Chapter 22
Leave it to Amber to be the first person from our old friend group to get married.
If living alone in New York hadn’t shoved me headfirst into adulthood, receiving her wedding invitation would have done the trick.
And even though the idea of getting married at twenty-three feels impossible and foreign, like something that only happens in the stories I write, I can’t pretend to be surprised.
Amber and Patrick are good for each other. I’m unbelievably happy for them.
The fact that I haven’t managed to cobble together anything resembling stability says more about me than it does about their relationship.
I threw myself into the deep end when I moved to the city more than a year ago, and every day since has been an exercise in not drowning.
In loneliness. In insecurity. In the fear that I’ve tricked people into believing I’m capable of something that I’m not, and that when they figure me out, it’ll all be taken away.
Their wedding venue is close to Patrick’s family and nestled in Redwood National Park in California.
When my flight lands, I tuck my laptop and my notebook into my carry-on bag, not sure why I bothered to pretend to work.
I’m barely writing under the best of circumstances, let alone at thirty thousand feet in the air, hurtling toward a collision with my past. The sequel to Torched is due to my editor, Whitney, next month, and every morning when I open my laptop, I stare at a blank page and relearn the meaning of the phrase existential dread.
What if I can’t do it?
What if Torched was a fluke and I’m a fraud?
What if I only ever had one good book in me?
My brain is a noisy bitch pretty much all the time.
The scenes between Fox and Juniper are the worst. Their dialogue is too cliché, their movements too wooden.
When I think of my looming deadline, a pit the size of a baseball sits in my stomach.
I have a constant nagging feeling that I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know how to make it go away.
I feel stuck and impatient and frustrated.
I always thought that writing would get easier the more I did it, not harder. And that living my dream would feel different from crying alone on the subway.
Life in New York feels at times both unbearably small and unbelievably unmanageable.
I go entire days without leaving my apartment or speaking to other people.
I’ve considered looking for a roommate, but the risk of ending up with someone who is a bad fit feels scarier than continuing to live alone.
I haven’t yet figured out how adults who work from home make friends.
The internet tells me to join a coed sports league, but I’m not that desperate.
Yet. Give it another winter. Next spring I might be lacing up my nonexistent cleats.
The city is big, but my world is small. Writing my second book gets harder every day I put it off, and emotionally I’m a wreck, due in large part to Torched’s impending release.
I don’t know how I’ll handle the pressure or the reviews or having my love letter to my ex-boyfriend available for critique.
It’s no wonder I’ve forgotten how to write a love story.
I’ve been lonely and anxious and devoid of inspiration for far too long.
The morning of the wedding, I dress alone in my hotel room while Amber and her bridesmaids get ready together in the bridal suite.
I might have been with them if I hadn’t dropped off the face of the planet when I went to New York, alone and depressed and letting phone calls and text messages go unanswered.
I sent my congratulations later than I should have, and while Amber says she understands that I was going through a brutal breakup, I still feel guilty that we now mainly communicate through “happy birthday” text messages and in the comments of our social media profiles.
My dress is an emerald-green maxi with gold accents and a V-neck so deep, not a bra on this planet would work with it.
I’m leaving all my faith in sticky tape and the universe.
I curl my hair into loose waves and painstakingly apply makeup, and when I survey the results, I can’t help but think it’s the most effort I’ve put into my appearance in more than a year.
Before I leave, I slip a small notebook and pen into my clutch just in case inspiration strikes.
In case he’s there.
Stupid, really, but old habits die never, I’m starting to fear.
I arrive at the outdoor wedding with only minutes to spare, stepping over moist green moss, fallen needles, and soft ferns as I make my way to the wooden benches on the bride’s side of the aisle.
I scan my surroundings with my heart in my throat.
Golden beams of light filter through the canopy of ancient trees, and an earthy fragrance fills my lungs.
I drink it in, enchanted, even as part of my brain is focused on something else entirely.
He’s not here.
Well, that’s okay. It’s good, actually. Now I can give my full attention to the wedding.
I smooth my hands over the stupidly expensive dress that I bought just for this.
As the last few guests take their seats, I wave to Amber’s parents and some people I know from school.
Finally, the wedding party enters, the groomsmen in white shirts, bow ties, and suspenders and the bridesmaids in shades of rust, walking arm in arm across the forest floor toward a circular clearing of trees—a redwood fairy ring.
When the music swells, it’s Amber’s cue.
In unison with one hundred guests, I turn to watch her big entrance, and my stomach pitches violently. Sitting on the edge of the very last bench is West.
His hair is short again, not a hint of a curl in sight.
It’s a small mercy, but I realize immediately that I have never, not once in the five years I’ve known him, seen West Emerson in a suit.
He’s wearing black pants, a black jacket with no tie, and a crisp white shirt with the top button undone at the neck.
He could not look further from the emo boy in guyliner and Sharpie nail polish I met when we were both eighteen.
It’s almost like looking at a stranger. His head turns in my direction, and I nearly give myself whiplash whirling around to face the wedding party.
I bunch my hands in the fabric of my dress, cheeks burning, heart racing.
The wedding is beautiful, and I don’t hear a word of it.
I can’t distinguish the vows from the blood rushing in my ears.
I cheer and clap when Amber and Patrick kiss, but my own lips have gone numb.
I’ve thought about this moment for so long, but now that it’s here, all my wires are crossed, the signals short-circuiting.
Amber and Patrick are quickly whisked away for photos, leaving the guests to enjoy cocktail hour on the deck attached to the rustic banquet hall.
“Mars! Are you famous yet?” I’m pulled into a circle of old classmates and am bombarded with questions about my book deal.
I’ve never made as extreme eye contact as I do now.
My neck aches from how actively I am not looking at West, but the problem with avoiding someone is that you have to know where they are at all times; when I’m offered a fruit skewer from a passing server, West is on the left side of the room chatting with Patrick’s best man.
By the time the prosciutto-wrapped figs make it to me, I can feel him standing by the bar.
It’s like he’s the moon, and I’m the tide, constantly tugged in his direction.
It takes restraint I didn’t know I had to act like I don’t care that we’re breathing the same air for the first time in sixteen months.
It’s almost unthinkable that we haven’t talked in that time.
A few months after the move, I sent him a long, groveling letter of apology, but I don’t know if he ever read it.
We had no last conversation or moment of closure; one minute we were together, and the next he changed his mind, and I lashed out, and by the time the dust settled, we lived on opposite sides of the country, and there was nothing to force us together.
It didn’t take long after our breakup for me to block him on Instagram. Eventually, determined to hurt my own feelings, I created a fake account so I could check his profile without being caught—but, of course, he never posts. When it comes to the details of his life, I’m a dog with a bone.
Cocktail hour ends, and Amber and Patrick join us to thunderous applause in the twinkly banquet hall for dinner.
I find my assigned place at a table near the back of the room, and it gives me a perfect view of West. As I watch him sip from a glass, too far for me to know if it’s alcohol or water, it occurs to me that any idea I’ve had about his life over the last year could be dead wrong.
Every time I picture him, it’s just a story made up in my head.
I don’t know where he lives or what he does for work or who he texts as he’s falling asleep.
The thought makes my chest feel like a drum: hollow but loud, my heartbeat thumping steadily against my ribs.
The chicken arrives, and as I’m taking my first bite, I realize the awful restless, waiting feeling is back with a vengeance. I glance at West and find him watching me, his mouth turned down, his eyes guarded. I wave, tentative and awkward. He nods, his eyes dropping to his plate.
My hands are frozen on my knife and fork, impatience clawing its way up my chest. I realize, finally, what that persistent feeling is all about.