Chapter 24 That Sounded Super Murdery #2
“But I’m not living in a van all the time.
I need things like a home base and a mailing address.
We could have a place together or I could rent my own…
and I’ll need a job, of course. But I’ve been rethinking my whole career plan, asking around about remote opportunities, so we can take long trips or travel to your shows.
It’s not the natural next step for my résumé, but I don’t care how our life looks on paper.
It only needs to be right to you and me, because I’m just so pathetically in love with you. ”
I add on the last bit because I don’t think I’ve mentioned that critical detail in all my ranting. I’m in love with him. I always have been. Even when I told myself it wasn’t possible, it never stopped. My love for my best friend was a plant in hibernation, ready to bloom.
I take a much-needed breath, waiting inside his impossibly long pause, until he breaks the silence to say, “Okay.”
What? “Okay?” I clarify, in case I missed a syllable. Or ten.
His face bursts to life with one of his familiar crinkly-eyed smiles. It’s a privilege to know every one of this man’s smiles, and I won’t be taking that for granted again.
“Okay,” he repeats. “That sounds good.”
He steps forward and takes my hand, the meeting of our palms a period at the end of a sentence. His pulse speeds up until it matches mine in a single heartbeat.
“Just like that?” I had much more prepared. Hours of material. “You’re not going to make me grovel or anything?”
He smirks. “That wasn’t groveling?”
A smile ruffles my wet, splotchy face. “I practiced a whole penguin with a rock allegory in front of my mirror, where our friendship is this pebble, and—”
“You don’t need to—”
“What about everything you said before? About how we shouldn’t need to map out our whole futures and ‘Why can’t we just try things?’?” I imitate his deep baritone.
“Is that what I sound like?” He clasps my other hand in his and pulls me close enough that our noses are only centimeters apart.
My heart’s been thumping against my bones like an animal in a cage since this morning.
Only now, it calms. “You like to know what tomorrow will look like, and I think I can learn to go along with that. I just prefer when tomorrow includes me.”
I twirl the strand of hair that flops onto his face between my fingers, and something heavy lifts from my chest. The armor around my ribs is cracking open and I can breathe again.
Living without Ethan is so much more terrifying than the unknowns of being with him.
“You’re a critical part of my five-year plan. ”
“Can I kiss you now?” he whispers through his grin, and I tilt my mouth to his for a kiss that feels nothing like a dare, a challenge, or a risk. This kiss is a soft place to land. A beginning of an adventure filled with so many more moments like this one.
“So,” he breathes into me when we come up for air. The buzz of his lips sends a trickle of heat down my spine. “I would very much like to carry you into the van right now and make up for lost time, but your sister and Petey are staring at us and—”
“Oh.” I straighten and crane my neck to confirm that, yes, they’re very much watching us. “They’re phase two of my plan.”
“Phase two?” He’s as confused as my road trip captives behind us.
“You didn’t think this was the whole plan, did you?” I tease. “I thought you knew everything I was thinking. I’m so predictable. Right, Powell?”
He shakes his head, his smirk blossoming into a full-blown grin. “Easy, Beekman. You surprise me all the time.”
I face the car again, beaming at my sister’s encouraging and perplexed face. “Phase two is the wedding.”
—
Laurel cries when I show her my proof of ordination—fully weeps for two solid minutes—hopefully with elation and not in relief that the only thing I want from her document box is the Cook County marriage license she procured last time we were all here.
“This dress is perfect,” she says, examining her braid crown in the mirror of Ted Wetter’s bathroom.
Ted was pretty cool about the stolen kayak/animal trap situation when I called to check in on him after his accident and arrange the surprise nuptials.
He was—understandably—unwilling to rent me boating equipment.
Luckily, he pitched the perfect alternative and generously lent Petey a white button-down.
I smooth the skirt of the cream-colored silk dress I spotted in the window of a secondhand store in Linden Hills. Between the plunging neckline and delicate lace details, I knew it was made for Laurel the second I laid eyes on it.
“I’m glad you love it. I thought if the packing list included a white dress, you might catch on to my master plan. Though I guess I could’ve B&E’d your place, since that’s a thing us Beekmans do.” My smile slips. “Or Eriksson-Thaos now, I guess.”
She grabs my hand. “You and me. We’re Beekmans, Charley. A wedding doesn’t change that.”
That’s when I start crying.
Petey knows the waterfall Ted is talking about based on almost no defining characteristics beyond You’ll know it when you see it and A sound bath of water and magnificence and It’s absolutely sick .
But when we climb out of the van and see the untamed beauty of it—hear the chaotic yet harmonious cacophony of cascading falls—I do know it and it does sound remarkably close to a sound bath of water and magnificence.
Petey stares out at the torrent of water with his hands on his hips. “See? Absolutely sick.”
Then all that’s left to do is help two of my favorite people get married. No one gives Laurel away, because she’s not going anywhere. She’s using her enormous capacity for love to make something new with her best friend. I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t want this moment for my sister.
Ethan eyes me the whole time like he’s getting ideas, and that’s fine by me. When it comes to him, I’m getting ideas too.
They exchange their own vows. Petey’s involve a complicated hockey analogy that is surprisingly poignant, but Laurel’s are simply, “I promise to run to you. With you. Always. To be as patient and generous with you as you’ve been with everyone you’ve ever met.”
“And with that…,” I tell them when the rings have been placed and the vows have been exchanged. “By the power vested in me by…the internet, it is my great honor to pronounce you husband and wife.”
Ethan steps on my decree with a raucous cheer that Petey can’t help but join. My sister throws her arms around my shoulders and yells, “We did it!” directly into my eardrum. It’s a clumsy end to an endearingly heartfelt ceremony.
“I forgot to have you kiss!” I lament once we’ve all signed the license. “How did I mess that up?”
“I’m sure it’s still valid,” Petey says comfortingly.
“Yes, but it’s part of the tradition, and now you won’t have that memory. You won’t have any memories, actually, because no one was here to take pictures. I knew I should’ve let Ted do this.”
“Charley.” Laurel grabs my shoulder, coaxing me to meet her eyes. “It was perfect. Ted Wetter could never. I’m so proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you too, Laur.”
She looks back at me for a moment, happy tears building in the corners of her eyes, and pulls me into a hug that’s a distillation of all our moments—girlhood and beyond.
“Enough sappy shit.” She sniffs. “Go grab Ethan’s camera and take some photos of my husband and me looking devastating next to a waterfall.”
I take about thirty or so pictures of them holding each other, gazing into each other’s eyes.
I even snap a couple with her on his shoulders.
Still, I know when I have the shot. Water is falling behind them in a dramatic curtain, they’re nose to nose, and I’ve caught them in that fraction of a second before their lips touch.
Laurel’s eyes are closed and her face is nestled into his giant palm, but his eyes are open.
He looks at her like a man possessed. That look says it all.
My impetuous sister may be ready to settle down with the boy next door, but he still can’t believe she’s real.
“We need a sister one,” Petey suggests, walking over to take the camera from my hands.
Laurel pulls me close in a moment that’s a breath away from precious, but then she ruins it when she yells at her newly minted spouse, “That angle is terrible. Get lower, babe. We’re going for fashion.
Drama. ” Only when Petey’s cheek is to the ground is Laurel satisfied with his position.
She releases him from his Instagram-husband duties after a few artful shots.
“Do the husband and wife have a song in mind for the first dance?” Ethan asks through the open driver’s-side door. He’s fiddling with the stereo.
“Play ‘Velvet Nebula,’?” Laurel calls out through cupped hands as Petey squeezes her waist.
Ethan’s cheeks glow pink, and just when I’m sure he’s about to pretend he can’t find the track, the intro booms through his speakers.
I know every note of the first verse—every aching, yearning lyric—the way you remember a song in your bones no matter how long it’s been. Lost in time and space while dreaming of your face. I won’t deny, I might be bracing for the one who will replace this heart of mine…
He jumps down from the driver’s seat and walks toward our sing-along on the grass as everything that’s ever hurt about this song clicks into place.
I freeze when he takes my hand, and Laurel and Petey join Ethan’s twenty-two-year-old voice for the familiar riff, singing about that woman in his head—in his bed—even when they’re galaxies apart.
Still her eyes, they’re in the sky, at midnight …
“In that velvet nebula!” The four of us scream-sing the chorus, jumping in the air holding hands and shouting the Ah, ah, ah s we’ve heard in TV shows, car commercials, and curated “feel-good indie” playlists. Petey picks Ethan up from behind, making his eyes bug out in gleeful astonishment.
“Lemonface, baby. Let’s gooooo!” Petey hollers at a volume only acceptable in hockey arenas.
But we’re all into it. Running up the pebbled lakeshore like children.
It’s almost too good to be reality. We’re in a distorted image where the edges are fuzzy and the colors are saturated.
We dance together, blurry orbs of who we were, who we are, and who we hope to become all at once.
Uncertainty and fear of what comes next still exist, but this miraculous moment apart from time is real too.
It only took jumping off a cliff to find it.
“So this song is about me?” I ask Ethan between the bridge and the chorus.
He spins me around, winding me up until I crash into his chest. “Yep.”
“Laurel’s right. It’s not subtle.”
His smile spreads into his cheeks, exposing his dimples. “I wasn’t trying to be.”
“Good,” I reply, tilting my head sideways so I can drink him in. “Subtlety is overrated.”
When the song finishes, Laurel takes control of the playlist. We jump and twirl, imbibing the champagne I packed early this morning.
···
“This was perfect,” Laurel whispers into our hug through the passenger window of Petey’s truck.
The sun has fallen behind the trees in a watercolor of pinks and oranges, and it’s time for her to leave.
I wave as they drive off, wearing the bubbly, wet smile that’s painted my face for the past hour, because it was perfect.
This strange little surprise wedding was exactly them, and I love them.
I’m going to keep loving them, knowing they’ll keep loving me .
We’re a bunch of saps who can’t help but be obsessed with each other.
Distance and paperwork won’t change that.
“What took you so long, Chuck?” he asks, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “I missed you so much, but ‘Sutton River’?”—he puts my alias in exaggerated finger quotes—“refused to meet me any earlier.”
“The rest of the plan wasn’t ready earlier,” I counter.
“What were you waiting for? You quit your job on Friday and the house sale was basically a done deal Tuesday.”
It takes a second for me to understand what he’s telling me, but then it hits me square in the jaw. “Wait. You knew about the house sale and the job?” I shove his shoulder. He barely budges. “That’s not fair!”
“Fair? After you quit your job, Laurel called me in a panic. Then I got this weird message about buying the van—which was so obviously from you…”
I stare at that smug smile of his in utter disbelief. “You already knew everything I was telling you. The whole time. And you let me make that humiliating speech?”
His hands find the dip of my waist. “I did. And thank god for that, because your plan was to ambush me in Wet Ted’s parking lot with no warning,” he complains, but his lovestruck smile tells me he’s not the least bit disappointed.
“I hate you,” I say into his neck. He smells as sweet as ever.
His hands grip me tighter and his eyes dance all over my face as though he might not believe I’m real and in his arms after all we’ve been through. “You don’t, though.”
“I don’t.” I barely get the words out.
I can hardly remember a time when I was afraid of this.
Of what would or wouldn’t happen when I jumped into the arms of my best friend.
I love him—I’ve always loved him—but I was so certain love was this fragile thing that would slice my palm when it inevitably shattered.
But it turns out we’re not so brittle, and I’m not that delicate.
“Wanna go home now?” He gestures with his chin toward the van. “Your name’s on all the finance documents, by the way. Which was another tip-off that ‘Sutton River’ was an alias.”
I pull him closer by the back of the neck. “I get it. I have no future in espionage.”
“So, where do you want to live, Beekman?” he asks, pressing our heads together. “The van’s too small. We’ll have to start looking for places soon or we might kill each other. Or you might kill me, more accurately.”
“Okay, rude. I can cohabitate in a van without resorting to murder.”
He squeezes me. “Sure you could.”
“You have no faith in me.”
“Have you even taken a second to consider the dark sides here?”
“Nope,” I answer, rolling my forehead along his. “It’s bright sides only from here on out, Powell.”
“Let’s do a week,” he suggests, his voice a little thick. “Then see where life takes us.”
I step back and lead him to the van, enjoying the weight of our clasped hands the whole way.
“I could try that,” I agree, sliding open the door.