Chapter 34
April
One Day Until The Wedding
My head spins as I take the spiral stairs to the upper deck, my breath quick and ragged. I grip the metal rail to steady myself. Luckily, I’m no longer working with heels. They dangle by the straps from my right hand.
Fresh night air hits me, bringing sensation back to my face. Goose bumps pop up along my arms. Inside, I’m still numb.
I only make it a few more steps to the deck railing. Raucous shouts and laughter around the corner stop me from going any farther. Sticking my neck out as far as I can over the water, I inhale deeply through my nose.
You did good, Libby. You did right by your friends.
Trip and Sabrina deserve a second chance. At love, at life. Maybe I was meant to give it to them. My heart swells at the thought. I’ve known both of them for less than a year, and yet they’ve given me so much. This is the least I can do.
Except my mind is a temptress, reminding me how it felt to press myself against the leather of Trip’s couch, his eyes as they dragged their way down my body, the way he challenged me to expect more from this life.
No.
Something bumps against my bare foot, and I look down. A football wobbles on the deck and is overtaken by a long shadow. Heavy breathing and a familiar voice.
“Lib?” Carter is silhouetted in the lamplight and his features come into focus as he moves closer.
Dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, jacket and tie abandoned.
His hair sticks up straight, damp pieces clinging to the sides of his face.
Leave it to Carter to break out the football at his black-tie rehearsal dinner.
He crouches down and retrieves the ball, standing up an inch at a time, like I’m a newborn colt he doesn’t want to spook.
“Coldwell!” A rough voice yells from around the front of the boat.
The hiss of beer cans and a series of chortles follow in its wake.
“Stay here, okay?” Carter’s eyes shine and he backs up, not taking them off me until he disappears around the corner.
The city skyline is bright as always, illuminating the night sky and reflecting in fragments on the water below.
It’s a postcard, the picture people send loved ones when they’ve taken a trip to the city, but this zoomed-out view isn’t New York to me.
Show me the way the contents of my neighbor’s planter boxes change with the seasons, the woman who leaves dog biscuits on her front step, the Vietnamese restaurant that serves the spiciest soup to warm your insides during the endless winter months.
I sigh. New York is my playground now. Time to start writing the next chapter. Which haunts, familiar and new, will I explore first? Maybe it’s time to take my story somewhere else. Move to Vermont or Colorado.
An emptiness floods me—a hollow, bitter ache. I don’t want to do it alone.
“I’m back.” Carter walks over—sans football—with a suit jacket over his arm. “How’s my girl?”
He drapes the jacket over my shoulders, and the thick material cocoons my bare arms, warming my skin.
“Sabrina’s actually locked herself inside the master cabin all night.”
It’s a dig, and not who he meant, but the words slip off my tongue like an ice cube.
He nods at the floor, his sagging shoulders a punch to my gut.
“I never heard from you.” Carter’s words have an edge. “Did you give any thought to what I said?”
A soft chuckle escapes my throat. “Would it matter now?” I spread my arms wide. “Looks like you’re planning to go ahead with the wedding. And in about twelve hours, at that.”
“It might matter.” He props his forearms on the railing next to me and returns my gaze over his shoulder. “Depending on your answer.”
I sigh and lean as far back as I can with my hands on the railing holding me upright, tilting my head toward the sky. “Carter, you don’t want this.”
“What?”
“You don’t really love me.” I lower my chin and meet his eyes.
“How can you say that? After everything—”
“Not in the way that you should. Not enough to call off your wedding. If you did, you would’ve done it by now.”
He stares out at the water and I do the same, the football game serving as muffled background noise to our thoughts. The waves lap at the side of the yacht, small splashes as the water meets solid metal. An impasse.
Carter speaks first. “You’re rejecting me.”
“Never.” I place my hand over his on the railing. “Carter, you’ve been a great friend to me. My best friend. You’ve brought fun and lightness into the darkest parts of my life. I’m not sure I’d be where I am if it weren’t for you.”
“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?” His voice cracks and he turns to study my face.
The freckles, the jaw, the nose that is so familiar to me. They’re cloaked in shadow, but I would recognize them in any light. My best friend.
“Aren’t I, in a way? You’re moving to London.”
“I’m not sure at this point what’s happening.”
I lower the burner on the pot simmering in my brain, the one wanting to boil over and scream at this man for not making a decision. For playing pickup football while his future marriage hangs in the balance.
I take a breath. “I’ve loved you since I’ve known you, Carter. You need to know that I’ll always be here for you—”
“Then why not be with me?” His eyes are fiery, even in the darkness.
My palm tightens around his. “Because I think if you truly wanted this, it would have happened sooner. That maybe in the fifteen years we’ve known each other you would’ve felt a fraction of what I felt.
I still love you. But I also think it’s possible to love someone without being in love with them. ”
“But we can figure that part out. We know everything about each other. We’re comfortable together.”
My heart severs clean in two. One year ago, this man fighting to be with me, regardless of the circumstances, would have been my wildest dream. Maybe I’ll regret this. I’ll be an old woman, alone with Kotka the Third, looking back and thinking, That was it, you idiot. That was your chance.
But somehow, I don’t think so.
“I don’t want to figure it out, Carter. I want to know. And I want you to know too. We both deserve to feel that way about someone.”
Trip’s lashes. Trip’s smile. His taunting. His praise. I can’t think about that right now.
Carter rests his forehead on the metal railing.
“What do I do now, Lib?”
“Well, first, you decide what to do about this wedding.”
When his eyes meet mine, I know he’s already made his decision. “I’m scared.”
Pulling my arms through the sleeves of his jacket, I rest one hand on his back, between his shoulder blades.
“It’s not easy. And I don’t envy you. But talk to Sabrina.” I press into a knot of muscle at the base of his neck. “I know you two will figure it out.”
“And then what?”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Carter is quite possibly the most privileged person I know.
A million doors will always be open to him, he need only choose.
But the glistening light and the fear in his eyes softens something in me.
It’s familiar. The need to please others, to avoid their disappointment.
Knowing you can’t continue on your current path, but at the same time, the thought of escaping, of choosing for yourself, even more terrifying.
I smile. “A wise woman recently told me that we write our own fairy tales. Maybe you should try it.”
He snorts. “Okay? Say more.”
“It means doing what’s right for you. Blocking out the noise from everyone else.”
He laughs and dips his head toward the railing, blond strands falling and obscuring his profile. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
I sigh and pat the spot in the middle of his back. “Welcome to the club. Maybe we can work on it together.”
Carter extends a broad, freckled hand to me. “Deal.”
I take his palm in mine and shake.
We’re thirteen years old again on the steps of St. Midge’s, introducing ourselves—his wrist a rainbow of friendship bracelets, mine completely bare. And while fifteen years later we stand here shaking hands in agreement, in a way, it’s like we’re meeting again for the first time.
He breaks the handshake, and his fingers move up to my hair, tucking a loose strand behind my ear.
“What are you going to do?” Carter smirks. “With your fairy tale?”
Maybe he’s mocking me. But for once, it doesn’t faze me.
“I’m not sure. But that’s the exciting part, I think.”
I face the water, stepping up on the bottom rail and clinging to the metal.
The breeze blows strands of my hair across my face, including the one Carter just tucked behind my ear.
As I tilt my head back, it travels up the column of my neck and across my collarbone.
Goose bumps rise on my bare skin, but this time not from the cold.
Carter’s eyes burn into the side of my face, but I don’t turn to face him. I am alive.
My mind floats above the skyline, to Trip lying in a cold room at Mount Sinai. A muscle clenches in my stomach.
“Anything I can do?” Carter’s voice is low. “To help with your next step?”
The corners of my mouth turn up. Still offering to help me, even when he’s no longer obligated. Maybe there was some truth to our friendship after all.
My mind still hovers several blocks uptown. “Actually, there is something you could do.”
“Anything.” His voice is earnest, sweet.
I turn to face him. Blond hair wild in the wind, cheeks tinged pink. The boy and the man I fell in love with. My first lesson in heartbreak.
“It’s going to sound strange. But trust me, okay?” A smile tugs at my lips.
“Always.”