Seventeen
“I’M TAKING A personal day,” I told Beanie when I video-called her later.
“Brilliant,” Beanie said, when I told her why. “Reclaim your power.”
I wasn’t sure eating Lindor chocolates for breakfast and binge-watching HGTV was reclaiming my power, exactly. But it would do for now.
Beanie, for the record, was appalled by Hutch kicking me out of bed. “He’s given you yes after yes after yes —and now suddenly it’s a no ?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“So much for heroes,” Beanie said.
“I mean,” I said, now feeling an urge to defend him, “he did do the twenty-four hours. Even though he didn’t want to.”
“But he did it for his brother, not you.”
“And he did dive in and save me when his dog knocked me overboard.”
“Big whoop. That’s his literal job.”
“And he sneaked me snacks on the helicopter so I wouldn’t barf.”
At that, Beanie brought the phone close to her face to stare me down. “Katie,” she said, “raise your bar.”
Before we hung up, she made me add to the beauty list.
“I don’t want to today,” I said.
“That’s exactly why you have to.”
“Can’t I take a day off?”
“No,” Beanie said. “It’s more important than ever.”
I frowned, looking for another excuse.
But then Beanie said, “This dude rejected you. So you have to un-reject yourself.”
“Fine,” I said.
“And don’t do anything weird this time. No armpits, or molars , or whatever. Pick something normal.”
Something normal.
I studied myself in the phone. Finally, I declared: “Mouth.”
“Mouth!” Beanie said, throwing up her arms in victory. “Yes! I’ve been waiting for mouth !”
I knew the drill. Now I had to tell her why. “It’s plump and kind of a nice heart shape. It’s a great color—a good shade of pink, even without lipstick.” Then, in defiance of whatever Hutch might think, I added: “It’s kissable.”
“It’s a million percent kissable!” Beanie shrieked. “Holy cow—this is personal growth for the hall of fame!”
“ Is there a personal growth hall of fame?” I asked, as I walked over to the bathroom mirror to double-check all the assessments I’d just made about my mouth.
Yes. Correct. Those were objectively kissable lips.
Infinitely kissable , dammit.
It really was the most incredible realization—and I felt it all the way from my brain down to my heart. I didn’t need a rescue swimmer to think I was beautiful.
I could do that for myself.
It was such a life-changing thought.
That longing to be looked at lovingly ? That longing to be lovable… that’s really also so much about wanting to be valued, and seen, and connected, and safe, and just deeply, fundamentally okay ?
Maybe we didn’t have to outsource that.
Maybe we could fill that longing for ourselves.
And I’m not saying we don’t need other people, or that we should spend our lives alone.
I just suddenly understood in a whole new, sun-breaking-through-the-clouds way that even if we do eternally need and long and want to be seen… maybe the most important eyes doing the looking are our own.
“Beanie,” I said. “I think my whole understanding of how human life works just shifted.”
“About time,” Beanie said.
I explained my epiphany while Beanie nodded at me like she was epically impressed. “This is so much better than elbows—or whatever dumbass thing I thought you were going to say.”
“I guess I needed a breakthrough today.”
“You sure as hell did,” Beanie said.
This culture-of-appreciation thing was working. “I feel like the Gottmans would be proud,” I said.
“Wouldn’t they?”
Now my mind was racing. “Is this why I stayed with Lucas for so long? Because I thought I needed him to do this for me? Because I didn’t know I could do it for myself?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Beanie, you’re a genius,” I said.
“I totally am,” Beanie said. “And you’re a lot less of a dummy than you used to be.”
I WAS STILL glowing from all the revelations when Rue knocked at my door not long before dinner.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, when I opened it. “Did Hutch just tell me you’re sick?”
“I’m not sick,” I said. “I’m just taking a personal day.”
“Wonderful,” Rue said. Then she held out another shopping bag from Vitamin Sea. “I’ve brought you something.”
I took the bag.
“It’s a sundress,” she said, “but there’s a choice. Romance red, or funeral black.”
I pulled them out, and held them both up, and let the fabric tumble down.
“Pick one, and wear it to dinner,” Rue said. “It’s Ginger’s birthday.”
And then, in honor of my new epiphany, I said, “Red.” As if there had never been a question. I might not be having a romance with Hutch. But nobody could stop me from having one with myself.
“I’m so glad you said that,” Rue said, kissing her fingers and then touching my cheek.
I hadn’t planned on going to dinner tonight, to be honest. I had planned on giving myself the gift of not having to see Hutch.
But now I’d discovered a hidden well of inner strength.
“Hutch will be there,” Rue added, thinking that would be an inducement.
I let that sit.
Then Rue said, “Or I assume he will be, at least. He only used to come to dinner once a week before you showed up, but now it’s pretty much every night.”
“He only used to come to dinner once a week?”
“It seemed frequent at the time,” Rue said.
“But why so often now?”
Rue looked at me through her red glasses. “I think things became more fun for him recently. For reasons no one on earth could start to guess.”
She gave me a wink.
Had I been fun for Hutch?
I wasn’t sure.
But it didn’t matter.
Hutch or no Hutch… Rue was throwing a birthday party for her friend. And my new red dress, my recalibrated worldview, and my kissable mouth would all be in attendance.
HUTCH DID SHOW up, in the end.
And the red sundress looked even better on.
If I held my arms out to the sides and lifted the hem, it made a full semicircle from the waist. Combine clothing that voluminous with a hearty island breeze, and add some string lights, an outdoor party, and some yacht rock on the speaker system… and you’ve got some fluttery magic. I walked out of my cottage and toward the party doing something I’d never done in my life: admiring myself.
Was every aspect of me Photoshop perfect?
Irrelevant.
The addition of my kissable lips to my growing collection of lovable visuals had tipped the scales.
I’m no scientist. I don’t know why it worked.
But I knew this much: it was enough.
I looked up and saw Hutch stepping in through the picket-fence gate, dressed up in a collared shirt in Ginger’s honor and carrying a birthday bouquet for her.
I don’t know what he saw in that moment—or what he felt.
But I can tell you that we both held still as we locked eyes—his bouquet forgotten in his hand and my red dress billowing in the wind—for much longer than people who don’t notice each other ever would.
Before we’d broken the stare, the drums for “Copacabana” started up on the speaker system, and Rue raised her arms to The Gals in a round-’em-up gesture and said, “Okay, ladies! You know what to do.”
Apparently, they did know what to do. The whole group started assembling itself into a conga line, and Nadine and Benita came to pull us in.
“What is happening?” I asked Hutch, as he lined up behind me.
“It’s a rule around here,” he said. “Whenever ‘Copacabana’ plays, you have to stop what you’re doing and conga.”
“I don’t know how to conga,” I protested, even as I placed my hands on Benita’s waist in front of me.
“It’s easy,” Hutch said, as he settled his hands onto my hips.
“You all just— do this?” I asked.
“Resistance is futile,” Hutch answered.
I guess it really was.
Were Hutch and I still fighting at this point?
I mean, can you really fight when Barry Manilow is playing?
I felt the warmth of Hutch’s hands through the sundress fabric, and I moved in time with the group, and the bulb lights shone overhead, and the breeze caressed us all… and I felt myself just giving in to it all—letting go.
What did that headline say about Lucas Banks’s ex-fiancée?
She has really let herself go.
Maybe that was right.
And maybe that was a good thing.
The four minutes of that song flew by in a blur of fabric and touch and the warm pressure of Hutch’s palms, and as the song wound down and the line broke apart, Hutch slid his hand over to grab mine and then spun me around for a minute. The swells of the wind, the waving fabric, the steadiness of his grip… it all felt surreal, and alive, and like I was part of something larger than myself.
Even after I stopped spinning, I was still spinning—you know?
And then The Gals started heckling Hutch to dip me, and never one to disappoint them, he did it… and just when I was thinking that this night could not possibly be more surprising, at the lowest point of the dip, with Hutch above me as I leaned back to stretch my neck, just in the seconds of silence between when that song ended and the next one started, a voice called out from across the yard, “Hey! Get your hands off my girlfriend!”
Hutch and I turned at the sound to look over, mid-dip.
And it was Cole.