churned with indignation of her own she had no time to unpack.
“Leave him alone,” Alex said, reaching down to seek Paul’s hand and pulling him toward the gate. “I’m serious. I’m not going to let you treat him this way.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Guy moved toward them, looking at Paul head-on. “But you want to play a game of chicken? Because if you want to call off the wedding, you can go up there and tell all one hundred of our guests that you’re not getting married anymore because you can’t wear your fancy little dress.”
“I’m not calling off the wedding,” Paul answered, head down and shoulders slouched. “I just have to get something else to wear tomorrow.”
Alex fumed inside, seeing up close a cycle that must have played out countless times in private. Paul became unrecognizable, and Guy pushed him to the brink of humiliation, over and over. That he was comfortable doing this in front of other people spoke volumes.
“There’s a menswear shop in town. You have plenty of options.” Guy’s eyes darted up to the terrace, where his parents were talking with friends along the stone railing. “Now, I’m going to take care of our guests. Why don’t you compose yourself, maybe drink some water, and we can finish the evening like adults?”
With that, he breezed past them and walked out of the gate, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves and his collar as he moved. Alex turned to Paul, whose face was ashen but stoic, blinking hard and looking straight out at the sea.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked, reaching for his hand between them.
“I’m fine.” He cleared his throat, smoothing out the front of his tunic with his free hand. “I’ll be fine. Can we go to your room, though? I want to splash some cold water on my face.”
“Of course,” she said, wanting to ask a million other questions but afraid to upset him further. “And like I said, if I can do anything for you, you just say the word, okay? We can do whatever we need to.”
“Yep,” he answered in an eerily calm voice. “I appreciate that.”
Alex pushed open the door of her suite, ushering Paul in first and flicking on the light switch before kicking off her heels. Only once he was securely in the bathroom, the running faucet providing a little auditory privacy, did she realize her hands were still shaking. She walked to her nightstand and cracked open the large bottle of still water, willing herself to calm down as she poured them each a glass.
The discomfort she’d felt for years over Paul’s relationship—her innate knowledge that it stifled and shamed all of the things she most loved about her best friend—now felt insufficient, even naive. It wasn’t just a question of mismatched personalities, it was a question of verbal and emotional abuse, at minimum. How much Paul had hidden from her over the years, whether his complaints were just the tip of a much more sinister iceberg—none of it was clear. But it was clear that she had to do everything in her power to stop Paul from taking this next step. If they got married (let alone adopted a child, as Guy wanted), there might be nothing remaining of the Paul she so loved.
“Is it okay if I use one of your hand towels?” he asked, water still running.
“Use whatever you want,” Alex answered, walking toward him with his glass of water.
She watched him in the bathroom mirror as he shut off the faucet and gently patted his face dry, looking up at her in the reflection and offering her a half-hearted smile.
“I’m going to be fine,” he said, setting the towel down on the counter. “I shouldn’t have gotten so dramatic.”
“You weren’t being dramatic,” she corrected, extending her hand toward him.
He grabbed the glass, moving past her and back into the expansive bedroom. “Guy and his parents put so much work into this wedding, and I’m throwing a tantrum about a stupid caftan,” he said, his back still facing her as he walked.
Finally, he plopped himself down in the corner armchair near the writing desk, taking another sip of water before nodding his head for emphasis.
She remained where she stood, keeping a safe distance from him to let their respective emotions breathe. “Is that what you think happened down there?”
“Listen, babe, I love you, but I really don’t need a lecture right now.”
“I’m not lecturing you,” she said, feeling the emotion rise up in her throat. “I’m worried about you.” He averted his eyes, and she cleared her throat without thinking, which drew them back to her. “Do you think you don’t deserve love?”
She hadn’t intended to phrase it that way, but once it was out, she let the question linger.
“You have to be kidding me,” he replied, tilting his head slightly in exasperation.
“What?”
“Do I think I deserve love , coming from the girl who’s been denying herself the relationship she actually wants for the past ten years ? It’s a little much.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You know how hard it was. You were there .”
A pointed silence bloomed between them, and he shifted in his chair.
“You’re right,” he corrected himself. “I know the Danny stuff is complicated, but I’m just saying that we’re all doing our best. We’re all making compromises. I know I’m a lot to deal with, and overall, Guy is good to me. He’s good for me.”
“You think that was good for you?”
“We have our moments. And listen, you’ve done plenty of things over the years that I didn’t agree with.”
“Like going to Greece?”
Her heart became heavy with the memory of it: their roles reversed, him begging her to think clearly, her steadfastly refusing. Only now could she fully understand the pain he felt in that moment, the realization that their platonic love was not enough to outweigh her romantic suffering. She knitted her forehead in love and concern, and he pointedly looked away.
“Like going to Greece.” He sipped his water, eyes scanning the writing desk next to him. “For example.”
“And you’re right, Paul. I shouldn’t have left things the way I did. If I had listened to you, I might not have gotten myself into so much debt, or burned the bridge with NPR, or—”
“Hey,” he interrupted her, picking up an envelope on the desk. “You have a letter.”
“A letter?” she asked, heart slowing to a standstill.
In the chaos of the garden, she had forgotten about the moments preceding it, the intimate dance and Danial hurrying away at the sight of that photo. Immediately, her heart sank to her stomach with the realization of what he must have come upstairs to do. This was his goodbye letter.
“I know what that is, and I can’t read it.”
“What is it?” Paul asked, flipping the envelope over to examine it as she sat down on the edge of her bed, defeated.
“I ruined my chance with Danial with that stupid video. He slept with me—”
“He what?”
“Yes, I know, but–”
“ Where ?”
“In my hotel. In Corfu.”
“Hot.”
“I know.” She rolled her eyes, redirecting them. “But he’ll never actually be with me, and this is his very polite way of saying that.”
She winced at the thought of how he’d phrase it, the beautiful, diplomatic way he’d let her down easy. The thought of it—of never being with him again—was excruciating, but at least now she understood him well enough to respect his methodology. Even in matters like this, he was supremely reasonable.
“Anyway…” She cleared her throat. “We don’t have to talk about this right now. This is not about me.” She extended her hand, opening her palm to take the letter.
Across the room, he unfolded the hotel stationery, slowly shaking his head. “Umm, I don’t think that’s what this is.”
“What do you mean?”
His eyes scanned over the paper, lips mouthing the words as he read them, an intense and somewhat dire look overtaking his face.
“I think you want to read this,” he finally said, flicking his head up to look at her before returning to the note.
Her eyes squeezed shut, full of anxiety and fear. “I can’t. You can read it to me if you want, but I’m not touching that.”
“Are… Alex, are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Paul took a deep breath and cleared his throat. And when he spoke again, his voice had a mellifluous, delicate tone she had never heard him use, like he was reading poetry:
“My darling Alex,
“I hope that you’ll forgive me for the lateness of this letter—in truth, it should have arrived over ten years ago. Even the letter I brought on the boat never made it to you: I was nervous, and then we touched, and then we fought, and then I felt so stung by you that I withheld it in anger. I even convinced myself, the night I finally had you as I dreamed of for so many years, that we could never truly be together. The fear of your rejection was the only force stronger than my love. But then I remembered the extraordinary bravery you showed in writing me that letter years ago, and I thought, I can’t live with a version of myself who doesn’t have the same courage.
“To the Alex who wrote that letter to me—the letter I never acknowledged, the letter I ran from—I am more deeply sorry than you will ever know. There was never a moment I didn’t share your feelings, I was only blind enough to believe I was alone in them. So by the time you spoke, I was with another person for whom I did feel care and loyalty. I thought I was being honorable by staying with her, but I was also terrified. As you might remember, her father was and still is a very powerful man. At the time, he could have made or broken my future, and I’ve grown enough to admit that he is part of the reason I didn’t immediately run to you the way I wanted. This is incredible cowardice, but I was a very young man under enormous pressure to succeed and provide, and I put that before you. By the time I realized the extent of my mistake, you were already in Greece and had rightfully closed your heart to me.
“To the Alex who is reading this letter today, please know that if you can forgive me, I will never put anything before you again. As the only woman I’ve ever loved, as the woman to whom I have written countless unsent letters, as the woman who inspires and moves and challenges me like no other person on this earth, it’s the least I can offer. I may have just quit my job—because I couldn’t be proud of it, something your presence in my life demands me to confront—but I’m not a rash man. I will care for you and protect you, your heart above all else, and never again give you a reason to doubt my intentions.
“But I must say all of this in the knowledge that you may not feel the same, that your passion may not extend to the same depths as mine. I must take the risk that you took ten years ago, and say this as much for myself as for any potential of you. Let there be no miscommunication this time:
“I love you, I have always loved you, and I will love you for the rest of my life.
“Yours eternally, “Danial”
He finished, lowering the paper slowly and sinking into his armchair. Alex looked across the room at him, silent, her heart racing and mind too stunned to form any kind of coherent response. Only after a moment did she notice the tears slipping down Paul’s face, the sadness and joy in his eyes. He nodded his head, bringing the letter to his chest and weeping. For a moment, he only rocked back and forth, cradling the letter in his hands.
“I know what you can do for me,” he finally said, his voice thick with emotion.
She nodded in his direction, wordless.
“I want you to go get my mom,” he said, smiling through his sobs. “I’m calling off the wedding.”