Chapter 27 #2
We may not be a real family, but maybe we’re making each other just a little bit better. Maybe that’s enough.
“Does this mean you’re not still furious with me for making you get on that plane?” Marianne asks me.
I think back to the day Marianne and Will dragged me to the airport, practically blindfolding me to get me on the plane.
It all seems so different to me now. How could I be furious when I got to experience the adventure of a lifetime?
I faced fears that have haunted me since childhood.
I finally let myself deviate from the plan I’ve been constructing my entire adult life.
Yes, I got my heart broken. But for a few years there, I wasn’t sure I had any heart to break.
“As long as you’re not still furious with me for booking the hurricane motel,” I laugh.
“Besides Will bleaching my favorite suitcase to ward off potential bed-bugs, I’d say we got by relatively unscathed,” she says.
“I’m probably the one she’s mad at.” Jules interrupts. “Watching the makeup artist put foundation on her this morning was like taking a dog to the dentist.”
“Jules, it’s your wedding day. I couldn’t be mad at you if you put me in a sumo suit.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Is that a promise?”
Marianne takes a large bite of the opulently decorated cake and promptly spits it out all over her plate. I knew anything that pretty couldn’t be edible.
“That good, huh?” I ask.
Marianne’s eyes go wide as saucers as she chokes out the last bit of chocolate.
“Oh my god. Is she having an aneurysm?” Will asks me, grabbing his wife’s shoulders as she chokes.
“Stella,” she wheezes out between crumbs. “Stella. Oh my God.”
I follow Marianne’s pointing fingers down to the path at the end of the large lawn. I’m half expecting to find a bear before I see what’s really causing her to asphyxiate.
It’s lucky I don’t have any cake in my mouth, because I’d probably spit it out, too.
Standing at the edge of the lawn, camouflaged in dress pants and a navy suit jacket, is…
My breathing comes to an abrupt halt. Now I think I’m the one having an aneurism.
I rub my eyes to make sure we’re not experiencing some sort of group hallucination before I remember the fifteen layers of mascara the makeup artist plastered on me a few hours ago.
I turn back to my friends to confirm, but even Will is slack-jawed.
Caleb raises a shy hand in a wave as if cuing my heart to detonate into a million flaming pieces. What the hell is he doing in Montecito?
I look to Jules, who’s beaming like a searchlight.
“Jules, what in the actual—”
“You promised not to be mad!” she squeals, jumping to hide behind a still-heaving Marianne.
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I mutter, trying to down the glass of Perrier in front of me. I spit it out when I realize it’s Will’s vodka tonic.
“Go!” Marianne wheezes at me. “For the love of Goddess, woman! Don’t let me die for nothing!”
This is just like the jump from the deck.
If I don’t do it now, I’m going to sit here flailing like an idiot until someone pries my fingers off the ledge.
I stand up, propelled by fragile fumes of courage and half a glass of red wine, and stride confidently to the path he’s standing on.
And by stride, I mean take teeny tiny Fred Flintstone steps to make sure my heels don’t sink into the grass.
When I reach him, I grab him by the sleeve and pull him behind one of the large oak trees that flank the path. I’m not sure whether it’s to move him out of sight or to make sure he’s actually real. I can feel the flex of his bicep beneath his sleeve.
Very, very real.
“Caleb, what are you doing here?”
He swallows, and I notice how three months have changed him.
Despite being undeniably gorgeous, Caleb is an absolute wreck.
His eyes are borderline bloodshot and his hair, which he clearly tried to gel back, is sticking out in all the wrong places.
One of his buttons is in the wrong hole.
And I’ve never seen him so visibly nervous.
Come to think of it, I’ve never really seen him nervous at all.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, and it comes out like a hiccup. “I know this isn’t… I’m not sure what I was thinking. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Classic Caleb. He’s flown God knows how many miles to be here for reasons still unknown and is still the picture of politeness.
I, on the other hand, am practically feral.
I fight the urge to jump at him; to drag my hands through his already unkempt hair.
Now that he’s in front of me, I want to tie him to this tree and never let him go.
“Caleb, why are you here?”
He takes a deep breath to say something, but it takes a few, agonizingly long seconds before the words actually come out.
“Jules invited me. She kind of threatened me, actually. For a small woman, she can be pretty terrifying when she wants something.”
He’s not wrong. I have a feeling this post-honeymoon conversation with Jules is going to be very, very long.
“But if you want me to go—“
“No!” I protest, markedly louder than I mean to. “I just meant—why would you even want to be here?”
“I had to see you,” he says, and my breath stops.
Of all the reunions I’ve fantasized about in the last few months (and trust me, there were many), Caleb crashing my sister’s wedding wasn’t one of them.
I answered every telemarketing call hoping it was his number.
I even ordered a book on sailing to serve some wild delusion that I’d run into him at sea.
But the ending of these fantasies was always the same: Caleb wanted nothing to do with me.
The only feelings he had for me were anger and regret.
“Why?” I ask him, my traitorous voice trembling as it escapes my mouth. “After I ruined your life?”
“Ruined my life?” he repeats incredulously.
I can feel the heat coming off him, and I’m suddenly terrified that this is some horrible intervention where Caleb tries to get closure for the wrongs I’ve done to him.
The fragile layers of scotch tape I’ve plastered over my heart since we last spoke tremble and threaten to pull apart.
“Stella, how many times do I have to tell you? I chose to be with you. I knew what I was signing up for the moment you grabbed me in the damned elevator. You didn’t ruin anything.”
“I—” I stammer to get the words out through the lump that’s rising in my throat. “I thought you were done with me. I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
But Caleb looks like I’ve just accused him of stealing silverware.
“How could you think that?”
“Because you said I was a mistake!” I remind him emphatically. “And… I was a coward. Instead of standing up for you, I just stood by and watched your life fall apart when I should have told them the truth.”
“What, so you could blow up three lives instead of one? It wasn’t your job to watch over the ship, Stella, it was mine. And I was fired because of my own decisions. I never expected you to dig your own grave just to lie next to mine.”
“But I should have stood up for you, Caleb. I should have—"
“You don’t get to pretend like you’re the only person making decisions here,” he interrupts, closing the distance between us.
“Stop making yourself responsible for everything! I chose this. I was done for the second you stepped on board. And if I could make that choice again, even knowing how things would turn out, I would.”
“I don’t understand.”
I can feel the pressure of unwelcome tears welling behind my eyelids.
“You never called.”
“Stella, how would I have gotten your number?” he protests.
“It’s not as if I could text Arthur and ask for it.
After I got back to Auckland, I did everything I could think of.
I googled Marianne. I downloaded Instagram.
I even called every university in Illinois pretending to be one of your students.
They wouldn’t even give me your cell number, just an obsolete email that hadn’t been active in weeks.
I convinced myself that if you wanted to hear from me, you’d have reached out. ”
He leans closer until his breath is strong enough to ruffle my hair. I imagine my heart flying out of my chest like an old cartoon, pounding hard enough to knock down a set of bowling pins.
“I’ll never forgive myself for what I said to you that last day aboard.
Honestly, I was in shock. But I’ve run it over a thousand times in my mind and every time it sounds even worse.
You were never a mistake. Even knowing how everything played out, even if you never want to speak to me again, I’d do it again a hundred times. ”
Suddenly, it’s just me and Caleb, here—no wedding party. No Warrens or parents or expensive band. I feel the energy between us light up like a forest fire: a heat I thought I’d lost that last day at Denarau.
I sure hope that mascara is waterproof.
“I crept away because I didn’t want to drag you down with the ship. If Matthew and Jules hadn’t called me to tell me about the wedding—“
“Wait, what?” the mention of his name shatters the spell of Caleb’s apology, and I have to run it back in my head to make sure I heard him right. “Matthew called you?”
“About a week ago,” Caleb nods. “They called me and told me that he told the Warrens the truth. Jules said that you wanted to see me, but were too scared to call, and…”
Holy. Shit. I’m not sure if I’m in more disbelief over Jules actually managing to keep a secret or the fact that Matthew thought about anyone other than himself. Did Matthew actually do something selfless?
“You didn’t know,” Caleb realizes, whatever hope was in his eyes flicking off like a burnt-out bulb.
“No,” I shake my head.
“I’m such an idiot. You didn’t say a thing to them about me, did you?”